Over the weekend, I transisitioned this website from ModxCMS to Zend Framework.  While one is a CMS and the other is just a framework and this site being pretty simple, either technology could get the job done.  Since I launched the site, ModxCMS was running the main pages and WordPress was used for the blog.  For the most recent client work I’ve been using Zend Framework.  Most of the implementations for the clients were pretty customized systems and I felt Zend Framework would give more flexibility in those systems.

It got me thinking and that same flexibility could be used on the company website.  At this point the site wasn’t really using the majority of the features ModxCMS had to offer and for that matter it’s not using much of the Zend Framework as it is now.  What I was more interested in was the MVC code structure and the ability to transition this site much more in the future.  That may or may not happen depending on the amount of time I can dedicate, but I figure being more familiar with Zend Framework over ModxCMS would allow me to implement faster.  I thought about writing blog software on Zend Framework.  I’ve written blog software in the past, but with the latest version of WordPress I’m pretty happy with it.

I was pushing Zend Framework for a lot of clients and rarely suggesting ModxCMS.  Don’t get me wrong both platforms are great products, but I found myself using Zend Framework more and more.  I feel like I should use the technologies that I provide my clients.

Since the site is very simple, it was easy to transition.  I’m sure if the site was much more complex and more time consuming I would have thought twice about the transition.  Overall it was very quick and relatively painless.  I’m pretty happy with the process and I think the site is running pretty well.  As always if there are any comments or suggestions feel free to leave them.

Noupe had a recent post some websites you shouldn’t have missed in May 2008.  It’s a list of 54 things to review covering a range of design, coding, to just some good resources to bookmark and keep for future reference.  I’m going to go through and give my top 10 from the list.

1. Pastel color menu with dynamic submenu using CSS – While I haven’t necessarily made pastel color menus, I have used this technique many times to create menus and submenus using list elements.  It keeps the code pretty clean and of course you need to have the small piece of JavaScript to support browsers like IE6.  One thing to be aware of is if you have a large elaborate menu scheme, this creates a lot of HTML in the header of your page.  If you are supporting JavaScript it might be a good idea to AJAX the appropriate data when the user takes action.
2. Yahoo! Design Pattern Library – I’ve been posting a lot about Yahoo.  I’ve just been really happy with the work they’ve produced over the last year.  This is a very good reference piece if you are wondering how something should be implemented or if you have a client that insists on one thing, you can show them that it’s been tested and proven to be best this way.
3. Which CSS Grid Framework Should You Use for Web Design? – I’ve been using a few of the Grids frameworks listed in this article, mostly the YUI Grids CSS for my work.  For the most part it gets the majority of what I want to do done faster and I feel like I’m a step ahead when I’m creating a site.  Good clean CSS is what we strive to create and these libraries make it easier for us to do that.
4. Applying Divine Proportion To Your Web Designs – While I don’t do too much design work personally, there are times when I do and I think that’s one area in my work that I can learn more and improve.  It’s always been pretty difficult for me to design things.  I guess I just don’t have enough creativity.  This article describes the rule of thirds when designing and this fits in well if you are using a Grids library.  You can work together with your front end developers and designers to create great looking layouts and save some time in the process.
5. Free 278 Page PDF eBook- The Photoshop Anthology – I haven’t read the entire book yet, but it looks like a good read.  There’s only a limited amount of time left if you want to sign up and download.
6. Find Similar Users on del.icio.us – I’ve really gotten into del.icio.us lately and I think it’s kind of cool to see who has similar interests as you.  I’m not one of those social network stalkers though.
7. 45+ Free Premium WordPress Themes with Magazine or Grid Layouts – There are some great looking designs in this collection.  Just glancing over them has given me some inspiration on some future projects.
8. 36 Cool Business Cards You Should’ve Seen – I’ve been looking for some new business cards since I formed the LLC.  I’ll have to take some more time to come up with something cool.
9. 30 Websites to follow if you’re into Web Development – I saw this posted in Digg the other day.  I saved it to my bookmarks.  It’s a great resource for web development.
10. SEO Guide for Designers – While I don’t like to take on too many SEO projects anymore, this is a good resource for best practices.  I don’t like taking the projects on because there are no guarantees in that market and if someone says they can guarantee something they probably aren’t doing it white hat style.

So that’s my top 10 from Noupe’s post.  If you have any questions for me or any comments about the resource, let me know.

