Accudyne Systems specializes in all aspects of custom equipment:

• Development
• Engineering design
• Fabrication
• Systems integration
• Start-up
• Support

We assisted in converting their old static HTML site into a content management powerhouse with the help of Drupal and custom Drupal module programming and provided them with a fresh new look for 2010 and beyond. Easy editing with CKEditor, eye catching images using our Billboards module, and an eye pleasing new design by Leif Osmundson.

Visit the new Accudyne Systems website, in your browser or iPhone/iPad! »

It’s 2010. It’s time to stop using Internet Explorer 6.

Internet Explorer 6 was released like a virus on August 27, 2001 with Windows XP. That makes the browser almost 9 years old. Most of you don’t keep cars for that long. You trust your car to protect you from danger, that it has efficient gas usage and quality parts. As soon as it gets old, or you have service issues, you go get a new car. Yet, some of you don’t seem to be bothered that when you sit down to do your banking or purchase things online, you use a browser that has little to no security, easily delivers malware/virii/spyware, and does not adhere to the internet standards created by some of the top minds of internet architecture at W3C. That’s like going 80 miles an hour in a car made of glass, bald tires, and powered by a leaky nuclear core. Eventually you are going to get hurt.

With so many super sexy options out there for browsers, you owe it to yourself to upgrade. And why not? Browsers are free. You’re lucky. I remember paying for Netscape Navigator 4 just to escape Internet Explorer in the 90s. That’s how much I loathed it- and that’s how popular Netscape used to be. For the stubborn who refuse to upgrade, you are about to be left behind. Companies like Google are discontinuing support for Internet Explorer 6. Google knows whats up.

It’s time for you to take action. Please upgrade your browser today. Choose a flavor and enjoy better, and safer, internet browsing today. All of these browsers offer bookmark importing, so you can take your favorites from IE with you.

Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Opera
Apple Safari

If you need assistance upgrading, we’re here to help.

“At least 34 companies, including Adobe, Symantec, Yahoo and Dow Chemical, were attacked, according to industry sources.”

Whether or not it was a government sponsored attack is irrelevant here (let the FBI/NSA/CIA figure it out, our tax dollars pay for that sort of thing). The common thread in all the attacks is that Internet Explorer was exploited and used to gain access to the infrastructures of these companies.

Do you still use Internet Explorer? The version doesn’t matter, even 8 still sucks. Ask yourself why. If Symantec, Google, Adobe and Yahoo couldn’t protect themselves from an Internet Explorer exploit, what makes you think you can? Google even has the cajones to come out and publicly lambast China and denounce Microsoft XP/IE6 and urge users to move away from Internet Explorer (props to Google).

Switch today. There are plenty of better and more secure browsing options out there. Our personal favorite in the office is Google Chrome. It is lightweight, extremely fast, secure, and works great with web apps like Gmail and Google Wave. It has the fastest javascript engine and pages load lightening quick. Apple’s Safari is also secure, but not as fast as Google Chrome. Opera is also plenty fast and secure as well. There is also Mozilla Firefox, which isn’t as fast, and becomes more insecure the more plugins you add into to it, due to how plugins run with all permissions. Personally I think Firefox is bloated and slow, but it was the first real alternative to Internet Explorer after Netscape left the scene some years ago.

Lastly, if you are still using Windows 98, 2000, XP, its time to move on. Don’t leave your front door open and then complain when your home is robbed. Windows 7 is great, OSX is great, and if you are feeling adventurous, try out Ubuntu.

Up to that point, we had done every project in Coldfusion hosted on Windows (and eventually Linux). There is a price tag that came with that though, whether it be hosting, Coldfusion licensing/upgrading, or development costs. As people were let go due to the economy, we also realized that it is difficult to support proprietary code for a proprietary solution someone else wrote. Why? Because that person is the only person in the world who knows why they made the application/code that way. When something goes wrong, you spend hours trying to find the issue, and even more time coming up with a tested reliable solution.

Proprietary solutions are sold as the best thing since sliced bread, but what customers don’t know is that they are getting locked in to that company. You can’t easily cut ties with a firm and take your site someplace else. Proprietary applications are the brainchild of whoever developed it. Therefore, when you need support, you won’t get it. That developer is long gone, but you are stuck with their code. These firms put you in a box and want to keep you there- that is the whole point of proprietary systems. Why do you think you can’t install OSX on a PC? Why do you think video games are built only for Windows, and not Linux or Mac? It’s all about client retention.

