We love it when new tools we drop into Soapbox get picked up and put to good use by our clients. We love it so much that we think specific examples are worth a mention every now and then.

Take Museum Without Walls, for example. They recently used a few tools that were added to Soapbox in February and March to do a little spring clean up of their site – all in just a few minutes.

What did they do, exactly? First off, they added a brand new slide show to highlight the various programs they offer to educate and engage students in the fight against racism and intolerance.

Second, they took a moment to add a customized page title to feature their tagline – Living History One Voice at a Time – in the address bar across their site and in search engine results.

Third, they upgraded their site statistics by implementing the Google Analytics plugin so they can collect data not just on page views but file downloads and off-site links.

And for a little bonus, they followed some advice shared at the latest Soapbox Salon and added a Facebook Fanbox to better integrate their site with their Facebook page.

All in less than an afternoon. All following step-by-step instructions. All with Soapbox. Spring cleaning was never so easy.

Manage standard content more efficiently, reduce spam, mix up slideshow transitions, alert folks when they’re leaving your site, monitor the disk space you use, customize page not found errors, and maximize Google Analytics.

Whew! That was a mouthful for just the overview. For the full details, check out our Help Desk and Happy Soapboxing!

Creative attitude, smarts, and a sense of humor required. Joomla experience a plus. Send letters, resumes, or recommendations to jobs-developers@picnet.net. The detailed job description’s after the break.

Code for a Cause

PICnet is leading the way in bringing open-source CMS software to non-profit organizations around the country. We’re a small, fast-moving technology firm that knows how to add value to the open-source tools we use, and knows that it’s best to contribute value back to the communities that create that software.

What to bring to the table

We’d love to hear from you if you’re a top-notch PHP programmer who strongly believes that making a difference in the world is important.

Job Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, test, and implement flexible and architecturally sound web applications (currently, all of our web applications are built by extending the Joomla! content management system)
• Work with other developers to estimate effort and plan the implementation of products based on requirements documents
• Participate in and help lead design and code reviews

Required Qualifications:

• A passion for open source
• PHP5 Object Oriented development with a solid understanding of MVC, design patterns, and software engineering principles
• MySQL database design and integration
• Experience with source control (SVN)
• Working knowledge of Javascript frameworks, preferably MooTools

Desired Qualifications:

• Familiarity with the Joomla content management system
• Experience with agile development
• Experience with creating and running unit tests
• Experience with Linux
• Experience working with web service APIs using REST, Soap, or XMLRPC

Of course, we highly encourage sharing with the community. Our developers contribute code to the Joomla! project, our CEO is on the board of the foundation that manages the project, and we participate and lead conferences around the world focused on Joomla!, open-source software, and technology for non-profits. PICnet’s reputation with clients and competitors is outstanding.

The not so fine print

Salary is commensurate with experience. We’re located in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC, and candidates must be able to work in our offices (no outsourced or telecommuting workers).

So, if you think you fit the bill, or know someone who does, please send us your:

• resume
• cover letter
• salary history
• references

If the prospect of doing some coding as part of the interview process gets you excited, we definitely want to hear from you.

jobs-developers@picnet.net

ATTN: Ben Freda, Director of Operations

As noted last week, the overall project will see a total of five Sister Community sites launch this summer.  These sites empower local Communities to craft their own message for their individual audiences while leveraging the common branding and shared experience on the Soapbox platform of the network as a whole.

Sisters of Mercy are an international community of Roman Catholic women religious vowed to serve people who suffer from poverty, sickness and lack of education with a special concern for women and children.  They are also a dear, long-standing client of PICnet’s.

When they came to us looking to expand their web presence by creating sites for their five individual chapters throughout the country, we saw the perfect opportunity to leverage the power, flexibility, and elegance of the new Soapbox 2.0 platform to meet their needs.

The West Midwest Chapter is the inaugural site to launch of these Sister sites with others scheduled to go live over the next few weeks.  All sites make use of a handcrafted PICnet design customized to offer consistent branding across all project sites while offering Community-specific touches with color schemes and menu options.

Just 30 minutes ago, we officially launched Soapbox 2.0.4, which gave us an opportunity to improve some key functions within our Taxonomy extension.  These improvements will make our Soapbox clients quite happy, and include key updates like the creation of  hierarchical term (or tag) structure for your content with a slick implementation of RSS feeds per term. You can also change the view of the term to be like Joomla’s Category List Layout or Section Blog Layout.

What does all this mean?  It means that you can now provide several ways for your audience to view an article/page without duplication, maintain a list of terms/tags without overcrowding your tag cloud, and better meet your audience’s hunger for specific tag-specific information.

Enjoy it! I know these folks will – Behind the Green.