I’ve been waiting for Versions to come out for about a year now.  I have been using Subversion for a couple years now and there really hasn’t been any clients for the Mac that I have given me the Mac experience I have been used to in quite a few of my other applications.  I had tried ZigVersion a while back and I don’t know if it’s changed much, but it didn’t work out so well for me.  It wasn’t a bad experience, it just wasn’t what I was looking for.  On the PC side, I use TortoiseSVN, but the Mac-like client didn’t seem to function as well as the PC.  Since then I’ve been using SmartSVN.  This has so far worked out the best for me, but I don’t really care for the interface and since it’s a Java app it doesn’t seem to play well with Spaces.

I was looking for something better and I saw a post on TUAW about a year ago and decided to sign up for the mailing list.  Today I saw another post that the beta had been released so I thought I would try it out.  I loaded all my current repositories into the client and everything seemed to work okay today.  The interface was new to me, but after a short while I was able to get used to where everything is located.

I found a couple of authentication glitches and it would be nice if I could create a folder in the bookmarks so that I can group repositories for different clients together.  These issues are pretty small and by no means prevent me from getting work done.  Actually compared to the other clients that I’ve used the experience seems much better.  It’s probably one of the fastest I’ve used under Leopard and as of right now it seems to be playing well with Spaces.  These are huge pluses for me.

I’ll be continuing to use it in the next few weeks and I’ll update this post if I have any new issues or anything else I would like to see in future versions.  If you’ve used the client or are looking for one on the Mac give this one a look.  Also if there are others that I don’t know about I wouldn’t mind giving another client a shot either.

If you have ever been interested about the inner workings of JavaScript and haven’t already, you should take a look at several video lectures by Douglas Crockford. Douglas Crockford is a Senior JavaScript Architect at Yahoo! and has authored an O’Reilly Book: “JavaScript: The Good Parts“. The two I’d recommend starting off with are “The JavaScript Programming Language” that provides fundamental yet thorough information into the JS language such as objects and functions. Even if you have been using JS for an extended period of time, I’d recommend browsing through the lecture. The second video lecture is basically a continuation from the first, “Advanced JavaScript“.

These lectures do not delve into any of the current JS Libraries like YUI, mootools, or prototoype, but the lectures will help you extend those libraries as needed by project demands. The general Yahoo! UI (YUI) Library Theater page has many other video lectures available that get into utilizing the YUI JS library.

I decided to use WordPress for the Brandon Quintana Consulting blog.  I had skinned quite a few for clients over the years and the old WordPress software just didn’t have all the features I wanted in a blog.  In fact back when I started blogging no one really had all the features I wanted.  Blogging was relatively new and everyone was still trying to see what worked and what didn’t.  This left me to create my own blogging software platform which I’ve used on many sites for a number of years now.

Well as time went on and the company got larger and larger, blogging was evolving and I had a hard time keeping up with it.  With all the client work load, I had little time to update the software with new features or fix any of the bugs that I had come across.

I looked to using WordPress about a year ago.  I wanted to switch everything over and use a piece of open source software that a group was actively maintaining.  I tried to make the switch, but just couldn’t do it.  It still didn’t have enough features and I didn’t have the time to write the plug-ins I needed.  Sure others were writing plug-ins, but a lot of them just weren’t ready for prime time.  I let the issue rest and kept using my old platform.

I recently was asked by a client to skin a Blogger blog for his business.  I figured we’d have much more flexibility hosting a WordPress installation.  I’ve always liked WordPress for clients because the user interface has always been pretty easy to use and hosting it yourself you have access to all the code.  While it might not have had enough features for me, for most of my clients it was more than enough.  I recommended WordPress to the client.  He agreed and WordPress was configured and starting to be skinned to match the look and feel of the new website.

In the latest installation, a lot had changed since I first looked at it about a year ago.  A lot of the features that were missing previously had been developed.  I thought maybe this time I can give it another shot and see how it goes.  Well I’m now writing this post in the WordPress admin.  I’ve completed a theme for the new Brandon Quintana Consulting site and for the most part I’m pretty happy.  It’s easy to use, easy to skin, and hopefully it can deter a lot of the spam issues I’ve had in the past with my own home brew.

If you have any suggestions for this blog or have another blog platform you think we should check out, let us know.  We’re always interested in new technologies and how we can use it here at the company for us as well as our clients.  This is the first blog post for the new site and we’ll hopefully have many more as the site progresses.