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Writing a Web Development RFP

Submitted by Jason on

Request for proposals can take on many different shapes, sizes and flavours. No two organizations are alike and subsequently, no two RFPs are alike. However, there are certainly some common elements that need to be included in any strong RFP, to give a potential vendor an opportunity to provide a suitably strong response. Requests that are vague can elicit vague proposals, or more likely, if a company deems an RFP a waste of their time, they will not submit a response at all. The following are elements that I have identified as key to strong RFPs. 

Proposal Writing

Introduction:

  • History of the organization;
  • Brief summary of the project & overall objectives;
  • State of the current website and URL(if it exists).

Budget:

Provide a range that can give the prospective bidders an idea of how much functionality they can include in their response.

Introducing the Connect Module

Submitted by stevem on

OK, so the Connect module has actually been around for a while now, but the first version was painfully difficult to use, and the second version has only just seen an official, albeit beta, release.

Connect arose because we wanted to create a flexible and extensible online campaign platform for Drupal. The goal was to produce a framework that would allow different features to be added as necessary. Thus, a single tool could be used to create a simple petition or a sophisticated online email- or fax-sending campaign.

Earth Hour Drupal Module - Learning to Turn Off

This has been slightly revised to reflect the status of this project for 2011.

Tell all your visitors you support the efforts of Earth Hour. It's a simple measure for the environment.

With the Earth Hour module for Drupal you can easily show your support and have your site automatically "shut off" for the hour, no matter where in the world you are.

The plugin counts down to earth hour, counts how many other sites are using this plugin, and share the link to earthhour.org with your visitors.

I was inspired to create this module by @haggaret who asked on Twitter for a Drupal version of the plugin for @bravenewcode's Earth Hour WordPress Plugin. It looked pretty simple to construct and I had never done a Word Press to Drupal port, so I decided to take it on.  

Translation Tips and Modules for Multilingual Drupal sites

Submitted by mgifford on

Drupal has some excellent translation functions but deciding which modules to use and how to configure the modules is challenging. There are many different possible configurations depending on your website needs, domain names and content. You'll find there are a lot of choices of modules for setting up a multilingual site.... then there are a lot of key configuration items to enable depending on your website.

This post focused on Drupal 6 modules and issues. We will give some example of the difficult decision making involved in translating content. There is no out-of-the-box configuration that seems to work, it all depends on the needs of your website. There are many different modules to choose from in core and contrib and a lot of their functions overlap.

The best advice is to start with the core multilingual modules and then add other modules when needed. Good Luck Bon Chance Viel Glueck 幸運 Buona fortuna 好运 Buena suerte Удача

Common Look and Feel Standards in a Drupal Theme

Submitted by mgifford on

Common Look & Feel ThemeFor those in the theming world, Common Look and Feel for the Internet 2.0 (aka CLF) is the source of many hours of CSS tinkering and artistic compromise but necessary if you want to make a Government of Canada compliant website

The context of CLF is noble:

Canadians have the right to obtain information and services from Government of Canada Web sites regardless of the technologies they use. The key to effective implementation of universal accessibility lies in designing sites to serve the widest possible audience and the broadest possible range of hardware and software platforms, from adaptive technologies to emerging technologies.

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