Drupal Newsletter, Summer 2008

Summer 2008

As Drupal 6 matures, we are entering an exciting time for its users and developers. Content Construction Kit (CCK) and Views 2 both have release candidates, and most of your favorite modules have either already been upgraded, or are well on their way. This summer has seen a lot of activity, such as the nearly 20 projects of the Google Summer of Code, and there are great things planned, such as the highly anticipated Drupalcon Szeged. We have seen two Drupal books published by Packt, with a third on the way, and Lullabot released the first DVD of their new Lullabot Learning Series.

Read on for a quick overview of the Drupal News and upcoming events!

Drupalcon Szeged 2008

On July 24th the organizers of Drupalcon Szeged will close the accommodation service, so if you want to have us organize a hotel for you, you should register for the conference the coming week! You will still be able to see the hotel listing online, but you will have to organize everything yourself. Drupalcon Szeged is again pulling a very international public. So far we have registered attendees from 35 countries. Hungary has a narrow lead with 43 participants, but is closely followed by the US with 40 and Germany with 35 registered participants. There are 6 weeks left until the conference so there is still time to put a banner on your blog and get more people in your country to attend Drupalcon.

If you are working with Drupal there are a lot of really good reasons why you should become a sponsor. It's a unique opportunity to contribute back and get visibility in the community. Acquia was the first company to sign up for a Platinum package, Sun for a Gold. Check out our packages to see how you can also get some serious value this August. Our track chairs also would like you to know that there is still some time left to suggest sessions.

Recent News

Drupal 6.3 and 5.8 released, fixing security issues

Drupal 6.3 and Drupal 5.8, maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Drupal 6.3 also includes some changes to the installer to prevent file ownership issues on shared hosts; upgrades jQuery to version 1.2.6; improves PostreSQL compatibility; fixes performance issues in search, menu and form API and contains a variety of other small improvements. It should also be noted that the Views for Drupal 6 release candidate requires Drupal 6.3 to run properly. Read more.

Summer of Code 2008 Mid-term Results

Mid-terms for Google Summer of Code 2008 are upon us. We have 19 students and over 40 mentors working tirelessly to bring you fantastic code ranging from new design tools, to fantastic new APIs, to improvements to existing modules such as Views and NodeQueue. Read on to meet the students behind SoC, and actually test out preliminary alpha versions of their projects yourselves! Make sure to log feedback to the projects' issue queues. :)

For more information about Summer of Code, see the SoC 2008 group on groups.drupal.org. Read more.

Upcoming Events

(See the full section for more on Upcoming Events.)

A lot is happening this summer in the world of Drupal. Of course, Drupalcon Szeged 2008, in late August, is a highly anticipated event, with already 350 Drupal developers and users registered. However, there are many other conferences and events worth attending as well. Following are a few of them; see the Events group for a more complete calendar. Read more.

July 2008
- OSCON Drupal booth at dot org pavillion: July 21-23, in Portland, Oregon
- Media/Files Code Sprint: July 21-25, in Portland, Oregon
- Drupal Camp Colorado: July 26-27, in Denver, Colorado
August 2008
- Drupal Camp India, August 8-10, in DA-IICT, Gandhinagar, India
- Drupal at LinuxWorld, August 5-7, in San Francisco, California
- Drupalcon Szeged 2008, August 27-30, in Szeged, Hungary
- DrupalCampNYC is tentatively planned for August or September, although the dates and venue are not yet finalized.
September 2008
- OpenExpo, September 24-25, in Eulachhallen Winterthur, Switzerland
October 2008
- Montréal DrupalCamp2008, October 2-5, in Montréal, Quebec, Canada

Getting Drupal Done Interview

Read the full Getting Drupal Done Interview, by Michael Samuelson (mlsamuelson)

Any seasoned Drupaller will tell you that in addition to Drupal being great software, it's also a great community.

There are a number of folks in the Drupal community that "get it" and make consistent contributions. This interview is dedicated to uncovering a few of the tips, tricks and practices used by one of those individuals to Get Drupal Done. Read this summer's Interview with Peter Wolanin, aka pwolanin.

Don't assume that people are going to see your patch and recognize its importance. Especially for core patches. Even for critical patches you need to keep following up and re-rolling, as well as working to find qualified reviewers. Don't get aggravated when someone finds a typo in a code comment, or a commit means your patch doesn't apply. Essentially, if a patch is important to you, you need to maintain some ownership of it and advocate for its inclusion. And after the patch is in you should then be a good citizen and help update the documentation, especially when you help effect a core API change. Oh, and sometimes, just take a break from it and forget about it for a few days (or weeks even).