Look What I Can Do

I need more web developer friends.  When I learn an awesome new skill like multisite hosting, I have no one to share it with.  So I'll just yammer here.

So yeah, multisite hosting.  What is it?  Well, now I can host two different sites from a single place.  Here's what I mean.  Open Koplowicz.com in a new window.  Then open barnannies.com in another window.  Different site, right?  Wrong.  It's got a different domain name, but it actually points back to Koplowicz.com.  But Drupal automatically knows which site you're visiting, and it displays the right content accordingly.

But it's more than just content.  You can have different appearance and different functionality.  But what's coolest is not what's different, but what's the same.  Both sites share the same set of themes and modules so I don't have to install the same things twice.  This is HUGE.  The biggest part of any new Drupal installation is uploading all the modules and making sure I have the latest version of each.  I've just eliminated that entire process.

This major discovery follows on the heals of my introduction to the wide world of Panels and Views.  Panels enables me to mix different kinds of content seamlessly, as I did with CAMarriage4All.com.  You can't tell the difference between a node, a block, or a mini-panel, and that's the point.  You want to know what Web 2.0 really means?  This is it.

Then there's Views, which takes the concept even further.  It reaches into my content and bends and twists it to my will.  Want to see a list of my latest blog posts?  Here it is:

1. I'll Totally Start Posting More Often
2. Gettysburg
3. My New Gallery (and why Flickr is relevant again)
4. Aaron
5. Nathan
6. Drupalcon: יום אחד
7. Android, Jelly Bean, the Cloud, and Google's Long Game
8. Starcraft II: Last Impressions
9. Our Strength
10. The Best Shave You're Not Having

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Want to see a list of just the posts about Nathan?  Here it is:

Here's the same list in a different format:

What's going on here?  Well, all the data is really stored in a database.  I use MySQL, which is wildly popular because it is free and open source.  But working with raw databases is hard; I worked with a guy once who could do it.  He has a house in Cancun.  Views lets you do the same thing, but way easier.  It pulls your content from the database, filters it, sorts, it, and serves it up to you on a silver platter.  (Or pewter, if you prefer.)

This stuff is really, really powerful.  And it propels me from the level of amateur web developer to true professional.  It's like graduating from Hogwarts.

This comes as I begin to get involved with various dot-coms and venture capitalists.  I haven't struck it rich yet, but stick along for the ride.