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2025  8

July  2

Thoughts on Professional Development

July 5, 2025 · 10 min · Aaron Crosman
We all have to constantly be learning. These suggestions are more or less in the reverse direction of importance. Keep reading.

Welcome to Hugo

July 5, 2025 · 9 min · Aaron Crosman
Why and how I converted my blog to use Hugo instead of WordPress.

June  1

My Self Documenting Code Doesn’t Need to be in Git: and Other Lies Salesforce Developers Tell Themselves

June 1, 2025 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
Developers love to lie to themselves. Herein you'll find some of the worst lies Salesforce developers use on themselves.

May  1

Writing for Developers and Consultants: Guides and Resources

May 31, 2025 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Some guides and suggestions to improve your writing and communication skills as a developer or consulting.

April  1

Salesforce Id Iteration Attacks

April 10, 2025 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
Please stop using Salesforce Ids in URLs or other user accessible parts of your solution.

March  1

Experiments with AI Coding

March 22, 2025 · 9 min · Aaron Crosman

February  1

Reset Security Token for Salesforce Integration User

February 16, 2025 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman

January  1

Architectures for Constituent Portals Part 2

January 25, 2025 · 9 min · Aaron Crosman
To make the right selection you need to balance your overall data ecosystem, staffing, budget, audience interest, as well as projected growth over time. I keep wanting to create a simple decision matrix, but an easy solution eludes me still.

2024  13

December  1

Mom’s Christmas Cookies

December 23, 2024 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman

November  1

Architectures for Constituent Portals

November 30, 2024 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
One of the common needs, or at least desires, for CRM users is to link their CRM to some kind of constituent portal. There are several ways you can architect a good data pattern for your constituent portal. The trick is picking the right one for your organization.

October  1

Tips for Salesforce Exams Part 2 – Taking the Exam

October 5, 2024 · 9 min · Aaron Crosman

September  1

Tips for Salesforce Exams Part 1 – Studying

September 25, 2024 · 11 min · Aaron Crosman
Suggestions about how to prepare for the first, or next Salesforce Exam.

August  1

More Advice from a College Professor’s Spouse

August 5, 2024 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
Advice from a college professor's spouse about how to succeed in college. Based on my own observations and my own conclusions.

July  1

Writing for Developers and Consultants: Listening

July 29, 2024 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman

June  1

Knowing When to Ask for Help

June 29, 2024 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman

May  3

Writing for Developers and Consultants: Know your Documents Types

May 31, 2024 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman

Tool Building Mindset

May 22, 2024 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman

Writing for Developers and Consultants: Use of Language

May 2, 2024 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
How we use language affects how our audience perceives us. In school teachers and professors taught many of us formal – and strict – rules for writing. Those rules are useful to know, but my point is not that you need to follow them strictly.

March  2

Birthday Baking

March 30, 2024 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman

Writing for Developers and Consultants: Editing

March 1, 2024 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Editing you own writing is the first step to writing well as a developer, consultant, or any other form of technical professional.

January  1

Salesforce Github Actions

January 5, 2024 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman

2023  14

December  1

Goodbye Mom

December 31, 2023 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Earlier this month my mother, Maria Crosman, passed away. I miss her. But I'm happy for the time we had together, and the lesson she was able to teach me.

November  1

Salesforce Nonprofit and Education Scratch Orgs

November 13, 2023 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
How to create scratch org config files for Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud and Education Cloud

October  1

A Salesforce Data Migration Pattern

October 23, 2023 · 11 min · Aaron Crosman

September  1

Thoughts on My First Dreamforce

September 30, 2023 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman

August  1

Mid-Career Resumes

August 13, 2023 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
As we exit the Great Resignation, application materials are increasingly important again. Make your mid-career resume shines.

July  3

The Queries Part 3 of 3

July 25, 2023 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
More questions you can use to challenge your team to improve your migration game.

The Queries Part 2 of 3

July 17, 2023 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
More questions you can use to challenge your team to improve your migration game.

The Queries Part 1 of 3

July 10, 2023 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
Questions you can use to challenge your team to improve your migration game.

