Drupal. Drupal? Drupal!

For development of web sites and applications is our company Syntactic Sugar using open source Drupal. This system was chosen after a long selection process, and especially after gaining experiences from different systems in the implementation of web projects. Drupal has many advantages.

Advantages of Drupal

• Ubiquity - Drupal belongs to the so-called Big Three of the most used content management systems (CMS), together with Joomla and WordPress. The exact order is not important and depends on specific criteria, but it is interesting that other content management systems have a significant gap in this triad, which is further widening.
• Open Source - Drupal is developed under GPL 2, i.e. its also for commercial use and is completely free.
• Community support - the development of the Drupal community is large. Drupal.org server has more than 830,000 accounts, of which more than 2000 developers. Each year, holds two meetings dedicated to the global Drupal - meeting in San Francisco in April 2010 registered more than 3000 visitors. Drupal interface is translated to 44 languages.
• Rich functionality - Drupal supports the widespread emergence of more and more functions. Eg. Server Drupal Modules contains more than 5200 modules = functions that are free and ready to be used use on your website. Of course, development and expansion of specific functionalities is also supported.
• Flexibility - in my opinion, this property is one of the main reasons for such popularity and extension of Drupal. In Drupal is no problem to react flexibly to customer requirements. Do you want a practical example? One of our customers came to us with the following requirements: "I don’t want my posts on the main page of Web site to be managed by the administrator. I want to allow to each registered user to write posts. These contributions, however, will normally show only on their special page. Our editor can see all contributions. Once he selects and approves one of the contributions, the article will automatically appear on the main page. I want to send e-mail with the assessment of the author and editor every time one of the articles has been evaluated. Rating is not only for articles but also for photos in galleries." In short - none of it was very difficult, but difficult was to find content management system that supported all this. Development of these functions is possible but very expensive. Drupal is really flexible, so we were able to configure all of the requirements (!) In the administration interface.
• Prepared solutions - Drupal makes a perfect base for more specialized systems and initiatives. There are such distributions as Acquia Drupal, which already includes the most common favorite modules along with other enhancements, Open Atrium is the perfect base for corporate intranets,Ubercart for e-commerce etc.
• Other - there are of course many other benefits resulting from the prevalence of the aforementioned. For Drupal this provides many ready-made graphical themes. The problem is to find a dedicated hosting (sufficient and regular combination of Apache, PHP, MySQL), programmers and consultants. Drupal had been assessed thousands of users who sorted all kinds of minor and greater complications. You will probably not find something you will be unpleasantly surprised about.

However, Drupal also has its drawbacks.

Disadvantages of Drupal

• The philosophy of the system - Drupal disadvantages stem primarily from its focus and the way we work with it. One would say that it is rather a property, but it is hard to explain this to the customer, who perceives it as a disadvantage.
• Steep learning curve - Drupal is a system which can come in and start working immediately. Firstly, it requires understanding of at least some basic rules. Then it's all about speed. This certainly applies to system administrators and programmers, to editors – even a suitable administration interface can help a lot.
• Rapid development of new features - even-though the rapid development of Drupal is definitely an advantage, in terms of system administrators who should respond to published hotfixes and new versions, these changes represents additional work.

In conclusion

We have implemented Drupal in a number of smaller sites and several major portals - for example Peloton.cz or Skinet.cz, which offer dozens of features and have high attendance. Long-term experience shows that Drupal is a good choice for companies developing Web applications, but also for our customers – end users.

Healthy working spirit

Despite the fact that everybody from Syntactic Sugar „kick“ for one team, sometimes we like to compete. Last week we competed in a company squash tournament.

New version of the skiing portal SkiNet.cz

We have successfully finished a new version of the SkiNet.cz which is the biggest and vastest skiing portal in the Czech Republic.

The aim of the project was to create a new version of the portal which would fulfill all requirements and new ideas of the owner. One of the main goals was to increase a performance and capacity of the portal. Now, the portal should manage up to 10.000 unique guests per hour which is more than 40.000 requirements for pages. Another goal was an on-line advertising support for the project submitter.

Wide range of the application’s functionalities offer information about ski resorts and accommodation, snow situation, weather, maps of ski resorts, trail maps, number of open slopes ,etc. The portal also contains up-to-date articles, ski resorts and accommodation rating and web cams. It is possible to search for information using several categories (ski resorts, snow situation, weather and so on).

