Grand Junction Design, LLC

"Digital Facelift" Webinar, December 14

Join GJD and the good folks at NTEN for "Digital Facelift: Tips for Transforming your Nonprofit Website," a webinar to take place Monday December 14th at 2pm eastern time. Read more »

If We're Gonna Change the World...

I spent yesterday with some of the most brilliant community leaders in Maryland, at the Maryland Nonprofits annual conference. Inspiring? Absolutely.

All of the discussion seemed to come back to the idea of working together, while acknowledging (but not focusing on) our differences. Think of it like a team sport -- we share a goal (winning the game), but we're still competing (human nature pretty much dictates that everybody wants to be the MVP).

So where does that leave us? Read more »

whitehouse.gov now using Drupal

The White House recently re-launched their website on Drupal! This is a huge milestone for Drupal, and for the open source movement in general. Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal, blogs about it here.

Some key points:

• It's a great match for President Obama's emphasis on having an open and transparent government.

Transcript and Handouts from "Digital Facelift" Teleconference

Hundreds of nonprofit folks participated in my recent teleconference, Digital Facelift: Tips for Taking Your Website from "Blah" Before to "Amazing" After. They raised a lot of good questions about search engine optimization, how to get found, whether or not to get involved in social networking, to blog or not to blog, and the list goes on...

Missed it? No worries! You can now: Read more »

Vote for Drupal at the Nonprofit Technology Conference 2010

The polls close today (Friday 10/16/09), so please vote to have Drupal at the 2010 Nonprofit Technology Conference! Here are links to a couple of our favorite session suggestions:

• Planning a User-Centric Website
• Drupal Tour

And, while you're at it, go ahead and mark your calendar for the conference. It'll be April 8-10, 2010, in Atlanta. More info.

See you there!

Using "Gigya Socialize" to Connect with Facebook and Other Social Networks

Join the Maryland Drupal Users Group on October 23, when GJD's own Ron Williams will share some of his recent work with the "Gigya Socialize" module to connect nonprofit websites to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other OpenID providers.

We predict that Gigya Socialize will become a popular tool for nonprofits because:

• it increases the likelihood that users will sign in to a site and participate in discussions;

Tips for an Effective Nonprofit Blog

Lots of people ask me if I recommend that their organization have a blog. There seems to be an element of peer pressure, or the feeling that "everybody's doing it, so we should too." But not necessarily... to do it well is a big time commitment, and you want to make sure that the person (or people) who are writing it are passionate about the issue you're discussing. Read more »

Free Teleconference: Take Your Nonprofit Website from "Blah" Before to "Amazing" After

Join me next Tuesday 9/29/09 for a free teleconference sponsored and organized by Network for Good! I'll be sharing the exciting story of The Hunger Project's website makeover. You can expect to get ideas that might apply to your own organization's site, such as: Read more »

Welcome, Ron!

GJD is thrilled to welcome Ron Williams, Drupal developer and newest member of our team.

Ron has been working with Drupal since 2005. He participated in the 2008 Google Highly Open Participation Contest - Drupal, and worked on methods to provide database migration and synchronization between live and development environments. As an active member of the Drupal community, Ron has contributed multiple themes, security fixes, and pieces of documentation, and he is the founder of the Maryland Drupal Group.

We look forward to introducing him to you!

Drupal Argentina Tour Continues in Córdoba

I couldn't imagine going to Córdoba and not meeting up with my buddy José Sánchez Tejeda and getting to know more fellow Drupaleros there. On August 20 Javier Reartes, José and I welcomed Diego, who has recently discovered the wonders of Drupal. Or perhaps I should say THEY welcomed ME, since I was a guest in their city of course. Read more »