June  1

Queries on Queries: Improve your data migration

June 30, 2023 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Queries on Queries is a talk that poses opinionated questions designed to point you in a direction. They are intended to encourage you to improve your data migration process

May  2

Take Good Notes

May 29, 2023 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman

Real Life Sorting

May 1, 2023 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman

March  1

Salesforce Data Migration Lessons

March 29, 2023 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Three lessons I wish I knew on when I started doing Salesforce Data Migrations.

February  1

Becoming a Salesforce MVP

February 25, 2023 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
The Salesforce MVPs are a group of people who are recognized within the Salesforce community as leaders and contributors. And now I'm one!

January  1

We Wish We Could Consult Like Sidney Freedman

January 29, 2023 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Major Sidney Freedman was often the perfect psychiatrist at the perfect moment – all consultants wish we were as effective as Sidney.

2022  14

December  1

Do Not Consult Like Col. Flagg

December 31, 2022 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
Consultants get a lot of good tactical advice. But if we take things too far we are only slightly less clueless than Flagg.

November  1

Consult like Father Mulcahy

November 23, 2022 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
Balancing the ideal and the practical is one of the challenges in consulting. Try to find Father Mulcahy's balance.

October  2

Thinking About Languages

October 31, 2022 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
If you’re a developer, go learn a new language. If you’re not a developer, go learn something different from what you use every day. It’ll force you out of your comfort zone and get you to learn more than you expect.

What I Brought from Drupal to Salesforce

October 1, 2022 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman

August  1

My Ongoing Liberal Arts Education

August 21, 2022 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
We all can benefit from being conversant on many topics and understanding their interplay. That broad understand allows us to be more informed in our lives.

July  1

Pro-Choice in Aiken, SC

July 31, 2022 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
In the days that followed the Dobbs ruling I joined a small but vocal group of people from Aiken calling for protection of the rights of women's and others. There are people in South Carolina who descent.

June  1

Scenes from the Boone Fork Trail

June 30, 2022 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
In a moment when the country is in another downward spiral about all I can think to offer are a few images from a recent hike on the Boone Fork Trail.

May  1

Getting Started with Salesforce2Sql

May 15, 2022 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
A getting started guide for Salesforce2Sql schema generator.

April  4

Solve Interesting Problems

April 30, 2022 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
A problem is not intrinsically interesting. We find problems interesting for our own reasons. That interest makes us intrinsically motivated to solve them.

Salesforce Developer Podcast Episode 119

April 16, 2022 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
This week's Salesforce Developer Podcast featured an interview recorded the end of last year. We talk about Snowfakery, PHP, Drupal, and more...

Supportive Open Source Projects

April 10, 2022 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Our project demonstrates that building a supportive community can yield great results.

Still a B Student

April 4, 2022 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Now and then something happens to us all that reminds us we're not perfect.

February  1

Disable a Salesforce Trigger in Production with VS Code

February 26, 2022 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Disable a Salesforce Trigger in Production with VS Code (and a solution if there are failing tests to bypass).

January  1

Project Estimates Tool 2.0

January 23, 2022 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Project estimation tool using Monte Carlo simulations and graphs to tell a story that empowers good decisions.

2021  13

December  1

Announcing Two New Snowfakery Faker Providers

December 4, 2021 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
This week I helped create two new faker providers for Snowfakery: Faker Nonprofit and Faker EDU

November  2

Faith’s Joy

November 29, 2021 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
Like many people I aspire to be more like my dog. She has handled life’s ups and down with grace and forgiveness.

Build Cycles of Respect

November 1, 2021 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Build developers should build cycles of respect with their colleagues.

September  1

Being Nice vs Being Kind

September 26, 2021 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Giving kind feedback is better than being nice. Make sure you tell the truth when giving reviews.

August  1

College Advice from a Professor’s Spouse

August 2, 2021 · 12 min · Aaron Crosman
As a service to all those headed off to college I thought I’d offer a few piece of college advice I’ve picked up as a professor’s spouse.

