Adding Understanding

Catching up on some blog reading today I picked up on a thread Dave Winer's been writing about. He's using ImageMagick to resize images and produce thumbnails. Throughout the thread I kept thinking this sounds a lot like a standalone version of the Drupal imagecache module. Perhaps, I thought, the answer could be setting up a Drupal site to do the conversion. Nah that's too much I said to myself.

However, the more I thought about it the more sense it made. Then I got to today's post where Winer mentions a small web server for doing the work. "I'm still bugged that: 1. It seems slower than it should be. 2. A window flashes every time it creates a thumbnail," Winer says in the post. OK this is the prefect situation for building a one-off clone of imagecache. The next paragraph says, however, that he doesn't want to build it in PHP as it's another language to pick up.

While heating up some naan for my lunch the plan came together. Build a small website using Acquia Drupal and have imagecache do the work for you. The beauty of the solution is that it doesn't take learning PHP. It is a PHP-based solution of course, but one with no coding necessary. So why use Acquia Drupal specifically? It has a couple of advantages in having the necessary modules already bundled with it. The modules are all available on Drupal.org but for somebody who hasn't setup a Drupal site before having them all together is handy. There's also a good Getting Started guide that makes it easy for users to get a site setup.

Like many in the community my first exposure to Acquia came back in the first part of the year. It was an exciting time for the Drupal community and what we learned at Drupalcon in Boston suggested many great things to come. At the time I was running an independent Drupal development shop. The news that an organization like Acquia was going to come to the Drupal ecosystem was great news. Some had early concerns that Acquia might compete in the site development space. These fears turned out to be ill-founded and the entry of Acquia into the marketspace a great boon for small shops like ours. Now the future held the promise that we could continue to work on the development we were doing and help customers build great sites, while having a solid organization we could hand off day-to-day support on the back end.

Over the summer my excitement about Acquia grew. First talking to Robert Douglass and Chuck D'Antonio about the partner program Acquia was putting together was very encouraging. The model sounded like it would very much help our business and grow the opportunities for all kinds of great shops doing awesome things with Drupal. Beyond a solid model as the various meetings about the partner program progressed it became obvious that not only was the model good but that feedback was being incorporated and the offering tuned in response to input from those participating in the discussion.

As the days of summer grew hotter and longer I was fortunate to participate in the alpha and then beta testing of Acquia Drupal, then code-named Carbon and the Acquia Network which was once "Spokes". These early sessions indicated Acquia had great things going on. And then as summer vacations everywhere were drawing to a close an opportunity to join the great team at Acquia came along. So for the last month I've been making the transition from partner to employee. It has been an invigorating experience being a part of the launch of Acquia Drupal and the Acquia Network. Without a doubt there is plenty left to do but the first release of Acquia Drupal is out the door and the Acquia Network is live.

So what does all this mean?

A year ago we were about to set out on our family version of Travels with Charlie. At the time our thinking was that we would be looking to move out of Southern Nevada in a couple of years. On our return to Southern Nevada we talked and chewed on the options. Finding no great reason to wait we packed up and moved north. Along with the move came a change in my focus. I made a great move from the world of running an information technology department to running a small Drupal shop. Along the way I've had many great experiences. From traveling to Drupal camps to having visited Boston for the first time for Drupalcon last spring.

While the moving van was hauling our worldly possessions down the road something else was happening on the other side of the country. A couple of really smart folks were starting Acquia a company providing commercially supported Drupal. Drupalcon in Boston brought more information about this startup. Beyond the uber-cool launch party at Felt the community also got a glimpse of what was to come next. The Drupal community was getting a company that could help all manner of Drupal shops, from small to large, provide support. The end result was certainly clear... it is a great time to be a part of the Drupal community.