http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/ http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/now-hiring-web-developer/ <p><strong>UPDATE: 12/06/11: Thanks for your responses. The position has been filled.</strong></p>
<hr/><p>LogicBrush Studios, Ltd., a small graphic design and software development firm located in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania, is seeking to hire our first full-time Web Developer to assist in the development of various websites and web-based applications for the company's ever-growing list of clients. Our work is primarily in the development of CMS-powered websites, with an eye toward projects that require complex business logic and/or unique user experiences. The Web Developer will participate in all phases of the software process, from requirements discovery, design, development through deployment and operation--although tasks will be primarily programming-related. We're small, so expect to get your hands dirty with a little bit of everything!</p>
<p><span>This is a three-month, contract-to-hire position--seriously, we really are looking for a long term arrangement. Work will primarily be from home, with periodic face-to-face meetings around the Montgomeryville area (until we do eventually get that office space we're working toward). Compensation will be $40/hr or greater, depending on experience. Please tell us what rate you deserve; we'll gladly pay more for the right individual. </span></p>
<p><span>Please send inquiries to <a href="mailto:jflearn@logicbrush.com"><span>jflearn@logicbrush.com</span></a>. </span></p>
<h2><span><strong>Responsibilities</strong></span></h2>
<ul><li><span>Define, build, verify and document a wide variety of web-based solutions, using all manner of web platforms and technologies.</span></li>
<li><span>Collaborate with ownership to estimate development tasks and define release schedules.</span></li>
<li><span>Generally get stuff done. </span></li>
</ul><h2><span><strong>Required Qualifications</strong></span></h2>
<ul><li><span>3+ years web development experience</span></li>
<li><span>Experience with object-oriented PHP or something similar</span></li>
<li><span>Experience with MySQL or other RDBMS</span></li>
<li><span>Familiarity with *NIX-style operating systems</span></li>
<li><span>Must be local to the greater Philadelphia region</span></li>
</ul><h2><span><strong>Add'l Desired Qualifications</strong></span></h2>
<ul><li><span>Experience with SilverStripe, Wordpress, Joomla or other PHP content management systems</span></li>
<li><span>An affinity for design; familiarity with Illustrator, Photoshop and other elements of the Adobe Creative Suite</span></li>
<li><span>A BS or greater in the field of computer science or electrical engineering</span></li>
<li><span>An interest in building, running and growing a software development business</span></li>
</ul> Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:27:52 -0600 http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/now-hiring-web-developer/ http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/a-brief-word-on-open-source-licensing-and-content-management-systems/ <p><img class="right" src="http://www.logicbrush.com/assets/_resampled/resizedimage500332-iStock_000000242782Small.jpg" width="500" height="332" alt="" title=""/>Are you looking into building a website with an open source content management system, but are worried about potential licensing issues? Most of the time, you needn't fret, but there are certain instances when your CMS’s license becomes very important.</p>
<h2>First of all, why are open source CMS’s distributed with licenses?</h2>
<p>It’s a matter of protecting the intellectual property rights of the creators of the CMS software. The authors of a piece of software get to define how that software can be used or modified; that’s their legal right. That’s why Apple can say that Mac OS may only be used on Apple hardware and why the free software foundation can sue Cisco for including their publicly available code in their routers.</p>
<p>Some folks don’t care what happens with their software after they’ve written it and make its source code available in the “public domain”. When in the public domain, others can do whatever they want with that software: use it, decompile it, modify the source, even resell it.</p>
<p>Usually, however, the authors want to instill some sort of restriction on the use or modification of the software. For example, if someone takes a developer’s code and alters it slightly to meet his needs, the original developer might want to be credited in some way noticeable to the end user. That's where the license comes in. It provides specific instructions on how (or if) the product and its source code can be used, modified or distributed.</p>
<h2>So, what if I need to make changes to the source code?</h2>
<p>Generally, open source licenses permit you to make modifications to the source code so that you can fix bugs, add functions and generally hack it up however you want to fit your specific needs. When you wish to redistribute your changes, however, things get more complicated.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that “redistribute”, doesn’t mean “use”. If you want to make changes to the CMS powering your website and then open it up for use by folks on the Internet (or a specific subset thereof), you’re not redistributing the work. It’s only if you take your modified CMS and give it — in source or compiled form — to someone else to use or adapt for their own purposes that you are redistributing it.</p>
