Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction Software Development

bdg takes Wind River live on Plumtree 5.0.4J

All of us at bdg are very pleased to announce that our very own Andrew Morris has led Wind River to a successful launch of 5.0.4J on their corporate extranet with an extremely slick and highly customized UI. In fact, the UI is so good that if it weren’t for the portal/server.pt in the URL, you seriously wouldn’t know that it’s a Plumtree Portal!

To pull this off, Andrew leveraged bdg’s extensive knowledge of Plumtree UI customization (especially pluggable navigation) in Java along with a boatload of Plumtree Content Server magic. Up until now, I thought SunTrust was the most creative Plumtree 5x deployment in terms of UI tweaking, but this one trumps it. By a lot. If you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself.

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction Software Development

What’s the best way to find out XYZ about Plumtree?

I get asked this question — or some variant of it — all the time. Unlike almost everything else known to mankind, the answer is not: search Google. Instead, the best thing you can do is register for an account on portal.plumtree.com. Perhaps it’s to protect the paradoxical proprietary yet “radically open” nature of the Plumtree product line (more on this later); perhaps it’s just part of the “eat your own dog food” culture of the company (Plumtree uses its own Collaboration Server on the site) – regardless, even though there are two Google groups about Plumtree, the best – and really the only – way to get your questions answered is to post them on the Developer Forum inside the Plumtree Portal. (There is also a Deployment Forum, but it’s not as well trafficked.) My account name there is “bucchere” – as you can see, I’m not terribly creative at naming companies or accounts. If you’re interested in reading some of my musings and rants on various Plumtree-related topics, log in there and do a search across the Developer Forums for “bucchere.”

One thing about me – and really about everyone who works for bdg – we certainly don’t always know the answer, but we know who knows the answer. So, I guess you could always ask one of us. But not until you’ve already checked the Developer Forums, okay? 🙂

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction Software Development

Here we go

Perhaps I’ve finally realized that it’s time to enter the 21st century; perhaps I’m interested in promoting my company and it’s services; perhaps I felt I needed a forum to express myself; perhaps I just can’t sleep — my motivations aside, I’ve decided it’s time to start a bdg/Plumtree blog.

First, some legalize to get out of the way. Contrary to what some people think, I do not work for Plumtree. I once worked for Plumtree. In fact, I was their 26th employee back in 1998 when they were first getting off the ground, starting in the PSO (Professional Services) and eventually becoming a Lead Engineer. The details of my career are probably only interesting to me, but if you’re compelled to know or just bored, you can read about them on my bio page on bdg’s web site or at Stanford’s CDC (Career Development Center). Because I don’t work for Plumtree, the opinions and views expressed on this blog do not represent the opinions of Plumtree, Inc. in any way. Nor do they represent the views of Trilogy, Microsoft or Sun, where I have also worked in the past. They do, however, represent the views of bdg, my present employer and the company I founded back in early 2003. (I guess there’s really no way around that.) That’s about as much as I care about legal matters, so I’ll call it quits there.

Some of the things I do care about – at least in my professional life that is – bdg’s customers, bdg’s employees and subcontractors, Plumtree’s products, other commercial and open source software, the science – or art – of enterprise software development and entrepreneurship. I’m sure over the course of time, I’ll comment on all these topics and a host of others.

So there you have it, I’ve finally embarked upon a journey I’ve been meaning to start for a long time. All I possibly hope for is that someone (or perhaps several someones) will derive some value from this blog and, if not, at least I’ve got an outlet for some of my frustrations. 😉