CMSW2009-11-19

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• Drupal 7
  
• Cloud Hosting for Drupal
  
• Open Source Community
  

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Welcome to Greg Knaddison

by Andy McCaskey

Direct from a security conference in Washington DC, we are joined this week by Greg Knaddison, of Growing Venture Solutions in Denver. Greg was a major force behind DrupalCamp in Denver last summer, interviewed by Kara Karsten. Greg covers a range of Drupal related comments as we address stories in the news about Cloud Computing, the shift of Recovery.gov to Sharepoint (Away from Drupal), some of the rewards for participating in open source community efforts, and other topics.

Greg was kind enough to join us directly from the convention center- so there is a bit of noise on the audio, but some great content. Thanks to Greg for joining us !

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After 82 weeks of development, Drupal 7 hit the goal: September 7 code freeze. The current phase is called code slush and will span 5 weeks.

During Code Slush, only patches with no new functionality will be accepted into the code stream, with a few exceptions. “Important and necessary” API changes are still allowed, as are improvements to usability, accessibility, performance, and documentation.

Drupal module developers, into overdrive testing custom code with the new base. The D7CX Movement (Drupal 7 Contributed Modules) is an initiative to have 40 modules upgraded and solid at release time. drupal.org has a list of the 40 popular modules in the D7CX Movement. See drupal.org/node/578446 for more code freeze details.

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In large organizations, convincing your boss or department or project to use Drupal can sometimes be met with resistance. But in fact, a lot of the arguments work for Joomla as well. This following table has been instrumental in convincing decision makers regarding why Drupal (and by extension open source) is leaps and bounds better than proprietary content management systems.

From think.workatplay.com, a table to help convince decision makers that Drupal and Open Source are leaps and bounds better than proprietary content management systems. The table compares Drupal to a commercial CMS on factors such as cost/licensing, development community, business continuity, add-on functionality, cost to make changes to the core, and awards. Of course the table is designed to show Drupal as the clear choice, so each category highlights limitations of the proprietary CMS in contrast with the strength of Drupal.

Proprietary CMSs have a department that can work on the website, assuming they are all proficient with it. There are many thousands of Drupal developers (and companies) around the world. If the CMS company ever goes out of business, bought, or the vendor relationship changes, there is a risk of being stuck with a website no one knows how to operate.

If a Drupal company or vendor ever goes out of business or the relationship changes, there are a well-qualified group of others who can take over instantly.

There are typically a handful of extensions to any proprietary CMS system such as Shopping Cart, Forums, etc. All involve additional licensing and customization costs. With more than 1,800 available modules, (over 4000 extensions to Joomla), the vast majority of your site’s requirements can be addressed with Drupal CMS and the available add-on modules (in a shorter period of time).

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CMSW2009-10-05

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• Alfresco Gains DOD Certification
• Why Few Themes in Drupal ?
• Joomla Adds Amigos

CMS Weekly is a Technology Podcast with news from the world of Content Management and Enterprise Social Networking

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SEARCH ANY STORY YOU HEAR ON THE PODCAST

SuperDome Behind the Glass

by Andrew McCaskey
This past Monday, we were able to participate in the HP Tech Day series for the SuperDome Server.

It has been almost ten years since HP introduced the award winning product, and it has worn the years well.

Complete coverage of the event will be found at SDRNews – but here is the chat and Twitter stream from our live coverage to give you an idea of the event’s scope.

<a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&#038;task=viewaltcast&#038;altcast_code=04c84dd374″ mce_href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&amp;task=viewaltcast&amp;altcast_code=04c84dd374″ >HP SuperDome Tech Day</a>

Twitter Stream from HP SuperDome Tech Day

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• Take 10% off any order at GoDaddy.com! Code SLASH
• More blogs about SlashdotReview and SDRNews…

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Thanks to everyone who attended my session at DrupalCamp Philly today. Here are the slides from my presentation.

Thanks to Steve Karsch for sharing his slides from DrupalCamp Philly. His presentation was Drupal 7: What’s In It For You.

First the all-important Drupal 7 release dates: Code Freeze currently scheduled for September 1st, But no release date specified as yet. 2010?

It requires: PHP5, MySQL 5, PgSQL 8.3, and PDO.

