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Web Jackalope

Creative Web Development Magazine

How the New ReTweet Will Impact Your Site MarketingNovember 16 2009

Reactions have been mixed on the new ReTweet functionality that’s recently been rolled out by Twitter. Some think it’s an elegant solution, others think it’s going to suck the life out of ReTweeting altogether. But no matter how you slice it, ReTweeting is going to change drastically in the very near future.

We all know that Twitter is a powerful marketing tool. (A good indicator of this is seeing how much spam has cropped up in the Twittersphere lately. Yikes.) ReTweets have provided a way for Twitter users to quickly share interesting tweets and links quickly, and nearly all Twitter clients have accommodated this unofficial feature.

But more importantly, site owners like you and I have enjoyed great exposure in the way our articles have been spread throughout Twitter with ReTweets. (Some of the articles on Web Jackalope have seen more than 100 ReTweets.) But as Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a changin’.

Twitter’s new ReTweet functionality could be even more powerful than before, adding more authority to your tweets and brand.

28 Innovative Green Web HostsOctober 15 2009

Photo by xtylerclub.

This post is part of the Blog Action Day 2009 over climate change.

Green web hosting is something that has started to become quite popular among many web hosting companies. Even some of the big players are starting to turn to alternative energy sources to power their servers, or to try show that they don’t have a negative impact on the environment.

Why does this matter? It matters because of a little study on server energy usage conducted by Stanford in 2007. Thanks to the explosion of video, VOIP and an increase of broadband Internet services, energy consumed by data centers from 2000 to 2005 doubled. And it’s only been getting worse over the past 4+ years since the study.

Every effort web hosts can make to consume less energy and become more environmentally friendly is a very important thing as we use more and more energy to power our websites.

How Does Green Hosting Work?

There are a few ways that web hosting companies and server farms have figured out how to become more environmentally friendly in how they power their servers.

Carbon Offsetting

Because changing t

60 Resources for the Frugal Web DeveloperSeptember 22 2009

Photo by s2photo

With the economy reeling and VC’s spending less and less on startups, developers have had to adapt how they create sites. Because of the world’s economic state, we’ve had to change how we develop.

Some may see this shift as a grim prospect. Change is hard, and change is essential to staying alive in these conditions. However, if you can cut expenses in your development process without cutting quality by using free methods and tools, then you may be able to develop without using any extra money.

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” – H.G. Wells

Table of Contents

Why You NEED APIs to Foster Innovation: A Case StudyAugust 19 2009

I’ve been noticing some buzz about the newly-launched photo sharing service DailyBooth, and can’t help but notice a trend that seems to happen with nearly every new web service. All newly-released websites seem to have an cycle of innovation that looks something like this:

Release product to early adopters
Early adopters sign up on a whim, not knowing how to utilize the product
More people sign up because of early adopters
API is relased
New, better uses are found
Product starts to refine itself

Now in case you weren’t paying attention here, the key part of this cycle was API being released. Why? Because API’s mean innovation. And innovation is the key to winning the web app game.

So let’s go back to the original example of DailyBooth. They are at the “release product to early adopters” stage. If you check out some of the suggested users, you’ll see that all they do is post profile pictures of themselves.

16 Different Clones You Can Build with DrupalMay 4 2009

Drupal is an excellent choice for a content management system (CMS). However, many people only see it as a simple CMS, a site to build a landing page or two. But Drupal is much more than that. Not only is Drupal easy to theme, it’s got a wide range of built in functionality and a large community powering the popular CMS.

One of the great things about Drupal is that you can build almost any sort of site that you can imagine, with the help of a couple modules. Want to go beyond the basics of a simple CMS? Drupal has an excellent API that allows you to extent nearly any aspect of the software. In fact, many people have started to talk about using Drupal as a framework, as it’s robust, well written, handles lots of traffic, and has a large and helpful community.

So, if you’re thinking about building your next big site, here are a few ways that you can take existing modules and turn a project quickly, without ne