About Drupal Everything
Drupal Everything is my blog that is *mostly* about my web development work -- which is almost entirely based on the Drupal open source CMS. Other stuff will creep in, I'm sure -- like a few posts about the recovery of our missing cat -- but most of what I'm doing with this blog is Drupal, rapid Web development, and educational technology related.
My name is John Jones. I'm director of new media and web services at ESSDACK (Education Services and Staff Development Assocaition of Central Kansas). I've spent the past ten years working in web development for Wichita State University, the WSU Alumni Association, and a startup called LineSight, before working at ESSDACK.
Here at ESSDACK, for nearly three years, I've been able to work practically full time with Drupal, building dozens of web sites, many of them quick and dirty sites that have short shelf lives. I have build sites for school districts, businesses, online startups, informational directories, for project and time management, to manage film reviews associated with the programming committee of a local film festival, for my world of warcraft guild and my dungeons and dragons campaigns.
Yeah, that's right, I'm a big nerd.
In the Drupal community (where I am Radiating Gnome), until I started this blog, I've been a pretty silent sponge, soaking up a lot of expertise and getting a lot done thanks to the power of the drupal community. Many of the drupal developers I run in to out in the world work on just one or two sites, and don't really have the advantage of the experience of whipping up 1-2 new sites per month. A smaller minority work in designer firms that use Drupal a lot, and those folks are usually no-kidding really sharp programmers who contribute modules, etc.
Well, I've done programming in my time (anyone remember Cold Fusion?) but I'm a writer by education, and I'm really only able to make a living the way I do because the Drupal project is a robust and complete. I mean, other designers talk about glue code. I rarely have to do anything along those lines, and as the project improves I need to do less and less of it.
Some sites I'm more or less responsible for:
Radiatinggnome.com - my tabletop gaming site (mostly dungeons and dragons). A lot of this site is hidden from the public -- we use it as a library of information for our D&D campaigns, but I use a bunch of pictures that I have no right to use, so I hide it from the public . . . I'm a bad, bad boy . . . .
Acmeminingcompany.com -- our World of Warcraft guild site. Our guild is neither big nor strong, but our web site is kinda fun.
Virobus.com -- a small business learning resource site I'm working on with some smart guys. It's not quite ready for prime time yet, but it's coming.
kscareers.org -- a directory of online courses available from Kansas institutions, organized by career cluster.
MyKidsTurn.com -- a video-heavy site full of content aimed at parents who want to help their children succeed in school.
ESSDACK.org -- our company site. This clunker is two years old and really, really looks it. Update coming this fall!
shop.essdack.org -- our online store -- Ubercart Uber Alles!
