[documentation] [Drupal newsletter] Drupal Newsletter for April,
2006 -- DRAFT 2
Drupal.org newsletter
info at drupal.org
Fri Apr 14 16:28:28 UTC 2006
------------DRUPAL NEWSLETTER FOR APRIL, 2006 -- DRAFT 2------------
Welcome to Spring! Welcome to warmer days, green grass, BBQ season, days at
the beach, picnics and Drupal 4.7. Yup, that's right Drupal 4.7. Now, before
you go scouring for a link to the tarballs, let me warn you, there are none,
yet. (for those of you on the opposite side of the globe, who will soon be up
to your ears in snow, we sympathize, we're just beginning to feel our ears
again up here :) ).
Thanks to the feverish work of many Drupal developers Drupal 4.7 should be
released shortly, and all the hyped-about features, the AJAX, the better
caching; all that Drupalistic goodness, will be yours.
In the Dev Zone of this issue (yeah, we changed section names again...) Karoly
(aka. chx) has outlined his list of the top new developers who made this
release possible, but this is no where near a complete list. On behalf of the
Drupal community we thank every person who gave a line of code or a good
suggestion, filed a bug report or said a kind word to the developers. Without
you, well, there probably wouldn't be a 4.7.
I'd also like to thank all those that responded to the Drupal.org frontpage
post asking for articles and personal experiences; thanks to the great response
we have enough articles to begin on our next issue as well! As always, we still
want to hear from you. Drop us a line at the official contact form
[http://drupal.org/contact].
Happy Spring!
Robin Monks.
Drupal Marketing Coordinator
*In this issue...*
* User Space
* The Path to Drupal – Read how one Drupal user came from the early days of
the web, to finding and using Drupal.
* Preventing Content Spam – Hate Spam? Find out how the Spam module can
help keep your site Spam-free!
* The Drupal Experience of Donny Nyamweya - Read how iDonny uses Drupal for
web development.
* Drupal Sightings
* Drupal @ SpeedGeek – Drupal was used in 5 out of 11 featured open source
projects at SpeedGeek, and Simon Pavitt was there.
* FP Passport – Find out how and why FP Passport uses Drupal
* Dev Zone
* The story of Drupal 4.7 – Get to see some of the new faces behind Drupal
4.7.
------------USER SPACE------------
THE PATH TO DRUPAL
Once upon a time, in the dark ages of the internet when only heretics used a
WYSIWIG thingy-ma-jig and it took a degree in astro-physics to build a decent
web site, I stumbled across a funky little beast of a laptop.
Thus it was, equipped with a 28K modem, my journey of World Wide Web discovery
began. I happened across a little website called Geocities and set myself up
with a free account. You have to understand, this was pre-internet-bubble days
when Geocities was groundbreaking and Yahoo! was what you shouted when you were
excited.
I signed up for everything free, and believe me, back in those days, everything
was free -- hundreds of email addresses, as many free web site accounts as I
could find. Then, the acronym assault began: HTML, DHTML, CSS, CGI, LOL and
TTYL. When I asked what it all meant, I was told to RTFM!
So, I did what any self respecting internet newbie should do. I bluffed my way
through it. I dibbled with this and dabbled with that. Somehow, a few years of
my life disappeared with no access to the latest acronyms. My free accounts
either had their dot com bubbles burst, or they got gobbled up into obscurity.
Suddenly, I found myself unable to bluff anymore. I had to get serious.
I found myself faced with new acronyms. PHP, ASP and SQL were the new buzz
words. Static websites were a piece of cake as WYSIWIG editors had progressed
to such a point where respectable web developers and designers were using them.
Photoshop even had a few nifty features to play with.
Static web sites put the developer in a bind though. Do you train the client or
do you offer to do the updates yourself? When your workload becomes higher, the
updates get slower and customers get tetchy. Things just become a messy pain in
the rear.
One new buzz word popped up a few times before I took any notice and that was
CMS. My first dip into the CMS foray was with the much-hacked and much-forked
PHP Nuke. I didn’t know anything about PHP or database-driven sites, but hey,
I’d bluffed my way through things this far, why stop now? So feet-first I went
into my nuke-fork driven site and learned a little bit about not a lot. Hey, I
got it working, and it did what I wanted, and that was enough for me.
In the back of my mind though, I knew there had to be more. Then one day, I’m
not even sure how, I stumbled across this thing called Drupal. I became a lurker
and hung around the forums to feel the vibe, and the vibe was good. A good many
months went by before I took the plunge and downloaded a copy of the latest
stable release. Weeks went by before I installed it.