July  2

SC DUG July 2021 - Queries on Queries

July 16, 2021 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
For the July 2021 SC DUG, I gave my new talk titled "Queries on Queries" which poses questions to ask yourself when migrating data between systems.

SC DUG June 2021 - MQTT and Drupal

July 9, 2021 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
In June for the SC DUG meeting Will Jackson from Kanopi Studios gave a talk about using his new MQTT module for Drupal 8/9 to connect to local IoT devices.

June  1

Snowfakery Custom Plugins Part 2

June 4, 2021 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Creating a custom Faker Provider for Snowfakery to generate exactly the data you want not just the data you need.

May  1

Snowfakery Custom Plugins Part 1

May 30, 2021 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Directions for creating plugins for Snowfakery to generate exactly the data you want not just the data you need.

April  1

SC DUG April 2021 - Getting Started with Electron

April 14, 2021 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
This month I gave a talk at South Carolina Drupal User Group on Getting Started with Electron.

March  1

SCDUG March 2021 – AWS: How an online retailer came to conquer the Internet

March 11, 2021 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Chris Zietlow from Mindgrub gave his new talk on AWS: How an online retailer came to conquer the Internet.

February  1

Why and How to Write Good How-To Articles

February 27, 2021 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
Writing how-to articles and sharing instructions is one of the best ways to help the community

January  1

Salesforce Lightning Web Components with URL Parameters

January 31, 2021 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
A security change invalidated nearly all tutorials on LWC URL parameters. This one fixes that.

2020  16

December  1

Salesforce Electron Starter

December 26, 2020 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
I would like to introduce Electron Salesforce Base, a secure base-line for Electron projects with Salesforce.

November  1

Generate Sample Data for Salesforce NPSP

November 21, 2020 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
This Snowfakery recipe creates 30 gifts, 20% from companies, 80% from households. They are spread randomly over a set of preexisting Campaigns, and create the needed Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and Payments.

October  1

SC DUG October 2020: Getting Started in Consulting

October 24, 2020 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
This month's SC DUG featured Mauricio Orozco posing questions about getting started as a consultant to long-time members who have all done some work with Drupal as a consultant.

September  1

RBG Aiken Memorial

September 22, 2020 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Rosh Hashanah. In the Jewish tradition, that makes her a person of great righteousness. May her memory be a blessing.

August  2

SCDUG August 2020 – “Good Enough” Testing Plans

August 15, 2020 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
This month I gave a talk at SCDUG on encouraging creating testing plans for teams that have been resistant for any number of reasons.

Simple Electron Starter

August 2, 2020 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
A simple project template for starting Electron Projects with a good security baseline.

July  2

SCDUG July 2020 – Drupal in SC State Government

July 15, 2020 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
Mauricio Orozco from the SC Commission for Minority Affairs gave a talk about the state of Drupal within the SC State government.

Protests in America – Black Lives Matter

July 1, 2020 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
None of us really trust police, the question should be what do we do next.

May  1

SC Dug May 2020: Virtual Backgrounds

May 29, 2020 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
This month’s SC DUG meeting featured Will Jackson from Kanopi Studios talking about his virtual background and office.

April  2

Images from NYC 2020

April 26, 2020 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman

SC DUG April 2020: Remote Work Round Table

April 16, 2020 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
This month's SC DUG was a round table discussion on working remotely during the Covid-19 lock down. We had actually planned this topic before the crisis emerged in full, but found ourselves having to pivot our talking points a fair bit.

March  3

Thoughts for the Newly Remote Worker

March 19, 2020 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Due to Covid-19 right now huge number of people are suddenly working remote. Some wanted this for a long time and are suddenly getting the chance; some didn’t really want a remote job but now are forced to try it.

Crash Teaching Online

March 17, 2020 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
This has been an interesting week for academics as we move to online instruction, perhaps for the first time. Here’s what I’ve learned and the order in which I found it helpful to tackle the sudden move.

SC DUG March 2020

March 13, 2020 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Launching a website can be a nerve-wracking experience, often times with developers working up until the wire trying to finish that one last feature. If only there was a crystal ball that would show you a vision of how your site would fare when the masses were set loose upon it.