SkiNet.cz contains a broad-spectrum of information and is designed for either professional or non-professional skiers. SkiNet.cz is an essential assistant when planning a skiing vacation.

For more information see www.skinet.cz.

Drupal performance testing

We specify and guarantee a maximum number of simultaneous users that web applications created by our company  can handle. This is especially important for servers that are visited by many users at the same time.That's why we have gone through the extensive internal testing during the last days. We simulated different  scenarios, we evaluated server response times and server load, we fine-tuned Drupal settings and triedvarious caching mechanisms. The results of the tests only acknowledged that despite its complexity  the Drupal CMS is in the right hands very well scalable.  It is also a great choice for servers dealing with a really huge number of simultaneous requests.

DrupalCamp Prague 09

DrupalCamp was a conference we attended last weekend 31/10 – 1/11 in Prague.

Six delegates representing Syntactic Sugar joined this conference. Tomáš Holub – Director, Miroslav Štìpánek – Development Manager, Martin Bydžovský – Drupal Specialist, Swenia Toupalik – Manager of SlusnyWeb.cz, Carolina Perea – Facebook applications Developer and Miroslav Hauser – Project Supervisor. 

All the lectures were very useful. We have gained a lot of new information and got tips on new modules. We have learnt about modules for easier system administration, creating preconfigured solutions for our clients or simpler implementation of column graphics. Such modules enable us to offer a better price to performance ratio.

We have expanded our knowledge of the possibility of integration Drupal system with other external systems. Thanks to this information we are able to create systems that cooperate with external servers more effectively. We are also able to develop sophisticated “faceted” search which is an advanced version of full-text search. 

Our delegates joined a very interesting case study of a new web of TV Prima and web pages of its programmes. This prestigious and high-level CMS is being used to create and administer web pages for the White House.

Surprise of the day was a presentation of an Atrium module. Atrium is a module for project management and knowledge sharing..

We hope this conference helped us to improve the quality of services we provide to you – our clients. 
 

We improve the security of our systems

To improve the security of our internal systems, we set up a HTTPS protocol and we started to use a security certificate in September.

There is no change in using our systems by clients. You can still use the address http://trac.syntacticsugar.com, from where you are automatically redirected to https://trac.syntacticsugar.com.

All our clients were insturcted how to install the certificate which is needed for the usage of the HTTPS protocol. In case of any problems, please contact our Helpdesk.

Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review 2008

We participated in Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review 2008. We were contacted by Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Association and asked a set of questions about our company. You can find the results of the survey on ITONews.eu or click here to dowload it.

International trainee

During the expansion of the company new ideas of how to do things differently and better are very important. One of these ideas was employing a worker from abroad.

 We decided to avail of services of AIESEC organization which arranges international traineeships for graduated university students. Requirements were simple – a graduate of IT specialization, knowledge of .NET technology and praxis during university studies was an advantage.

 Carolina Perea, a graduate from the "Universidad Del Norte (North University)" in Barranquilla in Colombia, was chosen. She has been working for our company since the middle of March 2009. She cooperates on Pathevo project which is aimed for US students choosing their future career and searching for the most suitable school and a way of studying. Carolina is working on different parts of this complex project as a developer. Communication ability, interest in her work and openness belong to her indisputable qualities.

Carolina’s coming has had an impact not only on the project she has been working on but also in the communication inside our company. English but possibly also Spanish became daily use. Everyone has thus a chance to improve his own language skills.

Our cooperation should last one year. We wish her a lot of success and we hope she will enjoy her work with us.
 

Benefit festival HaDR

Syntactic Sugar supported the benefit festival HaDR (Music and Theatre Rotaract Festival) that was held 25. - 28.11.2008 in Pilsen. The financial profit will be used, as every year, to finance charity non-profit organisations that mainly help young people and children in need. This year has been the 6th HaDR festival to be organized by Rotaract Club Pilsen. Syntactic Sugar contributed not only financially but also to organise this several days lasting event.

Money collected during this year's festival will be given over to Primary school and Kindergarten for deaf in Pilsen which is the only institution of it's kind in Pilsen and Karlovy Vary region. New furniture that fulfill specific requirements for deaf children's education will be financed from this money. Money collected during festivals happening in previous years supported for example Social Care House for handicapped youth in Zbůch, Creche Domino in Pilsen – Skvrnany or Care house of St. Zdislava for mothers with children in need.

