[drupal-docs] [draft] Drupal Newsletter #4 - August
Robin Monks
devlinks at gmail.com
Fri Aug 19 14:06:11 UTC 2005
OK, second draft. More comments needed (there is also a void that
needs to be filled in the newsletter. Rant or raves welcome :-) )
------------------------------
AUGUST, 2005 DRUPAL NEWSLETTER
------------------------------
Welcome back to the Drupal newsletter! We have received great
acknowledgment from the community, and have had a generous supply of
content thanks to our contributors. As always, we are a completely
open newsletter. Good Drupal-related content is always welcomed and
encouraged!
As you probably already have heard, Drupal 4.6.3
<http://shurl.org/drupal/4.6.3> was released this week. The new
XML-RPC vulnerability this addresses
<http://shurl.org/drupal/sa-2005-004> would allow an attacker to take
over the server.
A code freeze in preparation of 4.7 was also announced this month
<http://shurl.org/drupal/freeze-0805>. The freeze, scheduled to
happen on September 1st, will move the latest HEAD code into a new 4.7
branch to be worked on, and debugged, before final release.
The Google Summer of Code (SoC) workers has also made some great
enhancements to the codebase <http://shurl.org/drupal/soc-0805>,
adding many new modules and features for Drupal users to enjoy.
There is a lot more to discover this month, so let's get started...
Robin Monks,
Editor
In this issue...
Upcoming Events – Find out what events are coming up for Drupal lovers.
Drupal Interview – This month's interview with Dries Buytaert, Kieran
Lal and Boris Mann
Drupal Development Quickies – What have the developers thought up this month?
Drupal Tips – How to make Drupal do things you didn't think it could.
Drupal Sightings – Showcasing some of the best new Drupal sites around
the world!
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UPCOMING EVENTS
---------------
After the very successful O'Reilly's OSCON in the USA, there will be a
Drupal conference during the Euro-OSCON in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
This event will take place from October 16 to October 20 and will be
both within the OSCON conference (paid) and separate from the OSCON
conference (free).
The goals of the mini Drupal conference will be:
* to meet up with fellow Drupal coders and users,
* promote Drupal by showing off the power of the code and the
community to the OSCON people,
* connect with other Open Source Software projects and
* ... just have a good time!
(Gaining world dominance is just something we do in-between)
No permanent agenda has been made yet, but it seems we will be
discussing three important issues that are centralized around the code
(release cycle, new features), the infrastructure (the new hardware,
the new infra team) and the community (promotion of Drupal, starting
the foundation).
You are encouraged to come to this event; we will try to organize a
cheap hotel or place to stay for the Drupal people. So even when you
are not attending the Euro-OSCON, there is a lot to do in Amsterdam
and you will meet with all your favorite Drupal coders as well.
The list of persons that will attend these meetings can be found at
<http://shurl.org/drupal/amattend-0805> . If you want to come as well,
make sure to edit your profile at <http://drupal.org/user/>.
Bert Boerland will be coordinating this event. If you are willing to
help him out, contact him at <http://shurl.org/drupal/contact/bert>.
If you want to discuss broader issues, please use the conference
mailing list, <http://shurl.org/drupal/conlist-0805> . Any feedback
regarding the place, the agenda or potential sponsors is greatly
appreciated. But most of all make sure to be in Amsterdam on October
16th!
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DRUPAL INTERVIEW
----------------
This month Robin Monks will be interviewing Dries Buytaert, Kieran Lal
and Boris Mann about OSCON Portland, future events and future
expectations.
Robin Monks: Could you each briefly describe your role with Drupal?
Dries Buytaert: I'm the Drupal founder and project lead.
Boris Mann: I'm a long time Drupal evangelist and contributor, as well
as being the founder of Bryght, one of the first commercial companies
focused on Drupal.
Kieran Lal: I am the development manager for CivicSpace Labs. I
coordinate Drupal development to help us accomplish CivicSpace Lab's
community goals.
Robin: Thanks! How do you guys feel OSCON was in terms of Drupal marketing?
Boris: The lead up to OSCON was a bit rushed, and it was our first
real "marketing" event. However, thanks to good work (especially by
Roland Tanglao, Chris Messina, and Nate Angell) we managed to have a
very good presence at our OSCON booth, as well as pull off a
successful DrupalCON event at PSU.