<h2>Why would I care about redistribution then?</h2>
<p>Often, you wouldn’t. If you’re building a product that you intend to resell, however, you most certainly would. If, for example, I decide to modify the Joomla source code with specific features useful for photographers — a digital camera interface, perhaps — and then sell that new “Photography CMS” as a product that can be installed on a purchaser’s own web servers, then I may run into problems. Depending on how I do that, I may be violating the terms of the GPL license under which Joomla was released.</p>
<h2>So, what can I do/not do with <span style="text-decoration: underline;">MY</span> CMS?</h2>
<p>It’s probably easiest to answer this in table form. Below, each CMS is grouped by its license. Each row contains a question that you may have thought about in this context and it’s answer for each license. Click on the license name to read the specific details of that license.</p>
<table class="bordered" border="0"><thead><tr style="text-align: center;"><th rowspan="2"><br/></th><th colspan="3">License</th>
</tr><tr style="text-align: center;"><th><a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html" target="_blank">GPL</a></th><th><a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license" target="_blank">BSD</a></th><th><a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license" target="_blank">MIT</a></th>
</tr><tr><td><strong>CMS Systems</strong></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>WordPress, Joomla, Drupal</strong></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>SilverStripe</strong></td>
<td style="text-align: center;"><strong>DotNetNuke</strong><br/></td>
</tr><tr><td>Can I run a public website using the CMS?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr><tr><td>Can I modify the CMS source code to suit my website?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr><tr><td>Do I then have to publish those changes?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">No, unless you're redistributing your changes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">No</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">No</td>
</tr><tr><td>Can I make changes and then resell or otherwise redistribute my “new” CMS product?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes, with restrictions</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr><tr><td>Can I redistribute my changes to the CMS under a different license?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">No</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr><tr><td>Can I redistribute my changes to the CMS without redistributing the source code as well?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">No</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr><tr><td>Can I redistribute the CMS with third-party components that themselves are under a different license?</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">No</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
<td style="text-align: center;">Yes</td>
</tr></thead><tbody/></table><h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>If you’re building a website for yourself, you don’t really need to be concerned about the license your open-source content management system comes under. If your intents are to produce a product from your changes, you might want to have a closer look at that license.</p> Fri, 25 Mar 2011 13:26:35 -0500 http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/a-brief-word-on-open-source-licensing-and-content-management-systems/ http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/consider-silverstripe-for-your-content-management/ <p><img class="right" src="http://www.logicbrush.com/assets/Uploads/_resampled/resizedimage400354-SilverStripeLogo.png" width="400" height="354" alt="" title=""/></p>
<p>You may already be familiar with the open source content management systems Joomla and Drupal. These platforms allow content authors to easily update a website without a in-depth knowledge of HTML, CSS or other web technologies. Often the first decision in a new website project comes down to a choice between the two, but there's one more you might want to throw into the mix that offers some unique advantages.</p>
<h2>Unrestricted Flexibility in Site Design</h2>
<p>Have you ever been to a website that "feels" like Joomla? The layout of the login form, those familiar little download icons — it's enough to make the site feel just a tad bit "recycled". Even with third-party components, aside from a few font and color changes, a JEvents installation on one site looks just like a JEvents installation on another site.</p>
<p>The reason for this is simple: the degree to which you can customize a module in Joomla depends on what the original developer allows.  If they don't give you an option to change the text on the "Login" button, you can't change the text. Yes, it's open source, so you can always dive into the PHP, hack up the code and, hopefully, get it to do what you want. However, when you do that you're diverging from the original codebase, so you have to reapply your changes with every patch or security update you install.  That's rife with error and gets tiresome very quickly.</p>