February  1

SC DUG February 2020

February 15, 2020 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
For SC DUG Feb. 2020 I gave a talk on the importance of self-directed learning for professional development as a developer – or really any other modern career. The presentation runs a hair over 30 minutes, and parts of the discussion are included as well.

January  1

Wedding Photography for Non-Wedding Photographers

January 20, 2020 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
I’ve learned a few things about taking pictures at weddings that I think make the couples happy while giving you good pictures to share.

2019  18

December  1

On Being Self-Taught

December 23, 2019 · 9 min · Aaron Crosman
Over time I’ve come to realize that the further you get into your career, the less the distinction between being formally trained and self-taught means anything; eventually we are all mostly self-taught.

November  1

Some Things Every Developer Should Read

November 25, 2019 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
Here is my list of works that I think every developer should read at least once in their life.

October  4

Salesforce Queries and Proxies in Drupal 8

October 28, 2019 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
How to query Salesforce from Drupal and proxy the results as JSON responses.

Drupal Salesforce Suite Custom Field Mapping Types

October 17, 2019 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
Creating your own custom field mapping between Drupal and Salesforce using the Drupal Salesforce Suite.

In Praise of B Students

October 13, 2019 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
There is nothing wrong with just being good at something.

Arts in the Heart 2019

October 6, 2019 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman

August  1

Drupal Tome + Docksal + Netlify

August 13, 2019 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Setting up a static site on Netlify with Drupal 8, Tome, and Docksal.

July  1

Bypass Pantheon Timeouts for Drupal 8

July 31, 2019 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Using Drupal batches and old school PHP file handles to bypass Pantheon Timeouts. Import all the data you need.

June  1

Docksal Pantheon Setup from Scratch

June 25, 2019 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Docksal has support for a project init command that helps setup projects for Pantheon. Since I had to run a dozen Google searches to make it work I figured I'd write it up.

May  2

SC DUG May 2019

May 19, 2019 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Mauricio Orozco's review of lessons he learned at DrupalCon North America 2019.

Hague Appeal for Peace Pictures

May 11, 2019 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
In honor of the 20th anniversary of the Hague Appeal for Peace and everything that happened as part of that event and since, I decided to post some of my pictures.

April  1

FormAssembly Dynamic Parameter Signing

April 28, 2019 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
PHP Function to support FormAssembly dynamic parameter signing.

March  1

On Being An Activist

March 30, 2019 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
When someone tries to insult you with what you often see as a compliment it is worth stopping to reflect. Am I an activist?

February  2

SC DUG February 2019

February 18, 2019 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Will Jackson's presentation on using Docksal for Drupal development.

SC DUG November 2018

February 4, 2019 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Kaylan Wagner's Presentation on applying gaming lessons that are useful at work.

January  3

SC DUG September 2018

January 28, 2019 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
Chris Zietlow's presentation on about using Machine Learning to Improve UX.

Drupal 8 Batch Services

January 20, 2019 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Drupal 8 batch jobs were basically untouched from previous versions. So I created a module that handles this problem elegantly.

Pictures from Belize

January 1, 2019 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
Pictures from our holiday trip to Belize.

2018  11

November  2

Waterfall-like Agile-ish Projects

November 30, 2018 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
In software just about all project management methodologies get labeled one of two things: Agile or Waterfall. There are formal definitions of both labels, but in practice few companies stick to those definitions particularly in the world of consulting. For people who really care about such things, there are actually many more methodologies out there but largely for marketing reasons we call any process that’s linear in nature Waterfall, and any that is iterative we call Agile.

Thoughts on Hacktoberfest 2018

November 1, 2018 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
This year I took part in Hacktoberfest. Partially to see what it's all about, partially to get involved, and partially the free t-shirt.

August  1

Throw away information

August 29, 2018 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
IT workers spend a lot of time acquiring information that promptly goes out of date. Be careful what you bother to memorize.

July  1

Developers need to write more than code

July 31, 2018 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
Developers need to know how to communicate. That includes to be able to write well in their primary spoken languages as well as they can writing in their primary programming languages.

