The second week has been very exciting and it has also proved that, eventhough making a quality website is relatively easy with drupal, it still takes quite a bit of work and fine tuning to get the site right. The site has developed in many areas. For one thing, a number of different themes were tested for a while, and in the end we decided to go back to the original drupal theme, because the other tested themes has thier problems. Some themes destorted the overall appearance of the site, some looked poor on smaller monitors with lower resolutions, some broke basic usability guidelines etc. A librarian’s menu has also been added, that puts all the esential content management features within easy reach of the librarian. Obviously, the regular users are not able to access this menu.

Getting the data from the old book database into the new database has also proved to be more challenging than anticipated, espcially since it is impossible to do bulk deletes in drupal, should anything go wrong. As a result we have to be sure that the everything works exactly as it should, otherwise, one will have delete a few thousand records manually. Fortunately, Doug was able to produce a bit of PHP code to solve this problem.

We’ve also run into another problem, as we need a page to exist in 2 different versions, depending on whether the user is logged in or not. We tried to write a bit of PHP code to check for this, but this did not work as anticipated, probably due to a bug in Drupal, so back to the drawing board we go… for now at least

I was also introduced to really cool online feature called tadalists (www.tadalist.com), which enables you to jot down a number of things that need to be done. The really cool thing about this, is that you simple click a list item to remove it from the list. This makes it much easier to stay focused and seems to increase productivity.

That’s all for now. Untill next time…

Yikes! I completely forgot to blog daily as agreed. Okay, here we go.

Wednesday and thursday were spent actually playing around with Drupal to gain an understanding of how it functions. This went pretty well, as we managed setup the main pages for the site and to crossreference them. We also installed and enabled a number of nessesary modules, which were:

• blog: enabling the librarian to post relevant newsitems on the front page
• tinymce: a sort of simple text editor similar to the wordpress “write post” page
• comment: allowing people to comment on newsitems, and later on, their experiences with any book in the library database.
• node_import: for importing the library book database
• page: used for displaying regular text
• poormanscron: automatically runs cron, which run maintainance operations on the server in the backgroud
• search: for finding content
• contact: provides an easy way for users to contact the librarian
• menu: allows the user to customize the navigation menus
• add_n_reference: allowing users to enter content into a database field, that is linked to another database.
• etc…

Friday was spent planning the book database and playing around with the node_import module for importing content from the existing book database. The import turned out to work fairly easily when the excel database was opened in open office and saved as a CSV file, since OO allowed the user to define the symbols for the separator. Furthermore, the book “defining web usability” by Jakob Nielsen, was checked out of the library to help with my thesis.

The weekend was spent playing around with themes.

Yesterday Doug an I sat down to discuss and plan the first “practice system” to help me learn how to use Drupal. It basically involves developing a library (did I spell that right ) resource site, that can be updated directly by lydia. First we concluded that the system should contain the following:

• Web site facilities
  • Information
  • asset database
  • comments
  • rating
  • most recently borrowed
  • most recently acquired
  • loan management
  • most popular
  • highest rated
  • authentication
  • terms and conditions
  •  
  • news stories
    newsletter (subscription)
    
  • contact form
  • FAC

At the same time, we tried to get an interview with the person who will be using the system in the future, but soon found that getting enough time to dicuss and clarify what the problem and that this is a lot of work, but we did manage to get a meeting the day after. Doug also stressed the importance of maintaining a glossary of specialist words, and of defineing their specific meaning.

After we had found what we wanted, Doug sat down and systematically explained the features of Drupal.

Tomorrow Doug and I will learn more about Drupal, have an interview with the future user of the system, and design the database that drupal and the system will use.

Doug and I had our july thesis meeting yesterday and many important issues were worked out. The paperwork was taken care of and a plan was setup for the practical work to come. It was agreed that august would be vacation month. However, I’m already in the process of downloading the UBUNTU Linux server distribution, and I expect to be playing around with this in preparation for the work to come. Work will be carried out from the month of september to december, the development of the website itself will probably take at least a month, so the plan in the thesis proposal is very ambitious, but the plan so far is to try to follow it for now and possibly extended the deadline to spring next year if it is found that it cannot be met. Furthermore, it was agree that I should send Doug feedback on the status of my thesis on a regular basis from now on. My I suggest once a week?

The set task will be to create the IUM community site acadMC.net, which will function as an online meeting center for the IUM community. It will be created using drupal, which I also have to learn first. Two versions of this site will be built, one which is design to meet the standards of good usability ant the other will not take usibility in to account. Both sites will then be tested by a relatively small number of ordinary users, who will be shown both sites and then asked to do a few spicific tasks while thinking out loud. Thier comments and thier performance will be noted down and used for my thesis.

A number of questions were asked about the thesis. Doug explained social interfaces, and reviewed the report and it’s structure at this point in time. He also guides the discussion more the direction of ecommerce, which I so far have not looked into.

A number of good books were recommended:
Persuasive Technology, Ch7 B.J. Fog
Information Rule, Networks and positive feedback
the anarkist in the library
the cathedral and the bazaa
The Mythical Man-Month, Frederick P. Brooks 1975

Thats all. I hope I haven’t forgotten anything. Untill next time…

Today I had a meeting with Doug regarding my options for doing a thesis with the basic theme: "IT in Business". The discussion involved the basic title "How does web site design affect on-line business performance", which now has to be narrowed into a smaller and more manageable thesis topic, leaving me with quite a bit to think about. Thankfully, Lydia's class is meant to refine this essay question. The first primary question was: Should it be specific and technical or a softer analysis of website user psychology? I'm currently leaning towards the technical side, since I believe I'd find the psychology a bit too chit-chatty.

I was also introduced to a few techie community websites that could help me out, the URLs of which I've already managed to forget. Help! :S

Untill next time…

Okay. Time to check out WordPress’s blogging software. Turns out that my friends have been using it for ages on their sites without me knowing about it. Instead, I’ve been blogging the complicated way, ie by adding it directly into the HTML file. Thankfully, no more.

Since the new year is approaching, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year! 2005 was a good and very eventful year for me, and hopefully the new year will be just as good, if not better. 2005 was the year that I did my blue collar internship in a Chocolate shop here in Denmark, gaining much experience and many new friends in the process. I also became webmaster for the NeXt Generation Entrepreneur Forum (a congress organised by IUM students for other students with the aim of providing students with entrepreneurial ambitions) and ended up completely redoing the website to make it meet current requirements. This provided me with quite a bit of useful experience, which I am sure will be useful in future. Having said this, I’m also in the process of renewing my old website/blog, so stay tuned for a new site soon. In the mean time this will be my blog because it’s easier for me to update, plus the URL is much nicer. Don’t ask me why I chose “touchme” in the other URL. These things just happen I guess…

Anyways, my holyday is hastily coming to a close, and soon I’ll be studying once again. I’ll have 5 courses:

• Business Finance 1
• Global Business Strategy 2
• Public Relations
• Leadership
• International Marketing
• Career Development Seminar

Plus, my responsibilities with the NGEF, so it looks like it’ll be a busy, but also interesting trimester for me.

Finally, I’m looking forward to seeing a few good old friends when I get back to Monaco. Unfortunately, I managed to miss two good friends because I couldn’t get back to see them in time. Hopefully, they’ll be the area again soon. In the mean time, “Long live the internet!”