Next time, I'd like to see us with at least one published book, more
marketing materials specifically focused around case studies and "what
can you do with Drupal?"
Kieran: I think it was internally very exciting to feel the strength
of our community, and it gave us a great chance say "Hi!" to our many
users
Dries: There was a lot of excitement surrounding Drupal at OSCON;
including a presentation, a Drupal booth, a Drupal BOF and a 2-day
off-site Drupal conference. I think that we succeeded in putting
Drupal on the map of many OSCON attendees.
Dries: Furthermore, the Drupal community, and their presence at OSCON,
is far more persuasive than any advertising campaign. The enthusiasm
of some Drupal users is far more convincing than traditional marketing
material (like leaflets), and just having these people present makes
for an effective marketing campaign.
Boris: We even made friends with the Plone guys. They walked off with
a "My CMS kicks your CMS's ass" t-shirt! And we know now the
international secret Plone handshake.
Boris: e.g. Rasmus (PHP Creator). Now we can hopefully look forward to
more Drupal t-shirt sightings around the world.
Big points for anyone that gets a picture of Rasmus' wife in her
Drupal t-shirt :-).
Robin: Also, Kieran, you sent back a little note saying that some
corporations had also expressed a large amount of interest? Care to
expand on that for our readers?
Kieran: A lot of traditional corporations are realizing they want to
harness the loyalty they see in communities as well as reap the
benefit of innovative ideas that communities can produce.
That does not occur naturally in a hierarchical customer service
department. It's particularly painful for large corporations that are
mission driven to acknowledge this.
It's organizations that had originally been mission driven and
originated as grassroots efforts and for efficiency and ease of
management they abandoned their volunteer and community efforts in
favor of the efficiency of paid employees who could take advantage of
the productivity of information technology.
Boris: I'd have to say that it's not just community.
Kieran: Boris, do you have examples?
Boris: Drupal has cutting edge features in its taxonomy and node
systems, as well as aggregation features, that make it killer for
mixing and matching lots of content -- competitive intelligence,
knowledge management, blogosphere tracking, etc. etc.
Kieran: Providing these powerful tools to people and communities that
were traditionally less powerful is very personally gratifying.
Robin: Do you feel OSCON will have a long term affect on Drupal?
Boris: It marks the second successful gathering of Drupal enthusiasts,
and shows continued momentum. There was one independent gathering of
Educational use of Drupal while we were there. And there is to be
ongoing meetups in Portland, starting tomorrow (see DrupalED.org
<http://drupaled.org> ).
Kieran: Yes, it was a very important landmark for CivicSpace for two reasons
1) It was a homecoming of sorts, to be fully integrated and
strategically aligned with Drupal once again. At an organization level
but also a personal level with Boris and Dries
2) The working groups largely broke up into traditionally marketing
segments: community journalism, politics, vendors, education. This
validated CivicSpaces approach of targetting a distribution to
specific communities.
Dries: Meeting developers makes it easy to discuss many topics in a
short timeframe and to align ideas. Discussions that otherwise would
have taken weeks, if not months. Meeting users is also important;
because it helps you understand their needs. It helps you reflect on
the state of Drupal, helps you define priorities.
Kieran: I think this showed that the Drupal community is maturing
beyond just technology but addressing specific community issues and
needs.
Robin: Dries, has anything like this happened previous to OSCON 2005?
Dries: Yes, we had an (unofficial) meeting in Vancouver (Canada) last
year, and earlier this year we had our very first Drupal conference in
Antwerp (Belgium). About 20 people showed up in Vancouver and about 50
people showed up in Antwerp. Vancouver was more of an ad-hoc meeting
but the Drupal conference in Antwerp was more like the Drupal
conference in Portland. We piggy-backed on a well-known FOSS
conference (FOSDEM) and added our own off-site, 2-day Drupal
conference.
Boris: It was great to have local support in Portland. There seems to
be a good base for future events. While OSCON was interesting and
provided the ability to check out a lot of other projects, the full
attendee costs were quite high.
Robin: So, overall, do you think OSCON was a marketing success for Drupal?
Boris: Yes!
Kieran: OSCON was a successful marketing activity, but not as much as
a promotional marketing activity, but from a strategic marketing, and
identification of market segments standpoint.
Dries: OSCON was a success, not just from a marketing point of view.
