Steve’s Stuff

CCIM chapter websites continue to evolve and will move to an open-source content management system this fall.

The current CCIM chapter websites can be considered Version 3 in a series. The first chapter sites were hosted by LoopNet. In 2002, the sites were moved to Catylist. In January of 2007, we took them in house and into their current configuration.

Our design externally resembled the Version 2 look and feel. The big changes were in the back end tools for administrators and integration of the chapter membership with the CCIM membership database. As a direct result of this process, we’ll be piloting chapter dues billing as part of the national CCIM dues billing this fall.

Since that initial rollout in January, Read the rest of this entry »

Drupal

The Find a CCIM Professional search is happy to welcome back the Area Code field. Although area codes are in the process of becoming disassociated from geophysical areas, it’s often useful to find everyone in Chicago, for example, by searching on “773, 312″ in the area code field. (You could do the same, however, by using “606″ in the Zip Code field.)

Yesterday, we think we finally squashed the bug for users of IE7 in the Find a CCIM Professional search. The symptoms were either getting an error message from Tomcat or the word “null” when starting a search or going between pages of a search. It seems to be a difference in the way Firefox and IE process cookies. We changed how the cookie is managed and the search now works reliably in IE7.

We strongly recommend the Firefox browser.

LoopNet/CCIMNet property listings are now integrated into Designee professional profiles.

For an example, visit Skip Duemeland’s profile and click on Property Listings.

Fedora 7 is out now, Fedora 5 just went into unspported mode, and it’s time to start rolling the Fedora 6 systems on to Fedora 7. For those how might not know about Fedora:

The Fedora Project is a collection of projects sponsored by Red Hat (http://redhat.com) and developed as a partnership between the open source community and Red Hat engineers. The goal of Fedora is the rapid progress of free and open source software and content. Public forums. Open processes. Rapid innovation. Meritocracy and transparency. All in pursuit of the best operating system and platform that free software (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) can provide.

The operating system is Fedora. It comes out twice a year or so. It’s completely Free, and we’re committed to keeping it that way. It’s the best combination of robust and latest software that exists in the Free software world.

The mindset is Doing the Right Thing. To us, that means providing Free and open source software, at no cost, freely usable, modifiable, redistributable, and unencumbered by software patents.

We run a good number of systems at CCIM on Fedora (including this server). Yesterday (July 4), I upgraded my home desktop. It was a successful upgrade and bodes well for server upgrades over the next few weeks.