Boldium Blog

Our freshly minted iPhone app: Clorox myStain

Suzanne Popkin — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:51:27 +0000

We are very excited about our newest iPhone app for Clorox: myStain.

It’s a useful, slick app that helps you figure out how to remove stains. Ever wondered how to remove ink stains? ( I have – okay, more than once.) The app gives lots of really useful advice - especially when you're on-the-go. Like… ever knew you could use hand sanitizer to remove ink stains – who would have thought?

Boldium at Drupalcon

Dmitri Gaskin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:00:45 +0000

I won't bore you with the gory details of Drupalcon SF, as it seems every other blog on the Drupal planet is doing (yes, we KNOW it's coming up and we know for sure that it will be AWESOME).

Anyway, Boldium (specifically, me, Dmitri Gaskin) has two session proposals: Drush and the Introduction to Theming. Both should be a whole lot of fun and very awesome, so you should go vote on them!

Happy birthday, Drupal

Dmitri Gaskin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:39:39 +0000

In honor of Drupal's 9th birthday, I decided to record the happy birthday song for Drupal! Starring my brother singing and me on accordion.

Node access

Dmitri Gaskin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:05:34 +0000

Node access is a big topic for many websites - restricting what content a user can view. However, for many people, such as myself (until last night), it's a big and scary topic. What I intend to do in this post is to reduce the scary factor and try to explain it (with code samples).

How to make pagers

Dmitri Gaskin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 02:07:54 +0000

I was working on a site today and needed to code a pager (the query was too complex for views). The most logical thing (which I looked for) was a tutorial on coding pagers in Drupal. Unfortunately, I was unable to find one, so I'll post a tutorial here.

Our iPhone App: Gigi & Frank Is Released!

Igor Gasowski — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:32:27 +0000

Boldium’s subsidiary company, BookBoing, just released its first iphone app for kids. As parents, we have found that too often, learning is separated from any meaningful context - both in the classroom and in most computer games. In the classroom, kids are often given worksheets with abstract problems they don’t really care about; and on the computer, they are usually motivated by symbolic money or stickers.

Drush Make comes to Installation Profiles

Dmitri Gaskin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:10:15 +0000

Drush Make, a module of mine, has been making waves in the Drupal community since it was released. Its primary goal is to take a file defining a list of modules and themes, or in Drush Make lingo, projects, and create a fully operational Drupal site out of them. Now you can use these same Drush Make files in installation profiles and they will be properly packaged on drupal.org.

Installation Profiles traditionally have been a piece of PHP code that tells Drupal what to do when the site is installed. When one used to download that install profile, they would just get that file. If the install profile author wanted modules used besides code module (for example, a WYSIWYG), one would have to download it after they download the profile. However, Drush Make has changed this.

Drupal.org, using Drush Make as a backend, now allows modules and themes to come with profiles, all in the same file. This represents a major step in installation profiles, as now they are much more useful.

Mobspin reviewed by TechCrunch

Igor Gasowski — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 06:36:17 +0000

We’re excited that Mobspin, a social networking site that we worked on, was reviewed by TechCrunch.

Here’s how the site works. Rather than looking for advice from anonymous people on a site like Yelp or Yahoo! Answers, you send out questions to your community of friends. (You can quickly establish a friend list by importing from Facebook.)

Fly-out Menus and Usability

Igor Gasowski — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:05:41 +0000

From time to time, while designing new web-sites, I am asked to consider fly-out menus (sometimes called drop down or roll over menus). In most cases, I steer my clients to more user-friendly, more efficient solutions; but in the process, I end up repeating the same basic points many times. So I decided to post my thoughts on fly out menus here and refer people to this entry.

First, let me go over the benefits of fly out menus. They are attractive, some might even say cool. They can save a lot of space.

Social Network Primer

Igor Gasowski — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:40:33 +0000

So you are tasked with building an Online community. Guess what: you are not alone. More and more companies are trying to elbow their way into social networking space.

The challenge is to approach it in the right way. You need to ask yourself and by extension your organization, not only, how would we benefit from an online community, but: how would a member of your online community benefit from participating in our social network? And while it may seem topsy turvy, this should become the objective of your effort, the foundation of your endeavor. Everything down the road should be measured against that goal.