To commemorate the launch of our most recent website—Engineered Restorations, Inc. (ERI), we’d like to devote some time to singing the praises of Drupal, a free, open-source content management system platform.

First, a little about ERI: ERI is a specialty contracting company that provides restoration, repair and protection services for all types of structures. Examples of their clientele range from the manager of a multi-family development to the senior-level engineer managing a nuclear power plant.

ERI’s site redesign needed to appeal to a wide audience, enabling clients to self-educate and easily navigate throughout the site. ERI offers a multitude of services that apply to dozens of industry segments, so this presented a bit of a challenge. Enter Drupal.

Drupal allows any piece of data to have attributes and tagging mechanisms. This intelligently connects information, keeping the user moving throughout the site and educating with each click. Generally speaking, Drupal is a great fit for sites with increased complexity. The platform boasts a large community of supporters and developers—both professional and independent—so the resources available are considerable.

Proprietary CMS platforms (Sitefinity, for instance) are Microsoft-based, expensive to invest in and maintain, and developer talent is limited to folks with .NET experience and Microsoft server knowledge.

For these reasons, we’re leveraging Drupal quite a bit for complex web application development—in fact, we’re currently developing 4 additional sites with the platform. It’s become our go-to CMS for complex and/or large sites and web apps due to its extensibility, scalability and ready access to thousands of modules supported by the greater Drupal community. Another prime example of the type of site well suited for Drupal (Drupal customization, in this case) is the site we built for CNNGO.

We’re not the only Drupal enthusiasts. Many major brands and organizations use Drupal, including whitehouse.gov, The Economist, and Fast Company.

Now over to you: have you had any experiences with Drupal? If not, do you have questions about it? Let us know in the comments.

Stewdio.org is the website of Stewart Smith, a designer from NYC that has done some great work. I was particularly amused by his Browser Pong app….basically the classic computer game Pong done with browser windows. Super fun!

Our fun, fearless, fabulous LesNouvelles ladies got nominated for Daily Candy’s Sweetest Things 2009. Go here to vote now!

iCalendar is a file format that allows internet users to download files that automatically add events into their local calendar system. This is how I created All Day Events…
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Search Engine Optimization. It sounds like one of those techno-babble phrases that means almost nothing to the everyday person. It’s the kind of thing you could easily ignore, simply leave it to the tech geeks (like all the folks at SolDesign) who constantly review the specs of their brand-new, food-themed internet phones. If only the term didn’t leave you with one sneaking suspicion: it may be one of those phrases. The ones that have surreptitious, quiet, unnoticed control over every aspect of your life, your work, your business, your money. You need to know what that phrase means. Understand the phrase; control your world. (more…)

Sol Design follows Tandus at the Neocon World’s Trade Fair this year to blog all about it.

Check it out / Tandus at Neocon

I just recently found this article in the NYTimes about social networking that speaks to what we do and also to where technology is going. Everyone thinks it is interesting/weird that Cisco bought tribe.net - I think it is smart. What do you think? Click here to read the article NYTimesArticle

We recently finished building the harmony-blog.com website. Our buddy Peter brainstormed with the owners of the blog and came up with a great idea to make the blog look like real postcards. When we got the finished design it looked amazing. Problem was, it had a few things here and there that are “impossible” for the web.

But with our turbo nerdy know-how, nothing is impossible at Sol Design. (more…)