Kieran: What did the bloggers have to say about Drupal coming out of OSCON?
Boris: Big thing was Doug Kaye selecting it. That caused lots of other
people to perk up their ears. But "bloggers" are diverging more and
more from our core audience, since Drupal is overkill compared to a
plain blog.
Kieran: Right.
Boris: BUT, when people grow out of "just blogging", they often pick
Drupal (e.g. events, recipes, movie reviews)
Robin: Are you all expecting similar results from Amsterdam?
Boris: No. In part because Euro OSCON is lower visibility than its US
counterpart, so from general marketing, there will be less "buzz"
unless Drupal has a big announcement (or a big site announces the use
of Drupal).
However -- yes from the perspective of users and developers, since
there is a very strong European core.
Kieran: For me, there are preset expectations going into Amsterdam. I
want to see how much progress we make on the Drupal foundation, User
Experience, and getting more developers.
Dries: I believe this is the first time OSCON is organized in Europe,
so the conference is unlikely to have the same level of attendance and
visibility as its USA counterpart which has been around for years.
Then again, FOSS is big in Europe so it's hard to predict. Either way,
it makes for a great opportunity to meet with other Drupal users and
developers. For me, the success and value of EuroOSCON depends on the
attendance of the Drupal community, and to a lesser extent on the
attendance of OSCON itself. To that extend, we already began to
organize a number of free Drupal related events around EuroOSCON
<http://drupal.org/conference-amsterdam-2005>.
Robin: How will marketing be organized for similar (future) events
like this? Is there some sort of marketing "plan"?
Kieran: I think we could move to preset common interests, less of a
"get to know you" and more of a "let's get work done". For example, we
saw Dries, Adrian, Jon, and James working on the forms API. We could
see the same thing for education, for community journalism, etc.
Robin: There has been a lot of talk about a Drupal Foundation; will
there be a Drupal Foundation?
Dries: at OSCON we had a Drupal Foundation meeting. Boris wrote about
it at <http://drupal.org/node/28338>.
Boris: And are working to get structures and community governance
models in place, as well as exploring options whether we want to go
our own way or connect with an umbrella organization like what Chris
Messina is pursuing.
Lots of people are interested in seeing this happen and willing to be
involved in the process
Dries: We want to explore our options before pushing this forward. For
example, we've been talking to existing FOSS Foundations and will
continue to approach more.
Robin: How will this affect further Drupal marketing and development?
Dries: One of the foundation's goals would be to manage the Drupal
donations and assets. The Drupal Foundation could decide to fund
Drupal-related events by paying for booth space, organizing
conferences, providing marketing material, Drupal swag, etc.
Boris: e.g. we had a free booth at OSCON, but had to pay for tables,
chairs and carpet (we skipped the carpet); as well as printing costs
for one pagers.
Robin: Finally, what are your largest expectations from Drupal 4.7?
Boris: For Drual's aggregator to be replaced with aggregator2
(feeds/items as nodes), support Atom.
Looking forward to the new infrastructure, which will let us put in
place tools to help people self organize local Drupal and Drupal CoP
meetings.
Dries: I hope that Drupal 4.7 will be more accessible to both users
and developers. I hope that for users, Drupal 4.7 will offer a better
out of the box experience thanks to the usability improvements and the
new features. For developers, I hope that Drupal 4.7 will provide a
solid and stable framework to extend and build custom applications on.
Kieran: For me, I think there are few things I'd like to see in 4.7
1) Drupal documentation being firmly tied between Drupal
administration help and the handbook will lead to a stronger resource
for helping administrators and users.
2) I think AJAX support will raise consciousness of interaction design
and information architecture for Drupal developers.
3) I think we will see the robustness of Drupal contribution modules
in Drupal 4.7 will make Drupal pull away as a community management
tool and separate from other CMSs.
Robin: Thanks to everyone, you've all been great! Any last words?
Dries: We are the Drupal community. We rock. ;)
---------------------------
DRUPAL DEVELOPMENT QUICKIES
---------------------------
- You no longer need $node->foo in your node.tpl.php, chx flattened
the node object's member fields. You can still use it if you like,
however. <http://drupal.org/node/24862>
- node_load got a simpler syntax, node_load($nid) useable. Developers
can expect similar simplification for user_load.
