Passover has been, well, a bit of a distraction for me. And blogging seems to have fallen to low priority, after cooking, sleeping, working, entertaining my daughter, washing dishes, baking potato kugel with my eldest son, brownies with my middle son, a nut jam cake with my daughter after she found out I already made a sponge cake without her.

So here is a list of what I might blog about in the future, maybe:

• Differences (and similarities) between Drupal and WordPress
• My Questions about Drupal
• How will Drupal 7 be different than Drupal 6
• A new Nature Notes (a meme by Rambling Woods)
• Barnum and Bailey Circus (may be in an upcoming Ruby Tuesday post)
• Stuffed Squash for Passover
• Slavery to Freedom Salad, updated with cooked radishes
• Klara’s Radish with Umeboshi Paste Pickles (delicious! yum)
• Replacing Grass with Chamomile
• My Dill Germinated
• Twitter for Insurance
• Twitter for Bloggers
• Twitter for Understanding Autism
• How Mrs. S. posts about Reasons to Make Aliyah (moving to Israel) but Baila’s post about the Midras Ruins would certainly be a convincing factor. Mom in Israel’s visit to Poleg Nature Reserve also would be an incentive.
• Synagogues in Far Rockaway (and how the young women in the White Shul wear black and I’m glad I live in Highland Park)
• Any new drawing by my daugher for a new What Do You See post
• My upcoming library talks with Eva Abreu at Highland Park Public Library, Edison Public Library and Franklin Township Public Library. See Eva’s Tour Schedule for more details and other featured speakers.

If I am organized enough, maybe I will post about Spring in New York City before 7 pm this evening. In case I don’t make it to that post, enjoy the rest of Pesach if you are celebrating. Everyone, take a few minutes to note any signs of spring in your neighborhood. If you are living in Australia and you happen to read this post, feel free to share signs of autumn.

Update: Thank you to Judy for identifying the blue flowers as scilla.

On My Blog

Today’s Flowers: Daffodils

The Drupal Experiment
I plan to post more about Drupal in the coming months, and I hope to write about Drupal vs. WordPress. Non-technical readers, I hope you will read these posts, as it is helpful for me to know what you can or cannot understand. Perhaps I will also post about an installed WordPress blog like my own and one hosted on WordPress.com, like that of Ilana-Davita.

Passover is Fun
I especially enjoyed the comments of Melissa (who is celebrating Passover for the first time) and of Mojo (who relates his one Pesach experience).

A Photo of Three Bowls of My Pottery
(how I long to get back to throwing on the wheel: someday!)

Landscape Workshop

Nature Notes: Germination

Four Cups in Watercolor

Scheduled for Saturday night: Another What Do You See post, featuring a cityscape by my daughter.

Elsewhere in the Universe

• Spring Flower: Raqefet aka cyclamen
• Logo Design Process by Chris Spooner
• Conversation vs. Confrontation by Lisa Braithwaite of Speak Schmeak
• 11 Ways to Increase Your Chances of Being Linked to By a Blogger

If any of you follow me on Twitter, you may know that I have been playing with Drupal. Drupal is a content management system (CMS). How is it different than WordPress (this blog uses WordPress), which is also a CMS? That is one of the questions that I hope to be able to answer by conducting my “experiment.” The idea is to learn out loud. When learning a new technical area, I find it good to make mistakes and get error messages. Why? Because then you learn more by needing to fix them.

If you usually come to this blog to look at photos, art and recipes, you might want to skip the next paragraph. Or hang in there and try to learn something technical?

I originally installed Drupal using the control panel that comes with my web hosting. But then I was informed that using the CVS (Concurrent Versions System) and the command line via shell access were better ways to keep a Drupal installation current. My first attempt resulted in multiple errors. It turns out I hadn’t deleted all the old files (I had left the settings.php files because I was warned about losing those). What I really needed to do was make a copy of settings.php (which I did), delete ALL the previous drupal files as well as drop the database tables (but not the database itself). Finally, it worked. If you care to visit, it’s current address is http://zot.leoraw.com.

My current plan is to use the site eventually to write about how a small to medium-sized business or organization can plan, update and optimize a website. There are so many factors involved, but I will name a few:

• Content: What would any site be worth without great content?
• A Good Domain Name: I named the directory zot because it was at the end of the alphabet, not because I thought it was a good name. I’ll need help coming up with a good domain name.
• Navigation: Users need to get around a site easily.
• Design: Working toward a good design for a site is important. If the design pulls a user in, the user will be more likely to hang around and read the content.
• Layout: Two columns? Three columns? Fluid or Static (this blog is static; the current Drupal theme is fluid).
• Search Engine Optimization: If Google can’t find your site, where are you?
• Updating the Site: Who will update the site? If the person can’t spell or has no sense of design, even if the site uses a CMS, you may have disappointing results.

Initially, however, (and initially could last several months) I will be using the site to learn Drupal. Anyone care to hang around and learn with me? Questions are welcome.

And for those who like art posts, I have another art post coming soon. A landscape.