Happy New Year to all my family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, people I have done business with (and anyone else not covered by those categories). May your 2018 be filled with not only the completion of personal and professional goals, but with contentment with who you are and where you are in this life.
2017 year end review
2017 marked the first year in our new home. We got it (mostly) decorated and have loved having guests over to enjoy some dinner, games and conversation. This post is one of my favorites to write every year because it allows me to look back on the year and evaluate what I've learned and determine [...]
The most important design principle: Be inclusive
I've made some previous posts about design systems, which are all the rage in 2017. We are still working through the creation of one at my organization. One of the core parts of design systems are principles. These principles ideally shape the future of design for an organization. The most important thing that I keep [...]
Using different template (tpl.php) files for a specific content type in Drupal 7
Use case In one of our sites, we post email communications that were sent out as all-campus announcements on our website. The problem is, our basic web template does not look like an email template. So I thought, "I wonder if I could just load a separate set of tpl.php files based on the content [...]
How to do a basic accessibility audit on your site
Here are some tools and methods for running an accessibility audit on your site. This can be a little bit easier if you already have a design system or component library in place, but it isn't necessary to gain some insights into how your site can be more accessible. The way I usually do it [...]
Launching a college news site with Drupal
SUNY Oswego recently switched from a legacy install of Expression Engine to integrating with the rest of our web platform and using Drupal hosted by Acquia to "re-design" our new News site. Hopefully this post will help others thinking of migrating to Drupal and provide some helpful tips if you're already in the process of [...]
Crafting a design system for higher education
As a front-end developer at a University, I can see first hand why design systems can be such an integral part of an organization's communication (and marketing) strategy. This post aims to explain the reasons why large organizations, including higher education, can benefit from having a robust design system in place. What process is like [...]
What’s the difference between style guides, pattern libraries, and design systems?
In my organization, we're trying to implement an integrated marketing plan which will be helped along greatly by a sound design system. In order to implement this properly, a shared vocabulary needed to be created so we could be sure we were referring to the same thing. In this post I do my best to [...]
Using your Android phone as a pet/security camera with IP Cam and Ivideon
My wife and I just got a new puppy and are crate training him. We'd love to know how he's doing if we're not there so I decided to look into some DIY pet-cam solutions. Using the IP webcam app for Android and Ivideon cloud streaming service, I was quickly able to get up and [...]
Basic bash, node, and npm setup on Windows
I never thought this would be something I'd be writing about but it's actually super exciting. This has been a major bane when trying to dev on my Windows machines. A lot of developer tools installation instructions walk you through some terminal commands, then the Windows people are all commenting at the bottom trying to [...]