Tech-Wanderings of Greg Holsclaw

Many like me couldn't make it to the DrupalCon in Szeged this last week. But there is no reason not to partake of the great sessions and keynote speakers. All the videos are now posted on the main session listing page. For many other sessions, the slides are attached.

Thank you to all of you videographers who took the time to setup up the cameras.

Through many crazy paths and a book proposal that some have seen already, I am embarking on writing Hello! Drupal for Manning Publications, the creator of the popular 'In Action' series. Manning has an Early Access program where some of the unedited chapters are available for free, and all chapters are available to anyone who pre-orders through the site.

Currently Chapter 1, 'Drupal, A Hammer that hits many Nails' is available to the public. I also plan on writing many tutorials here as well on the Handbook pages that intersect with the material that will be found in the full book.

Manning also said they can setup a direct affiliate program earning 15% of sales for Drupal.org and any partners who buy through the Drupal.org affiliation.

At the Sunnyvale 2007 DrupalCon, there was a conversation about the competitive and complimentary nature of the different OS CMSs out there (Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress...) and how through all the efforts the complete solution space will be search out. In the same way the more books that are being written about Drupal, the wider the reach for readers, regardless if some of the books overlap in content around the edges.

Hello! Drupal will be an introductory book, that assumes no Drupal or developer experience. A book for the unskilled technology enthusiast. Not everyone has the time or budget to make an awesome Warner Bros. Records kind of site, as there are plenty of mom-pop stores, independent authors, churches, local charities and bloggers who want more than a blog who can leverage Drupal to create their first web presense, and this book will help them do that.

I believe that Drupal covers a great and growing swath of the solution space for CMS/CMFs, and likewise this book will broaden the user base of Drupal for many first-time website builders.

From the Manning announcement page...

Drupal.org, the official home of Drupal on the web, describes Drupal as an "Open Source content management platform." That's a really boring description for a really cool piece of software.

How cool is Drupal?

• FastCompany.com uses Drupal to react automatically to reader behavior and present the most relevant news and features.
• Popular Science magazine uses Drupal as an online publishing platform.
• Yahoo! and AOL use Drupal for internal websites because of its flexible permissions system and user-friendly content updating features.
• Amherst University uses Drupal for a public-facing website and academic support services that add to classroom and distance-learning experiences.
• MTV, Sony, and Warner Brothers use Drupal for sites that blend rock-solid content management with advanced multimedia.

Whether you have a full staff and a bottomless budget like MTV, or you're just starting your first website, Drupal is a great way to bring your ideas to life. Hello! Drupal will help you get going, fast.

Hello! Drupal is a fun, engaging tutorial that introduces Drupal and shows you how to build Drupal-powered sites quickly and easily. This friendly, fully-illustrated book starts with the absolute basics for the new Drupal user—setting up your computer to use Drupal, building your first pages, creating user accounts, and so forth. By following a series of interesting examples, you'll learn to manage both small and large blocks of content as well as how to add navigational features like tags, menus, catalogs, and search.

With the fundamentals well in hand, you'll learn to build rich interfaces that include color, motion, and sound. You'll also pick up valuable techniques for building and supporting user communities. Along the way, you'll find out how to participate in the large community of Drupal users around the world.

Hello! Drupal is for readers with little or no experience with Drupal. If you've done websites using another technology, this book will help you use what you already know in Drupal. If you're brand new to the web, Hello! Drupal is a great place to start your adventure.

Doug Green, maintainer of the Coder Module, get all the praise this morning. On a quick vacation, I decided it was time to finally upgrade the two small modules that I maintain. I haven't used Coder in a while (though I will be using it much more now), but I knew that it had a helper for upgrading D5 => D6. And what a breeze Coder made upgrading my modules.

I have to admit that I hadn't played with Drupal 6 all that much until most recently. So some of the cool whiz-bang features had been lost on me until then. I had ready about them on the development lists, but had not actually used them until the last month or so. The updates to the Book module, though not groundbreaking or technically cutting edge, are great usability improvements.

I have recently endeavored to write a technical book title Drupal, Start Here! Having recently finished Chapter 2, I wanted to start sharing some short tutorials or helpful tips that are excerpted from the book. I hope all readers find them helpful and possibly even entertaining.

It is a bit tardy, but last month I attended the Google I/O conference. It was a two day conference where Google was able to showcase many of their open APIs, demonstrate how to use them, as well as having more general fireside talks about the future of HTML and a whole Social track highlighting Open Social, OpenID, and OAuth technologies. Chris DiBona gave his Open Source is Magic talk, which he gave as a keynote speaker at the Boston DrupalCon.

The main reason I am writing is that most of the speakers were mentioning how many installations of a particular API are out on websites, as a testament to how easy it is for developers to use their APIs. The thing that irked me is that many CMSs like Drupal have developed wrappers for their APIs, increasing the pool of potential users beyond developers, to Drupal users.

So I just had one of those moments when I realized that Drupal is creeping into all aspects of my subconsciousness. Today, a normal ordinary word morph into a Drupal related abbreviation. On the Bay Area Drupal group mailing list an email just went out with this as the subject line, "[BDUG] re: Drinks"

My mind instantly wondered if this message would have some new cool links for Drupal resources.

Drinks - Drupal links

No I am not trying to redefine the word. I am just showing how pervasive Drupal has become in my head.

So when I am trying to explain or evaluate the value or health of an open source project, the visibility of the project to the outside world is one key indicator. That being said, the Google Summer of Code (Drupal announcement, http://drupal.org/node/249455) is a great measure to evaluate how a project is doing, and maybe where it is going, especially when compared to other like minded projects. Here is a quick breakdown of the number of projects that Google is sponsoring for a few hand picked projects.

Drupal: 21
Wordpress: 8
Joomla: 15
Plone: 5
Zope: 5
Xwiki: 10
Wikipedia foundation (partial MediaWiki) 4
Moodle: 12
Django (a python framework): 4

I might have missed another CMS/CMF project, but once again Drupal is on top in the number of projects sponsored by Drupal (one more than last year it seems). I believe this establishes that Drupal has a well running community that crafts acceptable projects that are well staffed, both from the student and mentor side. So many sponsored projects by Google means they are confident Drupal is worth investing in, and will be around for a long time. Great job Drupal.

Drupal sometime gets a bad name because designers have a hard time theming the site. It is true that you need to know more PHP than a designer ever wants to know, but if you get a good theme implementor, working along side your design, you can get sites look like this: Vintage Faith Church:


My church needed a website that they could updated more easily than flat HTML files through Dreamweaver, and one that would use an in house designer, with custom art an photography donated by the community. They also have a Drupal developer willing to theme and implement the entire site. (Showcase page on DrupalCon, Boston, vote for the designer! (I just implemented it))

Well, Drupal's visibility is surely rising. I bought a jQuery book for reading on the long flight home once Boston DrupalCon, 2008 is over (yes, I will blog about it later). In jQuery in Action in the introduction, the author is giving examples how jQuery is taking the JavaScript world by storm, 'winning the support of major websites such as MSNBC, and well regarded open source projects including SourceForge, Trac and Drupal' (emphasis added).

Three cheers for Drupal and for the start of another great DrupalCon.