Acqal Experts Blog About TYPO3 and Other Hot Topics

US Political Campaign Websites - The Basics

By: Virgil Huston

We do a number of political campaign sites every election cycle and have been doing so for years, from Congressional down to local races in a variety of states. I've learned a thing or two about effective campaign sites over the years.There are a few characteristics that distinguish a campaign web site from most other sites:

They are always temporary, the longest time a campaign site is live is usually less than a year and that only if the site gets set up early and the candidate makes it past the primary. Even if the candidate is using his usual web site (assuming he has one), campaign...

Acqal is Going Through Some Changes

By: Nicole Johnson

Most of you have now heard that Acqal’s CEO, Michael Cannon, decided to resign his position with Acqal at the end of February. Michael left in order to start a family and to make career changes. We wish him the best of luck. With that said, Virgil Huston and I have been moving forward in beefing up the Acqal team. We’re very excited by the changes and the upcoming growth.

Acqal has added a team of six TYPO3 gurus that will be assisting us with support items as well as projects. We’ve also added a Senior Technical Advisor, Ries van Twisk. Ries will be working with us on those projects that...

TYPO3 in 2010, Join the TYPO3 Association and Get Involved

By: Virgil Huston

Despite rough economic times all over the world, TYPO3 made great strides in 2009 and the future looks good for both TYPO3 4.4 and TYPO3 5. We at Acqal had a good year and TYPO3 continues to increase its market share in the US, although we all would like to see that move a lot quicker.2009 saw the first TYPO3CON outside of Germany. Held in Dallas, it was well attended and was a great start to bigger things to come. T3CON10 in Frankfurt was the best T3CON yet and it looks like settling on Frankfurt as the venue was a great idea, as Frankfurt is centralized and easy to get to from both Europe...

TYPO3, Marketing and the English Language

By: Virgil Huston

Sometimes coming up with a blog post topic can be hard, so this week, some odds and ends that are of interest and some things that keep rolling around in my mind.TYPO3, Marketing and the English LanguageI live in the US and use the US version of Google for searching. One thing I did while trying to come up with a blog topic, was run a search for TYPO3 on Google News. Wow, one would have thought I was using news.google.de. Out of the first 5 pages of news results (50 results), only 2 were English (one of them irrelevant as far as TYPO3 is concerned, the other a press release), the rest were...

Poem: TYPO3 is of the community

By: Michael Cannon

TYPO3 is of the community and for the community. Together we succeed, apart we fail. With another year comes, us together in Frankfurt to join and raise a glass for a cheer. To new friends, new sites and new techniques. At the close, we go a little sad, a bit tired, but fuller of hope to a brighter future of more friends and growing success. – 9/11/2009 – Thinking about TYPO3’s future during the T3CON09 Frankfurt keynote.

TYPO3 Teaserbar and T3CON09

By: Virgil Huston

I love my new HP Mini and wrote this blog entry in a text editor using it. When I was done, I set the mini down and the battery decided to fall out. Not good. I get to now rewrite my entry. At least this isn't as bad as losing an entire research paper when I was in grad school. I think I might save as I go this time :-)

Acqal Exec Team Going to T3CON09

We are excited that the Acqal Executive Team will all be at T3CON09 in Frankfurt, for a variety of reasons. First is the conference itself, including tutorial day. The amount that may be learned is amazing and hard to describe. This year,...

FLOW3 and TYPO3 Versions 4.X and 5.0

By: Virgil Huston

The recent release of FLOW3 1.0.0 alpha 1 has caused quite a buzz in the TYPO3 community and should also be creating a similar buzz in the PHP development community as a whole. There is also some confusion in the TYPO3 world regarding FLOW3 and the upcoming release of TYPO3 version 5.0 versus the current version 4.X.Spring was an appropriate time to put out the first FLOW3 release as this is a season of rebirth. It reminds me of the wren that built its nest and raised its three chicks in our basement this spring. The bird nest was a surprise and fun to keep an eye on. We also worried that our...

Acqal Corporation Supporting Community Good Works - Le Chat Noir

By: Virgil Huston

Last week, I wrote Corporate Responsibility in Poor Economic Times. I wrote of the importance and responsibility of corporations to give back to their communities or donate to those doing good works anywhere in the world, depending on your preference.

We formed Acqal in poor economic times and, although none of us are getting the paychecks we would like, we all felt we needed to start off immediately setting aside a percentage of our gross income for nonprofit organizations doing good works.

We are members of the TYPO3 Association, a voluntary contribution that supports development of...

Busting 4 Myths About Open Source

By: Virgil Huston

The second thing that angered me last week was on the topic of open source myths. It began when I received my copy of the May, 2009, issue of Website Magazine. This is the ONLY free industry publication that I actually read and I thought it was a pretty good until this week. What did it for me, was an article by Paul Markun, "Choosing the Best Web Content Management System." The editors certainly did not do their due diligence when they published this and did a serious disservice to their readers.The author is VP of Marketing for Sitecore, a proprietary web content management system...

Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs - the big three

By: Virgil Huston

This was a really busy week with a number of client projects moving into high gear and wrapping up a couple of others.So, I didn't get around to writing the next installment of my open source series. I will get to that, I promise. But, this week, I need to relax on a Friday evening, sip a gin and tonic, and write about lighter things.I have been playing around with Facebook and Twitter in a big way this week. I've been on Facebook a while, but have only started to use Twitter this week.Obviously, I have a big interest in using social networking applications like these to further business...