• 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 content is considerably different than "normal" content, such that much will be removed as soon as the candidate loses a primary or wins or loses a general election. Negative content about opponents is almost always quickly removed, as is the usual campaign focused material.
• Most campaigns have small budgets, especially for web sites. The bulk of funds spent on campaigns is still radio and television ad production and airing. Unless we are talking a presidential election, campaigns are local, at the most involving one state. It is essential for all campaigns to have a web site and engage in social networking activities, but not a lot is spent on them. Many do a terrible job with social networking. Twitter, in particular, seems to be a very difficult concept for campaign staff to understand and manage. One thing we do a great deal of is advising campaigns on using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking tools. In some cases, we even manage these for the campaign, including email.
• The main purpose of a campaign web site is fundraising and it is essential to take online donations. The funds raised uaually go to the aforementioned radio and TV ads.

With very few exceptions, we almost always use Wordpress for campaign web sites. It meets all the needs and we can offer a very competitive price compared to a TYPO3 site. This is just a matter of selecting the right tool for the job. Campaign sites are not very complicated and all require common features.

The next blog post will discuss the features every campaign site requires.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

I was in Dallas this week for  the T3CON10 Dallas TYPO3 conference. As am a barbeque fanatic, I was eager to sample Texas fare. I know that Texas barbeque is not the same as in South Carolina, so was looking forward to brisket in particular. We went to two barbeque places. The night I got in, I met up with our Chief Technical Officer and his wife. I am from South Carolina, the CTO is from the Netherlands, and Karina, his wife, is from Ecuador. We are all foodies.

We had no clue where to go, so I googled barbeque in Dallas. The only 5-star review I could find was for a place called Red, Hot & Blue in Irving. I don’t know who rated this place 5-stars, but they should be shot. I had pulled pork and brisket. The brisket came with sauce already on it and the pulled pork had a plastic commercial sauce container next to it. First thing is that this place is a franchise and looks like one. No franchise restaurant has even been able to produce good barbeque (or food or any kind, for that matter). Strike One. The brisket was overcooked and dry. Even worse, that sauce was disgusting, sickly sweet heavy sauce that tasted terrible. Strike Two. Luckily, the sauce wasn’t put over the pulled pork. I opened the container and it was the same disgusting sauce. Strike three. The plain pulled pork wasn’t 5-star, but it wasn’t bad, at least there was something I could eat. My companions both had brisket and weren’t impressed. So much for a first impression of Texas barbeque.

The next night, we went as a group to Hard Eight Barbeque, it was what appeared to be a Dallas institution. The Germans in our group (half of us) had been there at last year’s conference and loved it. The place was impressive, a lot of barbeque pits and wood, but none were operating. Red flag one. They sold meat by the pound, serving it all from a grill. Choices included ribs, brisket, chicken and jalapenos wrapped in bacon, Chorizo sausage, corn on the cob, potato salad and more. They advertised pulled pork, but had none. There was a pan of great looking skins and other pork residue they told me was trash when I asked for some. That was too bad. I ended up with ribs and a beef, bell pepper and onion kebab. My friends had the chicken and sausage, brisket, and other things.

The ribs were excellent, the only highlight of the meal. Tender, falling off the bone, a bit too much rub, but still quite tasty. The kebabs were inedible, beef, peppers and onions all tough as shoe leather. I couldn’t even eat it and this stuff was not inexpensive.  People around me said the brisket was dry and that the chicken was merely “OK.” The potato salad was horrible. I am not sure what was in it, but I couldn’t eat more than a couple of bites.

I am sure Texas has some good barbeque, but I haven’t found it yet.

Hereis a pic of part of our table.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

I got into Dallas Wednesday late afternoon for T3CON10 Dallas, tried to meet Ries van Twisk (our CTO) and his wife, went from Terminal E to Terminal A and back, no one had heard of the flight number they were on. Finally took a taxi to the hotel and they arrived a few minutes later after trying to find me. I am not sure I've ever seen a city that was so spread out.

Today was tutorial day and an opportunity to meet people. As always, when I attend these events, one of the best things is actually meeting "face-to-face" people I have known for years on the Internet, not to mention seeing people I've met before.

The hotel is very nice and the conference location, Irving Bible Church, is great, even if we have the wifi overloaded :-)

I went to Ron Hall's all day tutorial, "TYPO3 from Newbie to Guru." I am already familiar with Ron's TYPO3 Templaviola framework, but this was a great talk that added to my knowledge. Ries attended "Fluent Development with FLOW3" and "Hands-on session with Extbase."

Here are a couple of pics from our evening out at Hard Eight Barbeque (ribs were outstanding, kebabs were overcooked and tough).

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

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 require more advanced technical and strategic knowledge. We’ve been working very hard to get everyone trained and are constantly implementing new processes in an effort to increase our efficiency. We welcome any and all feedback to ensure that we are strengthening Acqal.

With these changes we believe that Acqal deserves a fresh, new face. We will begin a brand overhaul in the upcoming weeks and plan to unveil the new brand shortly before T3CON10 in Dallas – May 20-22.

One more item, please note that we have changed our phone numbers.

• Sales: +1 (612) 284-2803
• Support: +1 (803) 426-3355

Our old numbers will still work for a few days. We will be updating our site and literature with the new numbers over the next day.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Acqal continues to promote helping others and having a little fun with a recent charity contribution to World Vision for 10 bicycle loans. This donation enables families to be loaned the funds to purchase a bicycle and every 6-months another family will be able to do the same.

