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Web Jackalope

Creative Web Development Magazine

16 Different Clones You Can Build with DrupalMay 4

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

12 Excellent Examples of “Lazy Registration”March 30

Photo by Paraflyer.

Signup forms have long irked the casual visitor. During the process of discovery, nobody wants to stop and fill out details before they can “unlock” the rest of the site’s potential. As web users become more and more fickle, signup forms are becoming an increasingly large barrier that repels many prospective visitors from great sites.

Fortunately there’s a new signup system in town that is making it much easier for the visitor to interact with the site and it increases signups. I give you: Lazy Registration.

Lazy Registration

Helping the web visitor only helps your site. One great trend that we’re starting to see in web development that helps visitors is “lazy” registration. Lazy registration is a process that allows the prospective user to test out many of the core features, save her sessions and data, and then when she’s ready to sign up everything is ported to her “new” account. Lazy registration is a way to allow users to try the site out before they sign up, no strings attached. Really clever sites have even found a way to bypass the signup form altogether. They slowly ask for data along the visitor’s path of d

Google Web Toolkit: Tools and Tutorials to Get You StartedFebruary 26

Google Web Toolkit is a monumental project for Java developers. Java is a language that isn’t usually associated with web development. PHP, Ruby, Python and others are typically seen as the languages of choice when building web applications. At least until recently. Google’s steady development and improvement of the GWT is a major step towards bridging the gap between ajax-driven web applications and Java. And it works well.

GWT: Three Years in the Making

Google Web Toolkit was released in 2006 at the Java One conference, and since then has shaken both the Java world and web development worlds. GWT is an open source Java development framework that essentially allows Java developers to quickly build JavaScript apps in Java. Essentially, GWT makes developing Ajax applications much easier. No more stressing over browser differences and other quirks that developers have to deal with. These quirks are compounded when you’re trying to wield AJAX applications. Just like the GWT official description states, developers spend 90% of their time working around these browser-specific issues.

So now that Google Web Toolkit has hit it’s stride with the latest release of 1.5, it might be time for you to check out GWT as a platform for your next rich Internet application. Here’s a roundu

How to Build and Launch a Social News Site in 21 DaysDecember 1 2008

Social media websites have made a huge splash on the Internet as we know it. No longer do editors dictate what is news, and what is important. The power belongs to the masses on social news sites, which is a huge reason for their traction and loyal users.

It’s no surprise that developing a niche social media site is a popular job request for web developers. When I first learned about brand new social site for financial news, ideas, and tips Tip’d, I was immediately impressed with the clean, sophisticated design and impressive functionality. Yet what was truly amazing about Tip’d was how fast the site was assembled by it’s rockstar development team.

Quick Turnarounds

Most developers know that sites involving social media features are hard to do right. Features like voting, comments, account creation and moderation take a long time to get right. The Tip’d team bypassed a lot of that coding and used a CMS specifically for social news sites, Social Web CMS, which had many of the features that they needed right out of the box.

Here’s an interview with the Tip’d team of Andy Hagans, Chris Pearson and Jimmy (”Jimbeaux�

15 Things Every Web Developer Should Be Thankful ForNovember 25 2008

Photo by xyber matthew.

With Thanksgiving only a couple days away, it’s appropriate to look back on the things that we appreciate best about our jobs. Let’s face it: Web Developers have the best jobs around, right? We’re incredibly lucky to have the professions we do.

Here are 15 things that we all should be thankful for. These are the technologies that we couldn’t live without, or that have previously paved the way and allowed us to be web developers.

1. Mosaic

Graphic designers everywhere should reserve a day in November to give thanks to the software that’s enabled our careers. Without Mosaic’s picture support, the Internet doesn’t need good design. The 1993 launch of this web browsing software opened up a brand new world to web developers and web browsers alike.

Photo by Marc_Smith.

2. Firefox

Firefox ended the long tyranny of IE oppression for experienced web users. The extension-ena