With that, we decided to start fresh and drop our proprietary Coldfusion CMS and Ecommerce platforms. Everyday we were tied up in fixing Inclind Commerce, or trying to meet the needs of each client for Inclind CMS. Pete and I went as fast as we could, but we pretty much knew there was no way to compete with the rest of the world. We turned to open source solutions to provide us a solid base to build off of, instead of starting each project from scratch (which all essentially had the same core functionality as it were). Developing Coldfusion in Fusebox framework is/was an absolute nightmare and probably still is. It is a disjointed unauthentic implementation of MVC style framework despite what they say, and requires you to hold its hand every step of the development process.

We knew Wordpress would not be a solution at all. At best, it is a blogging platform and nothing more. You may read lots of articles that say how awesome Wordpress is and is a CMS, but it is not a CMS. You’ll also see that those articles are written by designers too, not developers. It’s a pain in the ass to develop for, it has patches every other week, plugins are prone to XSS attacks or theme hacking, and cannot sustain the level of development we perform. It is not a prime-time application for websites.

We also tried Joomla. Knowing it was based around Mambo, my expectations were low for it based on the experience I had working with Mambo. Even 5 years later, it had an ugly backend, scattered developer community, and little support. The developer area is full of confusing rules, practices and jargon. Take this for example, from the Joomla extensions page:

• Component – Mini-application to render the main page body.
• Module – Renders small html blocks on any page.
• Plugin – Changes code behavior dynamically.
• Language – Provides language translation.
• Ext. Specific Addon – Specific addon that requires another ext. to operate.
• Tool – External application that helps with creating or managing Joomla! site.

What the hell is the difference? All 6 bullet points say the same thing, yet they are 6 different kinds of extensions for Joomla. We couldn’t see ourselves training clients around the confusing backend or having lowered development time with their overly complicated extension system and scary licensing rules.

We came to Drupal. I had heard about this one on and off in various circles, generally more good than bad. After a week of successful proof of concepts for different kinds of websites, we decided Drupal was the best solution for us in terms of what we needed to accomplish.

Out of the box, Drupal provides:

• Database abstraction
• Auto-discovery of custom modules
• Managed workflow
• Robust Development API
• Experienced and organized developer community
• Intuitive administrative backend
• Easy integration of custom modules through the hook system

There is a solution for just about any scenario in the Drupal world. They have a very good approval process for modules. For example, if a module has security loopholes or bad coding practices, it will not be accepted until those are corrected (I don’t see this happening in other projects). If someone is trying to submit a module that already exists in some form, they are encouraged to merge efforts so the community isn’t littered with duplicate modules with the same functionality. It is differences like these that make Drupal the most widely used, highly regarded, best open source CMS bar none.

Our choice was the right one, proving vital in our relevance to custom web development and is a reason why we are still here and still the top choice for web design / web development / website building on the peninsula. We are able to deploy websites with a consistent codebase and backend in rapid succession. Clients are pleased with the added functionality and easier administrative UI. We’re at the point now where we can take Drupal and make it do anything we need it to do, big or small. We’ve been able to provide scalable solutions from the collaboration of many people providing a solid product. Instead of a couple of people making an in-house solution, we’re working with hundreds on a more polished result. We changed our entire development process so we could have a streamlined workflow and tighter communication between ourselves and the client with great results.

We have some pretty cool projects in the pipeline for 2010 utilizing Drupal and hope to have some things to show off in the next few months. iPhones, region-free real estate integration, content distribution, big boy stuff. Lookout.

From the award announcement,

We are pleased to announce that Drupal has won the Best Open Source PHP CMS Category in the 2009 Open Source CMS Award. This category featured a very close contest between the top three, Drupal, WordPress, and Joomla! in which Drupal ended up as the overall choice for the judges and the public.

This is the highest award that Drupal was eligible for in 2009. Drupal previously won for Best Overall CMS in 2007 and 2008 has been placed in the Hall of Fame. The winners of the Hall of Fame Drupal awards for best Drupal theme and best Drupal contributed module will be awarded Thursday, November 12th, 2009. The themes and modules nominated were selected both for the most used and for a diverse set of nominees.

We use Drupal exclusively for building customized, scalable high end web applications. It’s no surprise developers, designers and users keep voting Drupal as Best CMS for years in a row. There is nothing you cannot do with Drupal. Being a CMF (content management framework), it is not pigeonholed into any one particular niche like Wordpress (strictly blogging applications).

What has Inclind done with Drupal?

• Integration with Microsoft Dynamics SOP System into Ubercart for product importing and inventory management
• Integration with Ubercart and Drupal into UPS Worldship for rock solid quoting
• Integration with UPS Worldship for automatic label printing for commerce orders
• Integration with Amazon S3 services for synced failsafe CDN (Content Distribution Network) support
• Integration with Windows LDAP Protocol support
• Integration with Invision Power Board Forum for external authentication of users through Drupal
• Integrated Ubercart as a management application of customers with interval based shipping orders (drop shipment / bulk ordering)
• Built routing algorithms to track and route best delivery methods for truck drivers on to Google Maps
• Built over 100 custom modules to meet the needs of individual clients
• … with more to come

Who else uses Drupal? Check it out!

