This is for the organization whose website stopped being a brochure a long time ago and started running the operation.
How we got here
My husband Joe and I met at the University of Delaware. We were both electrical engineering students. I had two older daughters, and when I found out I was having my son, my third child, I left with only three classes left to complete. I ended up finishing my degree online, in computer science.
After we had our daughter, I waited until both children could talk before I wanted to go back to work. I landed a job doing desktop support for a while, and then I ended up in the IT department of the same bank my husband worked for. We both earned our MCSEs.
Several years later, the bank was being bought out, and we were offered severance packages. We thought there was no better time than the present, so we very excitedly accepted them and decided to start the company. Our official start date is our first granddaughter’s birthday, March 4, 2005. We thought 3-4-5 was a pretty lucky number. The name came from late nights with laptops sitting by the fire pit in the backyard saying, “Gee, this is a cool fire.”
I first started doing web development in the late 1990s and wanted to bring it into the business. We were also concentrating on small business networking at the time. Since we were Microsoft Certified Partners, we were doing very well, and the business was growing fast.
2007
Around 2007, that all started to go away. We had purchased equipment on credit and charged our clients monthly to have it. Almost all of our clients went out of business in 2007, and we were left liable. We almost lost everything, but we didn’t want to give up on the business. We knew that we would get through it somehow. We questioned our endeavor since we did still have young children, but children are resilient, and going through life’s challenges is what makes us who we are. Our children are grown now, by the way, and very successful, wonderful people.
So, at that point, we decided on two things. First, we wanted to get out of hardware. Second, we wanted to be able to travel because we had children. So we decided to stick with the software side. No hardware for us anymore.
We looked for a CMS that we could build our business upon. We thoroughly investigated all the options at the time, and Drupal came out on top. Not only was it robust and powerful, but our clients would own their data and their site. We decided to put our time and efforts into Drupal, and we have been a Drupal shop ever since.
Why owning it matters
Some website platforms are proprietary. You can’t get all of your data out of many of them. Your content, users, almost everything could be left behind. You have to rebuild if you want to start over. You are renting. So you’re tied to them and their ever-increasing costs, fees and limitations.
Drupal allows you full access to the database and backups, and you can get your information out at any time. You fully own your data.
That matters even more now. AI can only work with what it can get to, so the business that owns its data and its website gets to decide how AI uses them. Also, the structure of your site matters more now than ever. Most sites are not structured properly for AI. Something else to think about. I’ll be writing about that next.
What Signal and Structure is
Signal and Structure is practical thinking on web dev, Drupal, AI, and what actually matters. Not technical jargon. Real speak, and real stories to go along with it.
A new piece comes out every other week.
Where to start
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We believe a business should own its systems and its data.
Talk soon,
Liz