The changes on this site weren't entirely for the sake of change. I've wanted to change to Drupal for a while, but I just didn't want to spend the time. WordPress was working fine and I had no real reason to change. Now I do. I've been building some other sites for family and family businesses using my personal hosting account. These sites have for one reason or another all changed to Drupal in recent months. One of Drupal's advantages is the ability to build multiple sites on the same code base. A multi-site installation. Other platforms have some form of this ability too, it's not unique to Drupal. In my case though, it was a very helpful ability. The only thing keeping me from using it, was this site. Due to my hosting structure, this site's directory was the most obvious location for an installation like this. Now that I've switched this site over, the rest of them will be moving over to share the code base shortly. As each one moves, that's one less code base I need to keep up-to-date. I have a little variability in the modules the various site's use, but it should still give me a 60% or more reduction in labor for Drupal updates. Same sites, same code, same function, 60% less work to maintain. I may be busy, but I just couldn't afford not to take advantage of a time saver like that.

My most recent project at Riven Design was a brand new Drupal site for Whitecap Custom Rods. The owners of WhitecapRods.com pride themselves on building rods "with an enthusiasm for excellence". It shows in their work, and I hope it shows in their site.

My business site, RivenDesign.com, has a new look. As well as the new style, I've improved the accessibility with better skip links and a better use of headings. It also has an updated version of Drupal.

I just noticed at Dries Buytaert's site that New York State Senate is using Drupal. It's now a very stylish looking Drupal site. Its' visual style is quite nice, but what lurks below the surface?

• No skip links to bypass blocks of content for screen readers or keyboard-only users
• Links not clearly identified
• No hover or focus effects on links to assist in navigation and link identification
• No level one header (h1) on home page to identify the page
• Drop down navigation is useless for keyboard-only navigation. It leaves some content extremely difficult to reach, if not completely beyond reach.

Why the half measures? Making a site accessible is more work. Making a site this un-accessible takes an active effort. The default CSS property for a link is to have an outline. This site has a focus outline property of zero. It's turned off so that a link with focus is not visible. An active effort to remove one property that identified focus, without adding another in its place. The default link property has an underline text-decoration. This site uses links with no text-decoration. A property helpful for identifying links was actively removed without replacement. I'm happy to see a very good platform like Drupal being more widely used, and this site is a good place for it. Dynamic content, multiple RSS feeds, press releases and more. All features with which Drupal excels. Unfortunately this is a bad example of Drupal theming. A good layout, a good overall design, but no thought to accessibility. What could have been a beautiful site, unfinished.