• AOL
• The White House
• Yahoo
• IBM
• Bob Dylan
• The Onion
• CNN
• Metallica
• United Nations
• jQuery
• Sony BMG
• Michael Jackson
• Ozzy Osbourne
• EA Games
• Star Trek Online
• Mastodon
• Warner Bros
• CKY
• MTV
• MTV2
• SpreadFirefox
• SpreadThunderbird
• Computer World

What are billboards (banners, header images, et al) you ask? Billboards are the large images you see on various websites that cover the header area. They typically contain marketing statements and imagery relevant to the websites purpose or page content.

Here are is one of my favorite examples:

Visit Southern Delaware Tourism Website

See that set of images just above the content, fading in and out? That is a billboard. With this module, you can create those in a matter of seconds.

After some brainstorming between Shaun and myself, we set out to create something simple, as simple as creating a Page node, without all the aforementioned hassle. After a week of coding, testing, testing and testing, we achieved just that. Now all you have to do is say, I want to create a Billboard, drop in your images (with a cool AJAX in-place uploader, you don’t even have to leave the page), and tell it what pages to display on and you’re done! It couldn’t be any simpler. You also have additional options available to you such as changing how the images display (random image, or fade in/out between images), setting ALT and Title tags for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and select a resize option to size the billboard to (which is controlled and hooked into ImageCache!). Oh, on top of all of that, it’s all output via a single block. That’s right, you can have 100 billboards and just one block. Once you place it in the region, depending on your site theme, it’s ready to go. In the future you will be able to add blocks so you can have a billboard in the header, and also the footer or sidebar if you wish.

We have been taking feedback from our clients over the months, taking notes during training meetings, and analyzing massive amounts of performance data from our servers. It’s been pretty quiet in the blog, Facebook and our Twitter and it’s because we’ve been very hard at work. Over the last few weeks Inclind has been working at refining what we do in order to better serve, better train, and better our clients online presence. The Billboard module is just the tip of the iceberg, a precursor to the ultra-streamlined CMS package we have been putting together. There is so much going on, I couldn’t even begin to write up what will be coming in the next few months.

We’re here to serve you, to help you get things done faster, and make it so you don’t need a PHd to manage your site.

If you have any questions regarding Billboards, Drupal, our refined CMS package or need help managing your content, we are here to help. Give us a call at 302-856-2802, send us a tweet @inclindinc, or stop by our office.

Their new site has everything they have been wanting and more. Dogfish Head Brewery can now easily manage their 800 page (and growing!) website, all its users, media, newsletters, news articles, events, RSS feeds, and comments. They can add/remove ‘locations’ of where their product is sold, served, or distributed. This allows customers to log in and see where they can find Dogfish on the ‘Fish Finder‘. Try it out!

With that, the new site features a fully functioning community section and social network. Users can register on the website for an account, after which they can create a basic profile. From there, they have access to submit a map location to their Fish Finder, add or comment on threads in the Forum, submit questions to Dogfish staff in Ask Dogfish, comment on Dogfish staff blogs (Blogfish), and connect with other Dogfish loving fans. All applicable content is able to be sent instantly through Twitter/Digg/MySpace/Facebook/etc in a single click of the ‘Share’ button. We really went all out to flesh out the community side and give users stuff to do in between staff blogs and answering questions.

Our new system that was used on Dogfish Head Brewery has no official name yet, or I’d tell you what it is ha. We hope to have that nailed down soon. What I can tell you is that its the most feature complete, stable and scalable CMS you are going to find on the east coast. I would put it up against anything the competition has to offer from Maine to Florida with confidence ours is as on par or better than what else is available. Since the code is modular, its not coded for 1 strict specific project (as we used to) but rather, any client who comes in the door can have the same power, accessibility, UI and functionality of big time folk like Dogfish. In other words, it makes our platform highly scalable and consistent.

All ya gotta do is ask us.

As for the rest of the week, Pete, Trey and Kevin are representing Inclind at DrupalCon in Washington DC. They will be talking to fellow developers and programmers and sharing / showing off work. You can follow what we’re up to on our Twitter (either by going to the Twitter site, or the side of our page on this site, or adding us inclindinc).

This is where I heard a statement that kind of jarred me.

“Oh I know, I make MySpace layouts….” – it brought my brain to a halt.