Some highlights: PDO-based abstraction layer; support for any database supported by PHP; theming improvements; the Drupal7 User Experience Project.

Links to SimpleTest Handbook and other details on stevekarsch.com. Sign up now to help test at drupal.org.

Just sent @CMSExpo a copy of the Google #wave embedding #joomla module, setting up the demo now.

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This past weekend, August 8 and 9, Drupal enthusiasts gathered in CA for DrupalCamp LA. You’ll recognize some of the same folks we talked to at DrupalCamp Colorado in June – Platinum sponsors pingVision and acquia, and Gold sponsor Volacci. Other than these familiar names, the session offerings look completely unique.

Another event shooting for 200+ attendees with lots of out of state registrants is DrupalCamp Atlanta. This is the inaugural event for DrupalCamp Atlanta, is sponsored by the Atlanta Drupal User Group and is a one-day event on September 19th. Registration is free and lunch is included, thanks to generous sponsorship by MediaCurrent interactive solutions, Matrix, acquia, MailChimp, autotrader.com, Volacci, a small orange, Microsoft and CMS Website Services. Get involved or register at drupalcampatlanta.com.

And don’t forget DrupalCon Paris on Sept 1-5. You can find CMSWeekly coverage of DrupalCamp Colorado in June under the events tab of SDRNews.com.

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I might also note Drupalcamp LA in progress this week and have a look at some of the speakers there that you interviewed in Colorado. Whenever a group organizes a conference for the first-time there are a lot of unknowns – the phrase “if you build it will they come” is always in the back of your mind.

However, I am happy to report that the response so far to the inaugural Drupalcamp Atlanta has been just awesome – as I write this, we have 158 attendees, 15 sessions, 9 sponsors, 2 keynote speakers with strong Drupal credentials, and a passionate organizing committee. We’re setting a goal of trying to sell out at 250, which is the max capacity the venue can adequately hold.

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You may be one of the estimated 400,000+ people or organizations that have launched a Drupal site since the open-source content management system’s inception. Not to take the wind from your sails, but the work on your Drupal site is not immediately over after you launch – it is really just beginning. In short, a website developed using an open source or proprietary platform, is not a one-time capital expenditure.

The “car” analogy is often used in the Web 2.0 world, but it is germane. When one makes a major purchase like an automobile, the expectation is that a certain amount of ongoing maintenance and support comes with the territory – oil needs to be changed, brakes replaced, tune-ups, etc. Same would go for a Joomla site. Once launched, a website requires alert maintenance to keep it secure and accessible.

As an open-source technology, Drupal, for example, is supported by a passionate community of international developers who quickly find and fix security vulnerabilities, which means you need to be on the ball to install and test frequent patches, as well as migrating to the latest major versions where the ongoing support is provided in a timely manner.

Two questions that Mediacurrent would like you to consider are: one, what does routine Drupal support actually entail; and two, what are the ramifications if I do not properly maintain my site over time? They have a checklist at www.mediacurrent.com. The same questions would come to mind if your site is based on Joomla or any one of the other web content management systems.

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The folks at Acquia have some free stuff to give away and you can have a chance to win it, in exchange for 5 minutes of your time spent filling out a survey. So, pop on over to acquia.com and help them with their roadmap planning. The one randomly drawn winner will choose an Amazon Kindle 2, plus $50 in Kindle electronic books, or a pair of Bose QuietComfort Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones.

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Sun, Aug 30, 2009 12:45 PM
Our friend Ben Finklea at volacci.com blogged this week about a new Drupal module called “Socialize”, developed by Gigya and Acquia. Socialize enhances the social features of a Drupal site, enabling site owners to authenticate users to Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, as well as mail programs such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail. It allows your Drupal website to push content and user activity out beyond the site and into the social networks, driving interactivity and viral promotion.

As announced in a July 23 press release, other features of Socialize include enabling users to invite friends to the site, or to share site content or a specific event and send status updates, tweets and newsfeed events to their social networks. The Gigya Socialize module has been fully integrated with Drupal’s user action and trigger core modules so Drupal site owners can configure the viral promotion channels to work dynamically.

The module is fully configurable and installs in minutes with no programming. The module is available, free of charge, on Drupal.org. View a webinar of the tool under acquia.com.
http://www.gigya.com/public/Content/About/Press.aspx?m=Press&p=1281

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