June  1

Families Belong Together: Augusta, GA

June 30, 2018 · 1 min · Aaron Crosman
I went to the Families Belong Together protest at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta, and organized by a few of their members, Progressives for Democratic Reform, along with a few other like minded groups that think tearing families apart is repugnant.

May  2

What else should I have asked but haven’t yet?

May 28, 2018 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
I found a great question for a candidate to ask at least once in every interview process: “What else should I have asked you?”

Making the invisible visible.

May 6, 2018 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
In a world that at times seems to grow increasingly uncaring, chaotic, and impossible to change, two sets of teenagers, a century apart, living remarkably different lives, may offer us a path forward.

April  1

DrupalCon Nashville Notes

April 11, 2018 · 13 min · Aaron Crosman
Notes from DrupalCon 2018 in Nashville.

March  1

March for Our Lives: Aiken, SC

March 24, 2018 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Pictures from March for Our Lives in Aiken, SC

February  1

Using Composer for Drupal Modules and Private Bitbucket Repos

February 25, 2018 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
The majority of resources are focused on using composer for publicly available code but sometimes you need a private repo.

January  1

“I can’t think of a single reason why we’re here, except that we’re needed.”

January 13, 2018 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Often the most useful ways to serve my community seems to require doing a things that should be utterly unneeded.

2017  22

December  1

A Process to create a Drupal 8 module’s Config

December 10, 2017 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
After a few tries I think I’ve struck on an effective process for creating modules with complex default configuration.

November  1

Preparing for your next crisis

November 20, 2017 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
Eventually every organization will face a crisis that requires a public response. In my experience most of the time the crisis that actually emerges isn’t what you expected and includes strange details that easily distract everyone from the main issue.

October  2

Drupal 8: Remote Database Services

October 29, 2017 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
I recently completed a project that included pulling data from a remote database. I figured I might save a few people time by writing it up.

We can do better

October 22, 2017 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
It's time to make sure our colleagues get the respect and support they deserve.

September  1

Make sure you have the pictures your site requires

September 17, 2017 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Frequently organizations fall in love with a site design that includes excellent pictures on every page. Those designs and images may be great, but only if you provide new images as fast as you create new pages (often faster).

July  2

Code Without Community is Dead

July 29, 2017 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
We like to say developers have a right be judged by code alone. The problem is that it’s not actually true nor just.

Helping the Cable Company Help me

July 5, 2017 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
After several hours on hold, 5 or 6 visits (I've lost count), and them testing everything in sight I finally started writing software to see if I can help find a problem on my internet connection.

June  2

Controlling Block Visibility with a Custom Field in Drupal 8 (updated for 9)

June 26, 2017 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
This week I was working on a site where one of those blocks needs to be enabled or disabled on specific nodes at the discretion of the content author.

Time estimation: making up numbers as we go along.

June 5, 2017 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
I wrote a simple tool to create project estimates that simulates how long a list of tasks might take.

May  3

Writing Good Directions

May 28, 2017 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Writing directions can be thankless: you know you provided good directions when people use them and never complain about them.

T-Shirts Revisited

May 14, 2017 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
A few weeks ago I wrote about not taking free t-shirts from vendors at DrupalCon (or other tech conferences). Well DrupalCon North America 2017 has come and gone so I thought I'd report back on this year's t-shirts.

Cached JSON responses in Drupal 8

May 6, 2017 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
Drupal 8 provides a CacheableJsonResponse class that links up to the rest of the Drupal 8 caching engine to provide much better performance than a stand Symfony JsonResponse

April  3

Early Thoughts on Drupal Governance Change

April 30, 2017 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman

DrupalCon Baltimore Notes

April 26, 2017 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman

Fixing the Expert Beginner

April 5, 2017 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
I’ve worked with expert beginners, and I think it is a curable condition. It requires three things: mentoring, training, and pushing yourself in ways they can see.

