The largest current installation of Drupal 4.4.0 in terms of community size has recently been upgraded to V.2.0. The common code for this blogging community powers motime.com and tipic.com (in English) and splinder.it (in Italian). Among them, there are more than 180,000 registered users.

One of the more interesting aspects of the Splinder/Motime project is the way that it takes advantage of a series of stand-alone modules written by Tipic, Inc. which showcase the flexibility of Drupal's module-based architecture.

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of this approach is the way in which the platform is integrated with a XMPP (Jabber) instant messaging (IM) system, which runs on Tipic's TIMP2 IM server. Upon registration, the same account is used on Drupal and the TIMP2 server. Users are encouraged to 'subscribe' to each other's blogs so that when a blog to which they have subscribed is updated, an alerts module sends the contents of the update (blog entry, comment or both) directly to the user's IM client if he or she is online and to a dynamically generated web page, always accessible to the logged-in user. This mechanism creates the feeling of "live blogging" among the community members and leads to the creation of very active real-time comment threads when a group of friends find themselves online at the same time.

The system works with any XMPP (Jabber) client which supports headlines and Tipic has also enabled a simple one-click browser-based java IM client for those members of the community that blog from computers on which downloads are not permitted.

With the introduction of IM-enabled mobile devices, the idea of carrying your blog (and the community which it supports) in your pocket is suddenly a reality. For those interested, Tipic provides a free IM client for a range of mobile devices called TipicME.

The blogger's control panel has been completely redesigned and is a great example of the kinds of customized solutions that Drupal permits. Powered by another stand-alone module, the new release shows how it is relatively simple to add increased functionality and to create an intuitive GUI to support it. The blog owner has all of the blog formatting controls that one could wish for, plus a suite of blog privacy and community management tools that will grow ever richer in the coming weeks. There is no other CMS out there that allows such a streamlined development path.

Splinder/motime fully exploits Drupal's powerful theming capabilities to give each site a distinctive look and feel. In addition, much work has been done on the private message module, bringing this function closer to the standards set by the various webmail services.

Actually, since it takes only about 3 minutes to open an account, and it's free -- if any of these features interests you as a user or developer, why not check it out for yourself? It's much easier to understand what we're talking about if you see it for yourself. Btw, both sites are also optimized for the iMode browser.

Tipic, Inc. is proud to be a member of the Drupal community.