I got a little nervous at first because the installation instructions weren’t
as easy as I was used to. There weren’t any magic widgets that did all the
dirty stuff for me. Luckily, I had learned enough from the nuke-fork days to
get myself a basic install up and running. Then there were the modules, I
pretty much downloaded everything that had a cool sounding name and bunged it
in there. What struck me at this point was that, although instructions were
lacking, I hadn’t actually had any major difficulties yet. Everything seemed
intuitive and, to me, logical.
Everything was where it should be, with modules in the modules folder and
themes in the themes folder. One thing that begun to dawn on me was that, out
of the box, Drupal did many things very well. Then I started switching modules
on, and wow, it did even more things. The unnecessary complexity of the
nuke-fork site I had been working with suddenly became a great waste of my
life. I wanted to scrap several months’ worth of work and start again with my
new-found Drupal bluffing skills.
I’m not a qualified programmer by any means. I’m not even an unqualified
programmer. I see a manual and my eyes start to burn like a vampire who’s
just seen a garlic covered crucifix. Yet somehow, Drupal just seemed to work
for me. I look at the forums and I see much Drupal bashing and I can’t
understand it. Here is a powerful tool being given to the web community; a
product of the sweat and tears of many dedicated programmers.
I’m not saying that there’s nothing wrong with it. Drupal has a lot of
things that don’t appeal to all, but the beauty is in the way in which other
functionality can be integrated into it with relative ease. Somehow, I
understand it. There is a beauty to its simplicity. Simplicity is an
unfortunate word to use as it so powerful and complex in delivering its
simplicity.
Now I’m supposed to figure out what AJAX is all about.
Mark Ashmead
PREVENTING CONTENT SPAM
Spam! We all hate it when it turns up in our email inboxes, and it's just as
annoying on our websites when it appears in comments, trackbacks, or posts.
Fortunately, if you use Drupal, your worries are over. I've been using the
Drupal spam module on my website at townx.org [http://townx.org/] for about a
year, and it's fantastic! It combines multiple algorithms, including Bayesian
filtering which gets better the more you use it, blacklisting of spammer
URLs, blacklisting by IP address, and custom filtering by regular expressions.
It is highly configurable, allowing you to automatically delete spam, delete
spam after a certain number of hours, send emails to notify comment posters if
their comment is treated as spam, etc. Recently, the
functionality has been extended to trackbacks too, making it even more
essential. I recommend you get hold of it at the Drupal module page for the
Spam module [http://drupal.org/project/spam]. Thanks go to Jeremy,
[http://drupal.org/user/409], for creating the Spam module :).
Elliot Smith
[ [http://townx.org] ]
THE DRUPAL EXPERIENCE OF DONNY NYAMWEYA
I first encountered Drupal when it was availed by my hosting provider in early
2004. I had previously evaluated and used other GPL and commercial CMS
applications. It took time to get up to speed in Drupal in comparison with
simpler CMS applications such as Mambo/Joomla, and Magnolia which lack in
flexibility.
However, Drupal is easier to understand and is more feature-complete when
compared to more complex and 'bloated' CMS applications from the likes of
Microsoft and Vignette. Drupal's flexibility, apparent complexity, and ability
to be configured and tweaked for virtually unlimited uses have facilitated its
continued use in all my web projects.
As a web production manager by employment and a freelance CMS consultant,
Drupal's flexibility, constantly growing toolkit of modules, and vibrant user
community are priceless in implementing this CMS. The daily use and maintenance
of Drupal-based websites has enabled me to regularly support new members of the
Drupal community, my small way to show appreciation for this valuable
infrastructure.
Donny Nyamweya
[ [http://www.cmsproducer.com] ]
---------- Want to tell us your 2 cents? ----------
Our entire newsletter is written by the
community; without content donations
and feedback from people like you, we
wouldn't be here. Contribute here:
[http://drupal.org/contact]
---------------------------------------------------
------------DRUPAL SIGHTINGS------------
DRUPAL @ SPEEDGEEK
Drupal featured heavily in the SpeedGeek demonstration section of the open
source 'Penguin Day [http://drupal.org/www.penguinday.org/seattle/agenda]' in
Seattle on March 25, 2006. As part of the NonProfit Technology Conference
[http://drupal.org/www.nten.org/ntc], they gave 11 projects relevant to the
nonprofit sector the opportunity to highlight their work in 5 minutes while the
other participants circulated around the demonstrations, learning a bit about
each one.
Of these 11 projects, it was significant that 5 made use of Drupal in one way
or another:
* CiviCRM [http://drupal.org/www.openngo.org] - a CRM designed for non-profit
organisations.
* Democracy in Action [http://drupal.org/www.democracyinaction.org] - an
online campaigning service for non-profits.
* Citizen Speak [http://drupal.org/www.citizenspeak.org] - a service for
lobbying elected representatives.
* GoodStorm [http://drupal.org/www.goodstorm.com] - an ethical goods ordering
service.