March  2

Why I won’t wear your free t-shirt

March 27, 2017 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman
A few years ago I was traveling to DrupalCon with a female colleague who was attending for the first time. The all male team had attended several times before that and she had always liked the interesting variety of t-shirts they came home with, and was looking forward to finally getting something for herself. Only she didn’t.

Good Enough Passwords

March 12, 2017 · 8 min · Aaron Crosman
Remember when you fight with your users about passwords the problem isn’t your users, the problem is we have made passwords unreasonably hard to do right.

February  3

Are you moving forward or backward?

February 19, 2017 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
In technology, communications, or any other job that involves one of those two things you are either moving forward or moving backward: standing still is not an option.

How to create a good trouble ticket

February 13, 2017 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
If I can’t reproduce the problem, I can’t promise you I fixed it. If you can’t reproduce the problem, you can’t check that I’m right.

What to say

February 5, 2017 · 7 min · Aaron Crosman

January  2

A Pattern for Drupal 8 Blocks

January 15, 2017 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman
A simple Drupal 8 custom block pattern to make projects easier to maintain over time.

Drupal 8 Custom Plugins are addictive

January 8, 2017 · 10 min · Aaron Crosman
Why and how to build your own Drupal 8 custom plugins.

2016  20

December  1

Responding to Drupal Break-ins

December 3, 2016 · 10 min · Aaron Crosman
If you support any web site long enough you will suffer a break in. A few weeks ago my number came up again in the attack lottery.

November  5

Yes I wear pants and other advice for working from home.

November 27, 2016 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
Yes, I wear pants to work even when no one can see me.

Let them eat Drupal Cake

November 19, 2016 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman

Postcards for children

November 10, 2016 · 2 min · Aaron Crosman

Lessons learned from my first Drupal 8 projects

November 6, 2016 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman

Sins Against Drupal 3

November 2, 2016 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
A developer needed to provide a custom authentication solution that allows staff to have one backend and members another -- and failed.

October  3

Documenting your work

October 23, 2016 · 4 min · Aaron Crosman
Any project that takes more than a couple hours to complete involves too many details for most people to remember for more than a few days.

Why I think pushing only STEM is a problem

October 9, 2016 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
The push to graduate students to be “workplace ready” in engineering and technology is – at best – short-term thinking.

What I learned by getting a degree from a liberals arts college

October 3, 2016 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
The most important skill I have is the ability to learn new skills. And I learned that by getting a degree at a liberal arts college.

September  3

Bad data systems do not justify sexist your behavior

September 24, 2016 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Just because your database cannot handle modern families does not make it okay.

Try doing it backwards

September 11, 2016 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
I recently rediscovered how much you can learn when you try doing something you know well backwards: I drove on the left side of the road.

My Grandmother’s Hats

September 4, 2016 · 5 min · Aaron Crosman
My grandmother made A LOT of hats, and inspired me to make them for kids in need.

August  3

Looking at a project from different angles

August 27, 2016 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Walking around Sydney harbor got me thinking about the advice I’ve been given both about photography and about my work: make sure you try things from different angles.

Picking tools you’ll love: don’t make yourself hate it on day one.

August 20, 2016 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
Too often organizations try to make the new tool behave just like the old tool then spend years dealing with problems that could have been avoided.

Sins Against Drupal 2

August 13, 2016 · 9 min · Aaron Crosman
The developer needed to support existing Flash training games used internally by the client, and broke Drupal to do it.

July  5

Sins Against Drupal 1

July 23, 2016 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman
A developer needed to support an existing JavaScript app with access to content in the form of Drupal nodes encoded in JSON, and broke all the rules.

This Week’s Drupal Fire Drill

July 16, 2016 · 6 min · Aaron Crosman

When Should I Update my Drupal Site to Drupal 8?

July 10, 2016 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman

Nonprofits Drive Innovation in Online Communications

July 3, 2016 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Nonprofits often struggle to figure out the right way to leverage new tools because they try to leverage them first, and drive marketing innovation.

Always Make New Mistakes

July 2, 2016 · 3 min · Aaron Crosman
Always making new mistakes is a great want to push yourself forward while understanding you'll never be perfect.