[drupal-docs] [draft] Drupal Newsletter #4 - August
Charlie Lowe
cel4145 at cyberdash.com
Tue Aug 23 16:16:36 UTC 2005
Hi Robin,
Are you still working on this draft or do you have yet another? I'd be
glad to take a look at it this evening if you still need feedback.
Charlie
Robin Monks wrote:
> 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!
>
> ---------------
> 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.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> For more information about Drupal, visit our website at http://drupal.org
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of this
> license, visit <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/>
>
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