The Cloud
What does Metal Toad do?
Welcome to Metal Toad! So you’ve been hired at this cool tech company cal
TOPIC
Wordpress
machine learning
Brazil’s Best: Metal Toad Wins 2021 Clutch Award for Top IT Outsourcing Company
From Los Angeles to Brazil Headquartered in sunny Los Angeles, California, Metal Toad is an award-winning
The Cloud
How to make a website
22 years ago, I worked at a company called LACityWeb.com. The company failed in the year 2000, but back in 1999 we were selling websites. The sales...
The Cloud
How to Host a Website on AWS in 5 Minutes
For most casual website owners, it’s often easy to simply use a hosting provider with built in support for their CMS and integrating analytics....
Artificial Intelligence
How to pick the best Headless CMS
In the past few years, Metal Toad has increasingly migrated clients to headless CMS providers to reduce costs, improve the conten
The Cloud
How often should I update my website?
The short answer the the question: how often should I update my website? is every 3 to 5 years. The much longer answer starts with: it depends.
The Cloud
How Cloud became the most important buzzword in business
Cloud is not the first (and probably not the last) disruptor to business via software. Over the past 50 years or so there have been four major epochs...
The Cloud
Building a AWS Headless CMS
Over the past several years, Metal Toad has launched several successful cloud-first web and mobile applications, often with hardware components. With...
The Cloud
Saas vs. Cloud
Discover how the Cloud has disrupted the software industry, from the rise of Open Source to the emergence of SaaS applications. Learn why the Cloud...
Artificial Intelligence
How Much Does a Website Cost? 2 of 3: Rebuilding
In my last article, I addressed the age old question "how much does a website cost?" from the stand
Drupal
Anatomy of a Drupalgeddon attack
Before working at Metal Toad, I saw an email from Acquia. A strange email. It went something like this:
Database
WordPress Deployments: Example of Database Changes in Code
How do you update the database of a WordPress site that's already in production without a lengthy content freeze or losing your client's data?
Education
A Place for Ideas
When people think of Metal Toad, they immediately think of technology thought leadership and a strong devotion to education and outreach.
The Cloud
Full Stack Basics for the Non-Developer
Let's visualize and talk about the "full stack" of web development.
Artificial Intelligence
CoverOregon goes Open Source
Ten months since my open letter to Oregon Governor Kitzhaber, challenging him to fix CoverOregon and to use more local companies and more open so
Artificial Intelligence
Migrating Content into Drupal 8
Drupal 8 includes a powerful built-in migration system for importing content into your site. It is designed to handle data from Drupal 6 or 7, and...
Education
Seeing Long Term Technology Adoption as Evolution
Much like an evolutionary tree our goal in technology adoption is too continue to move forward and evolve, rather than getting caught in a dead end....
Education
The Challenge to Innovation
Recently inspired by Peter Thiel's excellent book Zero to One, I've been reflecting on the software industry as the preeminent place where we can...
Artificial Intelligence
Drupal vs. WordPress? Who Cares?! They Are Both Open Source.
Every week I hear about someone choosing WordPress over Drupal (or vice versus).
Artificial Intelligence
Why More People Select WordPress than Drupal to Build Websites
First off, Drupal has had a great year and a great quarter.
Artificial Intelligence
You Should be Paying More Than $50/month for Hosting.
In the year 1999, if you ran a business and you had a website, you were ahead of the game.
Artificial Intelligence
The Successful Digital PM, Part 4: Knowledge
There's no rocket science behind this post. Just like a construction project manager is probably going to want to know a thing or two about...
Database
Metal Toad University #10: Real Time Word Press
In this episode our intrepid adventurers embarked on a quest to install WordPress. I have to admit, this was quite easy and didn't take nearly as...
Artificial Intelligence
How (and Why) Google Needs to Invest in Open Source
As more and more people start using the internet, and as websites get increasingly full featured Google continues to see growth in its userbase. Open...