Groups that supported this event and performed great shows were: PPLP, Démophobia, Pátý přes devátý, No Exit a dramatic ensamble Antidivadlo.

Even now we would like to invite everybody for the next year's festival that will be held in Pilsen in November 2009.

The Best Thesis of the Year

Competition The Best Thesis of the Year was announced by ABRA Software company at the end of September. One of the competitors was our longtime colleague Mirek Vavruška. In the interview below you can get to know a project with which Mirek entered into the competition or what he is working on at the moment.

Hi. Firstly, congratulations on the master’s degree you have just successfully obtained. How is it for you to be a fresh graduate?
To be honest, I haven't realized any big difference. At the end of my second year at University of West Bohemia I joined Syntactic Sugar. From now, you will just meet me in the office more often ;-). One of the things that every graduate experiences right after the graduation is not having student discounts and advantages anymore.

Why did you decide to sign up for The Best Thesis of the Year competition?
I signed up for the competition because I wanted to compare my thesis with the works of other students. I am quite a competitive type of person so this was a great challenge for me.

You signed up for two contests. What were the differences?
There was a big competition in both of them. Around 80 competitors signed up for each of these contests. There were 6 cathegories in the one announced by ABRA Software company. One of the cathegories, for which I signed up was „Corporate information systems“ in which I won the 1st place. In the other contest announced by Profinit company was only one common cathegory and I was on the 8th place.

Could you please shortly describe the project you entered the competition with?
Topic of my thesis is "InnoQ Document Management System". InnoQ is "InnoForss Quality Management System" in short. InnoQ is a quality control system defined by InnoForss institute. Huge amount of documents was developed when the Institut was creating this system. My task was to make an application that would help to effectively keep these documents under control.

Basically, it is a system for document administration that I have developed for finnish research institut. My first contact with the institut was during my study stay at HAMK University of Applied Sciences in finnish town of Forssa. InnoQ Document Management system is written in PHP and works under MySQL database. System is able to work with all common used MS Office and OpenOffice document formats. It is possible to search within documents. Interesting is that system is automatically able to convert documents into PDFs. Considering the international character of the project I have written my thesis in English.

How did the competition go?
The process of both of them was very similar. Jury selected the best works from all that were signed up and all selected went to final. During the final we were presenting our work to a professional jury and we were also answering all curious questions of the jury members.

How did you actually get to this project?
In Finland I recieved an offer to work on the project. I really liked the idea to solve a real business problem and to practice the communication with the customer in English. By the way, this experience was later on a big advantage for me in Syntactic Sugar. I got offers to participate on several projects but I liked this one the most. I liked that results of my work will be finally used in practice.

What are you currently working on?
Currently, I am working on a very interesting project for our customer from United States - Owen Software company. Goal of the project is to create a web application that helps students with choosing the field of study and future profession. The application includes three complex psychological questionnaires. As a result, there is a list of fields of study and professions that fit the student the most. ASP.NET 3.5 technology is used for implementation together with MS SQL 2008 database.

Thank you very much for your answers and I wish you a lot of working and personal achievements.
DThanks for the interview ;-)

Roman Sterly

Improving our own TRAC

TRAC is primarily a tool designed to divide tasks among team members. We have gone much further. By never-ending testing and creating our own plug-ins we have turned TRAC into a valuable assistant that directly and positively supports our internal business processes.

We made the first step in September 2007 when launching TRAC into the testing operation and using it also as a tool for counting hours we work off. Lots of other improvements were coming later on - for example project planning and it’s following checkup. During few upcoming months we moved even further. We use TRAC to keep a record of all employees, applicants and also enquiries. TRAC has turned into a small CRM for us. Recently, we have been working on sophisticated reports. Counting wages doesn't take 6 hours but only 30 minutes with their help. Other reports can be used by project managers, other will be used by our new colleague Sarka, who is responsible for HR. We certainly haven't forgotten other configurations, that allow us take an easy control over our worked off hours at all projects. Launching an official program to support private projects of our employees can be considered as an important milestone. Roman and Swenia are the first who have their own fully modified TRAC environment including Subversion.