<http://drupal.org/node/25634>
- Thox continues supplying AJAX functionality, Drupal now can POST
data via JS. <http://drupal.org/node/23746>
- mathias created menu on the fly for nodes. Upon entering a node you
now can create a menu item for your new node.
<http://drupal.org/node/9178>
- Drumm modified the taxonomy API significantly. <http://drupal.org/node/19621>
- Morbus separated vocabulary and term screens. <http://drupal.org/node/20505>
- Moshe unified the admin comment form and the usual comment form.
Administrators now can change the author and timestamp of a comment.
<http://drupal.org/node/18656>
- drumm made the destination persist across multiple pages.
<http://drupal.org/node/26467>
- Jose A Reyero made taxonomy vocabulary and term forms to be
extendable. <http://drupal.org/node/16440>
- Steven added mbstring support and cleaned up string handling.
<http://drupal.org/node/26688>
- ahoeben added refer(r)er to "page not found" warnings.
<http://drupal.org/node/23651>
- drumm created nice error screens. <http://drupal.org/node/27231>
- Tobias added a subject field to the contact form.
<http://drupal.org/node/27633>
- Gerhard made the username themeable <http://drupal.org/node/27737>
- Drupal now correctly distinguish 403s from 404s for nodes thanks to
willmoy. <http://drupal.org/node/27864>
- Robin Monks added 'send me a copy'-functionality to the contact
forms. <http://drupal.org/node/26236>
- Prometheus6 made the aggregator module parse Atom feeds.
<http://drupal.org/node/13941>
Overall, Neil Drumm was sending small patches for various issues like
no tomorrow. Thanks! To quote another developer "I like the devel list
because I hear from drumm so much on it".
Karoly Negyesi,
http://drupal4hu.com/
----------THE DRUPAL THEME GARDEN------------
A showcase of beautiful Drupal themes.
http://themes.drupal.org/
---------------------------------------------
----------------
BLAH BLAH CORNER
----------------
We need something to fill this void!!!!
Suggestions please!!!
----------
DRUPAL TIP
----------
UPGRADE (Contributed by Sthithaprajna Garapaty)
Upgrading is especially important this time because of the major
security fix. Failing to upgrade can result in someone cracking into
your website and abusing it.
Even if it is not a security issue, it is a good idea to upgrade
every time a stable version of Drupal is released. This way, you have
the latest bug fixes and new features.
However, before you upgrade, be sure to backup your database and files
so that you can roll back in case of any unforeseen issues.
PLAY B-I-N-G-O! (Contributed by Angie Byron)
Want to help Drupal? Like random games of chance? Why not combine
both of these interests in one fell swoop and participate in:
Patch Bingo: http://drupal.org/patchbingo
and
Bug Bingo: http://drupal.org/bugbingo
These links will take you to a random issue in the Drupal queue.
Test out bugs to see if they're still an issue, try out patches to see
if they work and comment on whether or not they'd be useful. You'll
both add some wacky adventures to your life, and help Drupal at the
same time!
E-COMMERCE (Contributed by Sthithaprajna Garapaty)
Check out this nice ecommerce module for Drupal:
http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce
While I wouldn't recommend it to start an entire store, it has
everything you need to make your own little gift shop and sell
t-shirts, coffee mugs and more.
Plus, it integrates nicely, so your store looks just like the rest
of your website.
You can get more tips from Bryght's "Best Practices" section at
<http://support.bryght.com/taxonomy/term/8>.
--------------
SITE SPOTLIGHT
--------------
Yet to be contributed.
Contributed by,
CivicSpace Labs
----------------
DRUPAL SIGHTINGS
----------------
We are always on the lookout for the Druplicon, and this month, we
think we found some prime examples of Drupal's flexibility,
customizability and usability.
Lassiter 91 <http://shurl.org/drupal/lassiter-0805>
A school reunion site that shows off some of Drupal's best community features.
Computerworld Cool Sites <http://shurl.org/drupal/cpworld-0805>
Just another small step as we take over the world. Muwhahahaha.
New Hampshire Public Radio <http://shurl.org/drupal/nhpr-0805>
A local community radio and events site that is using the power of
Drupal to manage their entire online presence. Go Public Radio!
Connect for Kids <http://shurl.org/drupal/cfk-0805>
A wonderful example of how Drupal can be completely customized.
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