If you are a software developer, Linxter is one of the tools you have in – or are missing from – your tool belt. A cloud messaging platform, Linxter enables software developers to quickly and easily connect their distributed applications and systems for a variety of needs, including: systems integration; remote monitoring and control of servers, robots, and devices; machine-to-machine communication; secure instant messaging and file transfer; smart grid implementations; and multi-player gaming, to name a few.
Because our product is a tool, we feel it’s important that we not only show the developers of the world what Linxter is, but what they can build with it. As a result, Drupal is not only our CMS for linxter.com, but also for 10 other sites. All of our Drupal sites promote various services, applications, and open source code made possible with Linxter’s cloud messaging platform.
Why we chose Drupal
Drupal was the perfect choice for our environment because we can standardize on the same CMS to support our rich marketing platform, which includes our main product site, many one-off brochure style sties, a social hub, and even an app-store like directory.
With Drupal, our web gurus can focus on front end development and design, our writers can make content changes without needing to know any html, and our head honchos can avoid hiring backend developers for our web marketing efforts.
We probably don’t have time to list them all, but here are the main modules we benefit from by using Drupal as the CMS for all of our sites:
- admin_menu – We don’t have to worry about site administration when we’re busy focusing on user experience.
- backup_migrate – The best kind of backup is the kind you don't have to think about. We have scheduled daily backups that delete themselves on a weekly basis.
- cck – Custom content regions make many more sophisticated data display error resistant for the uninitiated to maintain..
- css_gzip – Makes our sites faster.
- customerror – Just because something goes wrong doesn’t mean we can’t provide a better user experience.
- globalredirect – Comes in handy. Also, makes Google happy.
- google_analytics – Makes Google analytics integration even easier.
- javascript_aggregator – Makes our sites faster.
- nodewords – SEO magic.
- page_title – SEO magic.
- pathauto – Clean urls are baseline; logical URLs are even better.
- search404 – Just because something goes wrong doesn’t mean we can’t provide a better user experience.
- site_verify – Lets us keep tabs on what the search engines think of us.
- views – Amazingly empowering tool for finding and displaying content.
- xmlsitemap – Makes search engines happy.
In addition, these modules have come in pretty handy for our main site, linxter.com:
- commentmail – Because it’s nice to know when someone posts a comment on your site (if you allow them).
- contemplate – Quick and dirty theming for custom content types (use with caution; it is often not the right tool for the job)
- imagecache – Upload one image file and have it displayed as many sizes as you need across your site. Super powerful for many scenarios.
- menutrails – Helps keep with views that are nested under content.
- mollom – Kills spam dead, but gives humans a fighting chance at a better user experience.
- semanticviews – For most sites Views is as crucial as CCK, semantic views gives us the control we want over views markup.
- webform – Super useful for lead generation.
Our Drupal Sites
- Linxter.com
- Our main product site.
- Linxterdeveloper.com
- The developer’s guide to using Linxter.
- Cloudmiddleware.com
- An online directory where we post cloud integrations made possible by Linxter.
- Cloudplumbing.com
- A podcast, sponsored by Linxter, in which we interview developers about anything that matters to them – it usually relates back to development.
- Monitorgrid.com
- A commercial server monitoring service that uses Linxter to provide two-way communication between servers and system admins.
- Smoothdough.com
- A cloud service that uses Linxter to make integrating PayPal payment processing into desktop apps a cinch.
- Linxtermessenger.com
- An open source set of code free to any Linxter developers who want to create their own private messaging systems.
- Boatbattle.com
- An open source application that demonstrates how Linxter can be used to create multiplayer distributed games.
- Onlinecount.net
- A cloud service that developers can use to enhance desktop apps by giving users the ability to see how many other instances of the same program are online.
- Availabletoplay.net
- A cloud service that developers can use to enhance desktop games by giving players the ability to find opponents who are online and available to play.
- SFtechtalk.com
- A community page for members of the group, South Florida Tech Talk, to get updates on events and communicate with each other.