The simple addition of a bicycle to impoverished farm families allows them to move more goods safely and quickly between home and market. This positively influences their health and helps them make their labors more efficient.

From World Vision:

Give a bike loan and help 10 families out of poverty. Your gift of a bicycle loan will actually provide 10 bicycles over the next five years — to enable 10 families to carry more goods to the market and increase their income. It all starts with a loan to help one mom or dad buy a bike. When that loan is repaid, within six months the money is loaned to the next recipient — and so on. With one gift, you can help transform the lives of 10 families.

Help out as well by donating to World Vision.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

You can change Name, Email, and Subject of above to display as you'd like on the front-end. Don't change name, email, and subject or else the sent email from name, from email, and subject will not be what the submitter provided.

The * before name and email denotes those fields as required.

The EMAIL of email, informs TYPO3 to validate the input as an email address prior to clicking submit.

Reference

• FORM

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

1. Website Language Creation
   1. On the TYPO3 Global page via List mode, add a new Website Language. Take note of the uid of that language. To do so, hover over the Website Language icon after saving and closing to see the uid. You'll need this for the sys_language_uid setting later on.
2. TypoScript Localization by URL or L Parameter
   1. If you do not have the cbstarter extension installed, put Section A into your main website TypoScript template Setup area. Otherwise, put Section A into your main website TypoScript template Constants area.
   2. Put Section B into your main website TypoScript template Setup area, below Section A.
   3. Based upon the URLs or domain names specific to your website and website languages, edit the Section A and Section B config.baseURL and sys_language_uid entries.
   4. config.locale_all
      1. Configures the locale which influences how some values from PHP is formated in the output, eg. dates formatted using strftime() which will then output month/day names in that language.
      2. Refer to the ICU User guide to format the locale_all entry.
      3. Refer to the ISO 639-2 Code List for the language code.
      4. Refer to ISO 3166 for the country code.
   5. config.language
      1. Configures the system “language key” to be used for the language. This is used to select labels from llXML (locallang-XML) files. Setting this should make frontend plugins respond by showing labels from the correct language (requires installation of the corresponding language packs).
   6. config.htmlTag_langKey
      1. Changes "xml:lang" and "lang" attributes in the <html> element.
3. UTF-8 Configuration
   1. If you do not have extension cbstarter installed, put Section C into your main website TypoScript template Setup area. Otherwise, put Section C into your main website TypoScript template Constants area.
   2. Put Section D into your typo3conf/localconf.php file.
4. RealURL Configuration
   1. Edit your realurl configuration to include a preVars > getVars > L entry.
   2. See Section E for a sample.
5. Click "Clear all caches" for your TYPO3 installation.
6. Create localized content
   1. Basic process
      1. Create alternative page language record
      2. Via Web > Page (TemplaVoila), click the "Create localized version" link on each content element you desire localization of.
      3. Via Web > Page, click the create new content icon, and set the language drop-down.
         
   2. Refer to the references for creating content in detail.

Section A - TypoScript Localization by URL

config.baseURL = www.cannonbose.com

# SSL is for cannonbose.com
[globalString = _SERVER|HTTPS=on]
	config.baseURL = https://www.cannonbose.com/
[end]

Section B - TypoScript Localization by URL or L Parameter

config {
	linkVars = L
	uniqueLinkVars = L
	sys_language_mode = content_fallback
	sys_language_overlay = 1
	sys_language_softMergeIfNotBlank = tt_content:image, tt_content:header

	sys_language_uid = 0
	locale_all = en_US
	language = en
	htmlTag_langKey = en-us
}

# French
[globalVar = GP:L = 1] 
	config.sys_language_uid = 1
	config.locale_all = fr_FR
	config.language = fr
	config.htmlTag_langKey = fr

# Chinese (Simplified)
[globalVar = GP:L = 2] || [globalString = _SERVER|HTTP_HOST= *.cn]
	config.sys_language_uid = 2
	config.locale_all = zh_CN
	config.language = cn
	config.htmlTag_langKey = zh-cn
	config.baseURL = www.cannonbose.cn

# Chinese (Traditional)
[globalVar = GP:L = 3] || [globalString = _SERVER|HTTP_HOST= *.tw]
	config.sys_language_uid = 3
	config.locale_all = zh_TW
	config.language = tw
	config.htmlTag_langKey = zh-tw
	config.baseURL = www.cannonbose.com.tw
[end]

Section C - TypoScript UTF-8 Configuration

config.renderCharset = utf-8
config.metaCharset = utf-8

Section D - localconf.php UTF-8 Configuration

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['BE']['forceCharset'] = 'utf-8';

Section E - realurl.php Sample Configuration

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['EXTCONF']['realurl']['_DEFAULT']['preVars'] = array(
		array(   
			'GETvar' => 'L', 
			'valueMap' => array(
				// 'english'
				'en' => '0',
				// 'french'
				'fr' => '1',
				// chinese simplified
				'cn' => '2',
				// 'chinese traditional
				'tw' => '3',
			),   
			'noMatch' => 'bypass',
		),
	);

References

• TYPO3 Frontend Localization Guide
• Multi Language Sites in TYPO3
• TYPO3 XHTML
• cbrealurl realurl.php

Extensions

• cbstarter
• cbrealurl

Please subscribe to Acqal Newsletter and Acqal Blogging via Email or RSS Feed .

© 2009 Acqal Corporation. All Rights Reserved.