Are you writing and using environmentally friendly software? Have you ever thought of the impact on the environment for the software you've written? Working in front of a computer it can be easy to overlook the impact on the environment due to what were creating. It's not like drinking a beverage out of a styrofoam cup (they don't break down). But, there is an impact. As Internet usage grows in leaps and bounds we need to start taking a closer look at that impact and doing something about it.

Why Performance Is Green

Why did Facebook start using Hip-Hop? According to their blog,

With HipHop we've reduced the CPU usage on our Web servers on average by about fifty percent, depending on the page. Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead.

When we have less servers we use less power, we need less space in buildings, less servers need to be built for our tasks and our overall footprint is smaller.

Think about it like this. We buy energy efficient appliances, we talk about turning lights off when we aren't using them, we look at energy efficient cars, and we think about being environmentally conscious. So, why not extend this to what powers our websites. Read more »

Amy Stephen recently posted on twitter how much Wordpress rocks. My gut reaction wanted me to respond by saying I was less than impressed with Wordpress. Instead I asked a question. How do we go about evaluating a content management system? Amy came to one conclusion and I came to a very different one which means our evaluation criteria must be miles apart. In response to that question, here is my take on how you evaluate a content management system. Read more »

With so many great and award winning content management systems on the market it can be difficult to choose the right one for a project or for a company to use as the basis for its sites. It's a big enough topic that articles have been written and books published on the topic. But, I think there is a more basic decision that needs to be made before the selection can be considered. One that tells you about your plans for using the system.

In the current state of CMS you can't have your cake and eat it, too. That is, you can't have everything you may want out of the box. You need to make a base decision about what you want. Basically, choose two of the following three:

• Flexibility
• Slick UI
• Install and Setup Ease

Let's take a look a couple real world examples using Wordpress and Drupal. Read more »

Wordpress is the top blogging platform. So, when I decided to build this blog I fully expected to use Wordpress and was really looking forward to it. As a full time Drupal developer it's inspiring to use a different tool. This gives me a chance to use a different and refreshing user interface, see under the hood of a different source code, and be inspired in my daily developing.

But, when I looked over my resources and requirements it turns out Wordpress was not the best fit for this site. Since a big part of engineering web applications is starting with the best tools for your task (or at least the best as far as you can tell) here is why I chose Drupal instead of Wordpress. Read more »