It wasn’t anything personal with her, but it was the realization I had that there are likely 1000s of young people just like her also doing the same. Some people are even making a career / making money off making MySpace layouts.

So why is this harmful to impressionable minds?

For starters, MySpace was never designed with the intent that a user would be able to toss the site theme in favor of something of their own design. To make one, you basically have to unlearn everything you knew about HTML and CSS in regards to site layouts or themes. For those who haven’t done anything with websites before, learning all the ins and outs of how to get a myspace layout to work are filling their heads with useless crap. Other social networking sites such as Virb are designed to allow the user to apply their own stylings in a non-insane way. I was actually quite impressed with Virb because it also allows you to disable all custom layouts at your discretion- something MySpace can’t do.

My best advice to her was to ditch MySpace layouts all together, and purchase a cheap web hosting account with Wordpress. She would then at least have full access to change anything in the site layout while learning invaluable knowledge and design at the same time. That’s how I got started 12 years ago on Geocities (remember them?).

Could you imagine if there were sites that let you code your own add-ons, and it required you writing some screwed up PHP or Coldfusion that wasn’t accepted anywhere else in the world? How about a home builder who didn’t follow industry standards when building your home?

Can you believe some colleges still teach web design using tables and code generating software? Crazy isn’t it? It was like that when I was there and from what I’ve heard, not much has changed.

The thought of people having to do absurd CSS and table structuring just to make the myspace layout look a certain way just disturbs me. We have standards for a reason, and one of those reasons is to not repeat the sordid browser wars of the 90s which is where a lot of that mess stems from.

So for all you folks out there looking to get into web design, young or old, if you’re going to do something do it right. Refer to the giants: Zeldman, Meyer, Snook, Cederholm, etc… strive for greatness.

Regional web development company Inclind Inc announces the launch of a brand new website this week for DJ Hook of Hook Productions of Bethany Beach, Delaware.Randy Vanderhook (DJ Hook) grew up with an ear for music. He joined the school band in elementary school on drums and continued with them on up through high school marching band for Indian River High School. When he had a chance to guest DJ he jumped at the opportunity and has enjoyed every minute of it since then, and Hook Productions was born.

With a huge library of thousands and thousands of songs (over 60,000!), DJ Hook prides himself on being one of the best DJ’s on Delmarva. Most DJ’s quit learning after figuring out how to hook up their system to a PA (public address speaker system) and still carry around bags and bags of CDs and large heavy rack based rigs. DJ Hook is constantly researching new techniques and using the most cutting edge hardware available, such as a computer based setup with a digital catalogue (making his setup far more compact and smaller than competitors).

DJ Hook has played numerous places in the Newark, DE area including Klondike Kate’s, Kid Shellie’s and East End. He has also performed at many popular hang outs in the beach area including Harpoon Hanna’s, the Chalkboard, Mackey’s, Fagers Island, High Stakes, Mickey’s Family Crab House, Brew River, Magnolia’s, Lifeguard competitions and many other private events such as weddings, anniversaries, birthday parties, corporate events and much more.Their new website (www.hookproductions.net) running on Inclind’s content management system allows Hook Productions to easily update the public on availability with their event calendar and lay out the booking process in detail. The calendar also shows public appearances DJ Hook makes, so you can attend events he will be DJ’ing at like Harpoon Hanna’s famous deck parties in the summer.

To learn more about how DJ Hook can cater your next event, please visit their website at www.hookproductions.net or call (302)-757-HOOK (4665). For more information on custom website development, please contact Inclind Inc. at (302) 856-2802 or online at www.inclind.com.

I myself was a skeptic and thought oh boy, another browser. It’s difficult enough with 4 browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera) to maintain a level of consistency and future proofing of your markup and javascript to not only work now, but work a year or two from that point. I was relieved when I found out Chrome is founded on WebKit and not some proprietary engine like Internet Explorer is, which would be quite silly.

I tried to benchmark the loading speed of the browser, and well, I couldn’t. This little baby is faster than Opera on a good day, and at worst, Firefox on a bad day (its a good thing). I made sure to clear out all history, cache, and cookies then tried again. Still lightening fast. I tried everything I could think of that would slow me down some from Digg to Scriptaculous to Design Melt Down to Ebay and CNN. Nothing. The sites loaded up before I could blink or release the Enter key. Even some javascript heavy sites didn’t bog down this browser at all. Major points in my book.

So, while I had trepidation last night about the arrival of yet another browser, Google really has a homerun product here. With a stripped down browser like this, organized fairly well, it should do great on the market and generate a lot of buzz. Chrome will be replacing Firefox for me at home, and if it continues at this pace, I’ll use it as my main at the office as well. Somewhere, Steve Ballmer is exploding in anger.

Learn more about Chrome »