New project SlusnyWeb.cz

The idea of this project was born months ago. The main aim of this internal project was to create a division of Syntactic Sugar. This division SlusnyWeb.cz would specialize in creating web presentations.

There is a long and usually not easy way from any idea to the realization itself. SlusnyWeb.cz was not an exception.  Before launching we spent many hours discussing potential advantages and disadvantages, benefits, expenses needed for realization, SWOT analysis and planning. 

Thanks to Swenia Toupalik all these plans and discussions have come true. Swenia has created the graphical face of this web presentation and is also its project manager. If you find our new services interesting and decide to cooperate with us, Swenia will be the one responsible for fast and quality realization of your new website.

Check it out on www.slusnyweb.cz/en/introduction

Secondary school students gaining work experience in Syntactic Sugar

Two secondary school students spent the last two weeks in May with us in terms of compulsory school work experience. The main aim was to show them how the company works and what it means to be a part of the real working process. 

From the work they managed during their stay I could mention data check and purification for example. These data were afterwards imported to the database of our project ObchodCZ.cz. Students also helped with testing the application. Furthermore, they updated photos from a charity event organized by Rotary Club Pilsen “1st Rotary Charity Golf Cup Pilsen 2008”. Photos can be found at web pages of Rotary Club Pilsen. Last but not least I can mention testing of company web pages, hardware support and so on.  

Thank you goes to both students for all the work they have done. We hope they enjoyed it and gained new knowledge and experinece at the same time.

Working reinforcement

I have already mentioned in some of the previous articles that our company is focused on external cooperation. Therefore, we welcome our new colleagues, workmates and friends this way. This month will not be an exception.

Two people have decided to join our team this month - Roman Sterly and Swenia Toupalik. Roman was hired on the position of sales manager but his position has soon become wider. He is also responsible for marketing and public relations. Swenia is a part of the technical part of the company. She is responsible for everything that has something to do with graphics.    

We wish both of them to enjoy everything they do. 

Renewal of a bodyshopping contract

Bodyshopping is one of the services our company offers. The question what bodyshopping actually is answered our employee Petr Dvorak. Recently, he has been rent to CCA company.

“Every software project comes through a variable stages of development. Specification of requirements, project processing, programming, testing and so on. Such phases differ also in size of the team. At the beginning the working teams are usually smaller and are constantly changing during the project. Obviously, it is most profitable for the company to have an exact number of employees.

It is very hard to find quickly qualified people without losing months needed for trainings in this branch. One of the possible solutions is bodyshopping. It is a kind of cooperation when the specialist works at the clients place and becomes a part of his team.

There are many implicit advantages at this kind of cooperation. The company that rents the developer can gain an independent source of income and reduce the fixed costs. For the other company such person can mean a different point of view on problems and can also help with his unique experience. Rented specialist is not becoming the other side’s employee. Therefore, the company is not taking the risk of people getting ill or dismissing its own employees.

What bodyshopping means from the employee’s point of view? Basically, it means different working environment, operating principles, company culture, different technologies and processes. Therefore, it can be compared to changing the employers. The main difference is in higher expectations and requirements from the company from the very beginning. The rented developer has to approve his knowledge and skills. Moreover, if there is some work transition happening at the first company people can get very busy. Fortunately, when the developer gains more experience with the new project such situation is over soon.

Having such experience is undoubtedly a great advantage. It is also more than interesting to compare how software is done somewhere else. Moreover, it is a great chance to gain new knowledge and meet new people.”

Fact that we have agreed with the CCA company to renew the contract evidences the satisfaction on both sides and advantages that body-shopping brings.

Lectures From Syntactic Sugar for Students of the University of West Bohemia

All university students has certainly experienced sitting through tiring lectures, which are for the most part concerned only with theory. Ing. Brada from the Faculty of Applied Sciences of the University of Western Bohemia, however, decided to conceive his subject differently. He divided the subject matters that he is teaching and he offered the individual topics to companies.

