Raised Eyebrow Blog

As of Tuesday, with each new Drupal 6 website we build, we will be providing access to an online manual. Like our paper manual, the online manual describes the basic functions of Drupal in easy to understand language and has customized client-specific content. But the new format also has many new benefits.

Book Module

The online manual uses the Drupal book module, which is a great because the book module lends to organizing things… like a book. The book module automatically creates a listing of the child entries, like a table of contents. You can order the child pages in any way you choose. I also like the book module because is has a printer-friendly version of each page. It does a really nice job of stripping out the unnecessary stuff and optimizing the content for printing, so you don’t get pages broken in half or extra white pages when you print.

Information in a New Dimension

What I loved about moving from a Word document to an online manual is how easily you can cross-reference. With the old manual, you could footnote or reference other pages, but ultimately it had to be a very important reference to disrupt the reader in this way. Now with the online manual, text and images can be linked to other sections of the manual. So if I think a word sounds a little jargon-like, but is still useful, I can add it to the glossary and link the word to its definition. This is great, because it allows us to introduce some language that we might have otherwise shied away from using. This is beneficial in the long run because it helps us develop a more accurate shared language with our clients to talk about their websites.

Keeping the Manual Up to Date

The best thing about the new manual is that if I discover an inaccuracy or a better explain something, I can simply log in and edit the site. Clients instantly have access to the up to date manual. Also, if a client adds a new feature, I can simply add a new page to their online manual and they will instantly have access to the file. This saves sending updated .pdfs and having many trees wasted as manuals are reprinted.

Works Great for Remote Training

We’ve also been experimenting with online meetings for trainings with remote clients and the new manual is great for this. I have three online trainings this summer!

Have You Ever Searched for Drupal Help?

Uhg! Lots of the information available online is too techie for words! Seriously, try Googling “Help Logging Into Drupal” and you’ll see that you get the weirdest stuff! Our help manual covers all the basic functions of editing and creating content for your site. Clients can access it from anywhere and it is constantly growing and evolving. There is a text-based search, allowing you to search the entire contents of your manual instantly, with a listing view of relevant results. It’s a help manual that really helps!

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Thanks to the whole team at RE who helped conceive of, build, create content for, and test the Raised Eyebrow Help Website!

Vertical Response is free for 501(c)(3) equivalent organizations, which is pretty amazing deal in the world of newsletter software.  Apply by emailing proof of your 501(c)(3) equivalency to nonprofits@verticalresponse.com and you will start getting 10,000 credits applied to your account per month.

We work with a bunch of different newsletter software providers, including Constant Contact, Emma, MailChimp and Vertical Response.  More and more, newsletter software providers are allowing us to create custom templates—where we design a beautiful html newsletter and upload it to a client’s newsletter software.  Then, areas of the templates are editable by the client, allowing clients to produce eye-catching newsletters without having to know HTML.  Vertical Response doesn’t have a custom template function, but recently we discovered a work-around:

1.    Design a template in Dreamweaver and copy the HTML code
2.    Create an “Email Canvas” newsletter in Vertical Response
3.    Once inside the WYWIWYG, click on the second tab, Edit Source
4.    Delete the existing HTML and replace it with the HTML code for your template
5.    Click back on the “Edit Graphical” tab

Et voila! Vertical Response provides a graphical representation of the template that can be edited.  For the client, the user experience has its quirks.  Unlike MailChimp, where you can configure styles that can be applied to text via a drop-down menu, you’ll have to copy styles from existing text. Also, we found that sometimes deleting two characters would inadvertently delete a whole column.  But if you remember to have your fingers poised on control + z and save frequently, this was just a small nuisance. Idiosyncrasies aside, this implementation of Vertical Response allows a non-profit client to set up and start sending really great newsletters for only the cost of creating a template.

I’m walking down the stairs, leaving our office at Tides Renewal Centre and I’m behind this other dude in a suit and we are both shuffling along because we are checking our Blackberries while walking downstairs. This strikes me as stupid, but forms the basis of a polite exchange of Crackberry jokes.

Spilling out onto sun drenched Hastings Street, I wonder what will become of us? Like lemmings, we march forward into the centre of a hornets’ nest–the downtown east side on a hot Thursday. How many obstacles will we encounter as we type and walk? I squint and strain to the read the tiny print on my Blackberry’s browser while walking under Woodward’s scaffolding, oblivious to cement being poured above. I stop and open a text message—poised in the middle of an active construction site–to read the message my sweetie has no doubt composed on his iPhone while driving 110 kilometres per hour on the highway.

I flip back to my browser window and type “ban reading email while crossing the street.”

If you want to cross a street in New York City or Buffalo, a New York state senator says, you should be fined $100 if you do so while in a state of “iPod oblivion.” (A Ban on iPods While Crossing)

I’m fascinated by regulations against Darwinian self-elimination.  Helmet laws, seatbelt laws, no talking on cell phone laws—all these regulations enacted to prevent us from doing something stupid.  Or hurting other people while doing stupid things.

Part of me wonders whether these laws are just the result of poor manners?  We’ve developed these technologies and adopted them like beloved children, adored with a sudden fierceness.  We haven’t had much time to establish etiquette for their use.  Our passion interferes with our judgement.  Wouldn’t it be polite if people put their toys away and walked smiling down the street, tipping their hats to each other and marveling about the lovely June weather instead?

An old colleague of mine once took me aside and pleaded,  “It’s imperative that you share your ideas about what is appropriate use of the Blackberry with your co-workers.  We can’t have people checking their emails absentmindedly while we are in meetings.”  Where is our iPhone Miss Manners?  Who will save us from being decapitated while walking down the street or giving all our friends the impression we aren’t interested in what they have to say because we are texting instead of listening?

Sent from my BlackBerry device on the Rogers Wireless Network