<p>With SilverStripe, component behavior is kept separate from presentation by means of a well-designed templating system.  You can "skin" any component — core, third-party, custom-developed — by writing your own ".ss" template file to change the way it is displayed.  Your template files are kept separate from the component's, so upgrading is no longer an issue.</p>
<h2>Intuitive Administrative Interface</h2>
<div class="captionImage right" style="width: 207px;"><img class="right" src="http://www.logicbrush.com/assets/Uploads/Screen-shot-2010-08-06-at-10.43.59-AM.png" width="207" height="230" alt="" title=""/><p class="caption" style="text-align: center;">The Site Tree</p>
</div>
<p>Joomla takes great pains to separate content (articles) from navigation (menus). Whether this is a good thing or not is debatable, but often I find that it is a source of confusion for the site administrators and authors. Frequently, a writer will post an article, publish it and then spend hours trying to figure out why it's not showing up where they intended. You can argue that that is a training issue, but I would propose that it needn't be that difficult in the first place.</p>
<p>SilverStripe's uses a site tree-based model for organization of content. The menu structure and the organization of pages are the same; if you add a page under "Services", that's where it will show up on the front-end. Yes, this is less flexible than with Joomla, but 95% of the time, you don't need that additional flexibility.</p>
<h2>Easily Extensible to fit Any Need</h2>
<p>Drupal is customizable, certainly; that is one of it's main selling points. Unfortunately, with that customizability comes a degree of complexity that's intimidating for developers and content managers alike. For this reason, Drupal is usually used only for large sites that require a level of custom functionality that's not easily attainable with Joomla.</p>
<div class="captionImage right" style="width: 398px;"><img class="right" src="http://www.logicbrush.com/assets/Uploads/Screen-shot-2010-08-06-at-10.23.21-AM.png" width="398" height="313" alt="" title=""/><p class="caption" style="text-align: center;">Look, I added Blogging functionality!</p>
</div>
<p>SilverStripe's development platform enables the addition of functionality to a site quickly, and in a manner that seamlessly integrates administrative functions into the existing back end.  With only a few lines of code, a developer can add a custom page type, add a new configuration panel to the administration interface for it, and generate the database structure required to support it.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>This has been just a quick summary of a few of the features that have made SilverStripe a very serviceable alternative to Joomla and Drupal for my organization. We plan on using it a lot more on our upcoming projects. I invite you to visit <a href="http://www.silverstripe.org" target="_blank">www.silverstripe.org</a> and read more about this promising CMS for yourself.</p> Fri, 06 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/consider-silverstripe-for-your-content-management/ http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/valkyrie-software-is-now-logicbrush-studios/ <p><img class="right" src="http://www.logicbrush.com/assets/Logo.png" width="321" height="175" alt="" title=""/>We're pleased to announce that, effective today, we have changed our corporate name from Valkyrie Software, Inc. to LogicBrush Studios, Ltd.  The reasons for this are many, but, in short, we feel that it more accurately reflects our corporate personality and our diversifying areas of expertise. That, and it's a lot easier to spell.</p>
<p>What does this mean for you, our customers? Well, from this point on we would ask that any payments or correspondence be issued using our new name and mailing address. For your records, it is:</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><strong>LogicBrush Studios, Ltd.<br/></strong> P.O. Box 423
<br/>Montgomeryville, PA 18936</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Future invoices you receive from us will show this new information, but if you have any automatic bill payments configured, please be sure to update them.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Our telephone (215.290.0636) and fax (775.618.6771) numbers remain the same.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">Emailing us using addresses ending with "@valkyriesoftware.com" will continue to work for the forseeable future, but you can now also use "@logicbrush.com" as an alternate. Emails you receive from us will use the new "@logicbrush.com" addresses.</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">If you have questions, please feel free to contact us at <a href="mailto:info@logicbrush.com">info@logicbrush.com</a> and we'll be happy to help. Thanks so much for your continued support.</p> Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500 http://www.logicbrush.com/welcome/bits-pixels-weblog/valkyrie-software-is-now-logicbrush-studios/