Greg and I have been working hard with Editure (parent company of AUSSIE) on a couple of new web sites. Last week, we launched the new Advancement Courses for Teachers (ACT) web site at www.actprogram.info.

ACT provides courses that educators can enroll in for professional development and career advancement. The old ACT site was maintained with a painstaking process of manual data entry and order processing. The new Drupal-powered site accepts online payments via the Ubercart ecommerce package and PayPal. And of course, ACT editors now have all of the data entry power of Drupal at their fingertips, simplifying their day-to-day work on the site immensely.

Graphic design for the site was provided by Editure, while Greg and I provided the site architecture and development. We also took this opportunity to overhaul our Drupal deployment process with some custom modules and better use of the community-contributed Features module.

The ACT site was built on the new infrastructure we’ve been building out for Editure, which features multiple secured web sites running in a Drupal multi-site setup, on a customized Debian Linux server. Look for posts about our smarter Drupal deployment process, and the launch of the ACT sister web site coming up soon!

I’ve been friends with filmmakers Jason and Leigh Morfoot (aka Kinobserver) since before Dtek was a twinkle in my eye

Recently, I helped them publish their latest documentary film project, Citizen 3.0, to the Kinobserver web site. As described on the site, “CITIZEN 3.0 explores the relationship between media, technology, culture and democracy through the lens of copyright law.” In addition to effecting our society and culture at large, these issues are at the very heart of Dtek’s business.

It’s fascinating stuff, and the film features some provocative and authoritative voices who approach these topics from many different angles.

You can stream the entire film from the Kinobserver web site:
http://kinobserver.com/

Enjoy!

We’re very excited to have just helped the International Women’s Health Coalition launch their Young Visionaries campaign! Young Visionaries is a contest designed to help youth who are inspired by human rights and women’s health share their visions for change, and win grants to continue their work. The general public can vote for their favorite visionaries, with final awards decided by IWHC’s panel of guest judges.

Young Visionaries is built on top of Akimbo, the WordPress-powered main IWHC blog. The nomination form allows youth to describe their vision, upload a photo, embed a video, and link to their web site or online profile. We’re using the herculean TDO Mini Forms plugin to provide a usable interface for submission of the nomination form, the Vote It Up plugin for the voting, the Vipers Video Quicktags plugin for handling of the videos, and the Cycle Lite jQuery plugin for the front page slideshow.

On the front end, the application ties in to the impressive Thesis theme already used by Akimbo, functioning essentially as a sub-theme for that section of the site. We used Thesis’ extensive customization and hook structure for most of the Young Visionaries sub-theme, though we did have to modify a couple of core Thesis files to facilitate the sub-theme. Tying it all together is our own custom logic and “glue code”, and theme files specific to Young Visionaries.

A diverse group of Young Visionaries have already been nominated! Have a look and vote for your favorite, or maybe even encourage someone you know to nominate his/herself.

Check out the IWHC Young Visionaries web application on Akimbo!

We just launched threeintentions.com, a web site that will build a community around the idea of the mind / body / spirit connection. The site provides related resources and represents teachers working in the field.

Three Intentions is organized by Brooke Warner, based in Berkeley, who Bad Feather and I worked with closely from conception and initial sketches, to branding and site mocks, to execution in WordPress. The site provides profile information, a blog platform, and event organization for Brooke and the Three Intentions teachers, whose numbers will be growing as the site gains traction.

Take a break from your daily grind to stop by threeintentions.com, and be sure to let Brooke know that Dtek and Bad Feather sent you.

It’s already the 11th, but happy 2010! The new year is an obvious opportunity to reflect on what’s passed, and plan for the future. Truthfully, though, an exciting period of review and growth started a few months ago for Dtek.

With new partnerships underway, forward-thinking new projects in development, and a whole slew of adjustments in my personal life the winds of change have been blowing for a while now.

First off, Dtek’s rates hadn’t changed since 2007, so our hourly rate has now increased, and our time will now be billed in increments of 1/2 hour. (Okay, so in addition to the more imaginative changes are the less romantic ones ) Existing maintenance retainers will of course honor the quoted rate. Please inquire any time for details, or to get a quote for your next project.

We’re also overdue to overhaul this web site. (We’ve spoken with many of you already about our cobbler’s shoes!) The current incarnation of dtek.net went live way back in (gasp) 2005! It’s been modified and updated in a piecemeal way since then, and has generally served us well, but look for a shiny new version of the site this year that better represents Dtek as a company.

And many other changes are percolating…

What hasn’t changed is our commitment to provide high quality web development services for independent and progressive organizers, entrepreneurs, educators and artists. We’re grateful as always to be able to work with such inspiring folks.

Here’s to a healthy and productive year!