* Chicago Artists' Resource
[http://drupal.org/www.chicagoartistsresource.org]
Along with CivicSpace [http://civicspacelabs.org] and CivicActions
[http://civicactions.com/], who contributed to other parts of the day, these
projects show that there now seems to be an ecology of Drupal projects which
complement and build on one another and which are combining to help Drupal
become the first candidate when selecting a CMS for a non-profit project.
Simon Pavitt
[ [http://www.headware.co.uk] ]
FP PASSPORT
FP Passport [http://passport.foreignpolicy.com] is a blog by the editors of
Foreign Policy magazine. Here you can read about the bread-and-butter foreign
policy issues of the day -- Iraq, the spread of nuclear weapons, energy
dependence, etc. -- as well as under-the-radar stories and angles unearthed
from a wide range of sources in America and abroad.
We chose Drupal to power this site for its extensibility and large set of
built-in features. More importantly, we chose Drupal for the strong
international community surrounding the project.
Thanks Drupal community!
Thomas R. Stec
------------DEV ZONE------------
THE STORY OF DRUPAL 4.7
There is a tale to be told about Drupal 4.7, namely about the people who have
joined the community in the last year. It's not like the old hats have not
worked hard but, well, that's expected from us (hey! now I am an
old hat!), right?
This is the way I see things. Others probably would emphasize on other people
or other aspects. So if you are not listed here, that means nothing more than
you are not in this list. So, without much further ado, the
people:
*Wesley Tanaka*
Wesley (wtanaka) from China has only been with us for 19 weeks. He sometimes
patches, but it's not the patches we love him for. Since the release of the
first beta of Drupal 4.7 in the beginning of December, he has opened no less
than 136 issues against the Drupal project. No one else even comes close to
this number. Please, please keep it coming!
*Markus Petrux*
Markus from Spain also joined 19 weeks ago. His nick is the same as his real
name: markus_petrux. He is the second behind Wesley with the issues -- since
beta one, no less than 92. To put these numbers into perspective, the third one
comes in with 50 and only eight people are above 20. Also, he persists for the
betterment of Drupal's security. Thanks for the persistance and your patience
with me!
*Karthik Kumar*
He is from India and with us for almost a year. On IRC we know him as |gatsby|
and on Drupal.org as Zen. I had complained to the devel list in January that
the form API conversion of core was not of uniform quality because those that
converted the core were learning and forming the form API at the same time they
were converting the core. Now, Karthik changed that. He almost singlehandedly
filed off most raw edges from the form API conversion. I had thought it would
have taken another release and a legion of people before this work was done.
Well, Karthik did it!
*Earl Milles*
His nick is merlinofchaos, and he is indeed a wizard from USA who joined 39
weeks ago. Maybe his core work is not among the biggest, but I am sure that his
modules will be immensely popular for 4.7. Views, for example is an infinitely
configurable module which lets you control how lists of content (nodes) are
presented. And there is the node access arbitrator which lets you use two node
access modules together. And... Give him some more donuts!
*Chad Philips*
He has been known as hunmonk for 48 weeks (with this nick, a bit less because
in the beginning he used thehunmonkgroup for his nick) and is from the USA. His
understanding of the innards of form API is among the best. The project module
you use to file issues would not be 4.7 compliant without him. Nor would be
form API be able to handle that... Thanks for pestering me with all those
multipage problems with form API!
*Angie Byron*
She is from Canada and joined us 43 weeks ago; we know her as webchick. She was
participating in the Summer of Code. Back in July, when Drupal.org was down, she
drew the frowning Druplicon, and since then she showers us with nice graphics
based on our beloved Druplicon. The married Druplicon couple on the front page
was also by her. But that's not enough -- she is into documenting and
programming too, synchronized the handbook and the help pages in Drupal, and
made most of the form API documentation. Oh, and in case you have not noticed:
the truly hilarious 4.7RC announcement [http://drupal.org/drupal-4.7.0-rc1] is
also her work.
*Richard Archer*
Richard lives in Australia and joined us 29 weeks ago. He was a real surprise:
he became the menu maintainer in almost no time. The menu system is our most
complex subsystem, and yet he mastered it in no time and provided a lot of good
and important patches. Alas, he does not frequent the IRC development channel,
nor has he come to DrupalCon, so I know little of him. Let's hope we meet
someday.
*Daniel O'Pry*
We know him as dopry; he is 48 weeks "old" with us and currently residing in
the USA. With Kjartan missing since August and walkah busier
than...well...walkah, we were in a desperate situation regarding bugs in the
file subsystem and the upload module. When all hope had faded, dopry took up
the torch and put all those bugs to fire. Great work, Daniel!
Karoly Negyesi,
[ [http://drupal4hu.com] ]
-------------SECURITY UPDATES-------------
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