Thus, students have opportunity to receive information about the given issues from practice and from professionals. In this respect, we have been cooperating with ZČU (University of Western bohemia) for several years already and this year's semester is no exception. The lectures awaiting us are even two. One deals with the topic: „Various styles of project management“, where we focus on the impact of the customer's approach on the course of the project. The lecture will be of course centered mainly on practical experiences from two larger and very different projects. The second topic, that we can surely base on practical experiences, is: „Advanced use of and experiences with the system TRAC“. The principal points of this lecture will be planning, estimates and accounting for the time spent on the project, continuous integration, etc. Work with the TRAC is a daily bread for all employees of the Syntactic Sugar and so we hope that this lecture given by us will be a pleasantly spent hour for the students.

A company signature or another drop added into the cup of visibility

Promotion is a word that makes many people shudder. But noone will learn about even the best and highest-quality product, if it is not sufficiently promoted. Awareness of the public of what we are doing increases probability that both acquaintances and randomly addressed people will become our customers. It would be ideal to focus just on one form of promotion. However, in today's world full of advertising and information lurking for us on every step it is simply not enough.

And so we – as a company – bet on a hot favourite: quantity. We will take advantage of any small supporting promotion that would make the Syntactic Sugar visible as an enterprise. Our next drop into the cup of visibility is the company signature this time. It is short, smooth, unified for all employees and it is automatically attached in the end of every mail sent from our company address.

Would you like to see its particular appearance? Write to info@syntacticsugar.com, we will be glad to send you one as an example.

Re-design of the web of the cycling diary Peloton

The main work content of the Syntactic Sugar is to solve each customer requirement. And above all successfully. Another challenge for us is undoubtedly improvement of the web of the cycling magazine Peloton.

We got the web as such in quite a high-quality version. The requirement from orderers though was: „To Improve and Extend“. Ondra Kvasnička, a regular member of our team, took charge of this with enthusiasm and responsibility and currently he is fully engaged by coordination of the entire project. The web is created by means of the editorial system Drupal, which is used for facilitation of content administration. Interesting functions offered to visitors by peloton.cz are for example publication of articles, release of news, insertion of videos, participation in various discussions or possibilities of chat. New peloton.cz will be a refreshing, modern web, which will enable its readers to participate significantly in creation of its content.

The day of Open Doors

The day of Open Doors. The first event of its kind that took place in our company. Even though we certainly have a lot to improve till the next time, allow me to state that it was a very successful day after all. We showed visitors how we live here and we tried to introduce both the formal and informal face of the company to them.

All participants had a unique opportunity to familiarize themselves with our realized and still proceeding projects, to debate with regular and external employees, to receive a small refreshment and to participate in a darts match. A very friendly ambience ruled for the entire day in the offices. The atmosphere in the company and the job opportunity addressed some visitors so much that they decided to become our new colleagues.

Not everything is perfect

We were able to verify that nothing in this world is perfect … not even systems, not even servers. Unfortunately. An unpleasant discovery was that our server, which we call by an in-house name Hummer, broke down. After a thorough analysis we found that one disc in RAID actually failed.

Fortunately, due to regular back up, no serious loss of data occurred and so the greatest piece of work consisted of creation of a temporary solution and putting it into operation. Critical systems were eventually, for the time of the repair, transferred to our server in the backbone network in Prague. However, a finding positive for us was that even in such critical cases we can cope with the situation in such a way that it does not disrupt and limit the operation of our company.

Our visit in Germany

Each day we spend long hours by engaging our brain cells. Last weekend, 2/3 of regular employees decided to let their brains rest and to warm up other parts of their bodies. They exchanged formal suits for sporting outfits and set out collectively for the marathon in in-line skating in Berlin.

The whole sporting event even produced several good results. One of the most important undoubtedly is the fact that they managed the entire 42 kilometers and everybody arrived to the finish alive and healthy. Souvenir medals, which they brought from this skating battle, are now proudly swinging at various places both in our office and elsewhere. No wonder. The people in question can be rightfully proud of such performance. Some of the participants are already looking forward to another sporting challenge, while others are glorifying beauty and comfort of an office armchair. The fact that it was a real battle is proven by the photographic documentation taken „at the venue of the action“.

But foreign countries do not open their doors to us only by their sporting events. An event very significant for us is the progressing cooperation with the German company Planta. Our developer Ondra Kvasnička spent 3 nice working weeks directly at the company in Germany. The entire project is proceeding very positively and the international cooperation proved so useful that Ondra is setting out to Germany for the second time and this time he is taking with him Mirek Vavruška, who starts to work on the project using the Skype and programming language C#.