What we've been up to.

Alltooeasy has been in full swing this past month.

Website Briefs:

We've been churning through quite a few briefs recently. We're finding that whilst there are a lot of Drupal Developers out there, we're getting asked increasingly to work over multiple disciplines and multiple systems. From MS Access and SQL powered systems through to conversions and upgrades.

Its seems like Drupal is finally gaining the reputation and credentials it deserves and through our marketing we're getting a lot on enquiries (keep them coming please!).  We're looking at a number of different projects currently, both big and small.

Upgrades and Service Contracts

We've had a few upgrades to do. A few clients have been running for on some older systems, so we've busily been upgrading their systems. Its amazing to see how much the Drupal community has come on even with Drupal 6 (we now exclusively develop in Drupal 7, because its infinitely better) we've had a fair few cases of development, in particular calendar and events functionality that once took us 30 hrs to hand code, now having a complete setup wizard to do most of the grunt work for us. That said, working with Drupal 6 is a big step backwards and we're happy to be developing in 7. The pace is crazy, they're already talking about Drupal 8.

E-Commerce and Syndicated Content from External Systems

We're efficient. Whilst we wanted to move an entire business on Drupal 7, allowing them to operate anywhere on the planet, our client is happy with what he has. Alltooeasy is against re-inventing the wheel. If something does what its designed to do, why replicate it. So instead we've invested a lot of time seeing how best to migrate data across from their existing MS Access system. We're now happily at the point where we can say that not only can we migrate it, we can post it to Google maps, Facebook, Twitter, have it update their E-Commerce Systems and back again!

Alltooeasy would like to say a big thank you to Commerce Guys. The work they're doing on D7 Drupal E-Commerce is nothing short of awesome. We're looking to enter the E-Commerce market in a big way.

SEO

Alltooeasy is upping its game on the SEO front. You can see what we're doing soon. But in essence we've adopted a new framework and we're looking to move into the multimedia market, with multiple content sources. We've had the pleasure of working with a couple of local Kent businesses that have seen a 200% increase in site traffic simply from the deployment of an SEO strategy.

Automation

Automation is coming! We're beginning to move away from indepently hosted sites onto having a big bundle of VPS driven sites. Which offers our larger clients a lot of added performance. The reason being that we want to ensure the larger sites (that need it) get not only the added benefit of our experience in Drupal, but in hosting and server management as well.

This has also opened up a wide variety of new areas for us, by running virtual online development environments for testing, automated backups and a whole range of other features that have streamlined our service. We're planning on passing on this efficiency to our clients. So more time battling code and less time battling sub-standard proprietary systems!

Business Model

Can't you do it for X? Well we could, but we couldn't offer you everything you need and want. We're sticking to our guns. We keep finding the victims of cheap shortcut solutions and budget it will do everything (but nothing well) customers. We've also introduced some new best practice in our feasibility studies and new policy on Support Contracts, ensuring that our advances are passed onto you. A prime example was where a support contract didn't cover the cost of an upgrade, but we did it anyway - so the client was happy and it meant we could support a common system for all our websites. (I believe they call that WIN - WIN - oh and he bought us both a few beers.)

Bug Tracking

Bugs sometimes make it through our QA system. But usually ones related to a lack of maintenance. So we've implemented a suggested support packages cost to ensure that timely and efficient maintenance can be carried out. Prevention is invariably better than cure. We've also put in place the equivalent of a rolling bed test option for our sites, by populating them with vast amounts of dummy content to test both performance, scalability
and robustness. So your sure to get the mileage we promise from our websites.

Drupal Con London 2011.

Alltooeasy is going to Drupal Con 2011 in Croydon! We'd love to see some of you there in August. Please get in touch and let us know if you want to meet up!

Hope your enjoying the weather.

The Alltooeasy Team.