planet

The contributions process for non-core Drupal themes and modules is in need of a revamp.

Currently the process is a very loose one that does not require adherence to any tagging conventions or release process. This makes it very difficult to know the status of the modules that make up a given site. I believe this probably results in many site admins out there just leaving their site as-is because the process of updating is somewhat confusing and tedious.

We want to fix this.

While there are existing 4.6, 4.7, etc... tags applied to contrib modules, they are not consistently used by module authors. Furthermore, tags are being applied inappropriately (4.7 tags applied to 4.6 code that is not actually upgraded).

I just returned from BarCamp San Francisco , and I'd have to say it was a success.

This was my first BarCamp, so I had no idea what to expect. It really is as simple as it sounds. A bunch of folks show up and schedule events on the spot based on who is present and what they're interested in.

One of the great features of Drupal is its ability to run any number of sites from one base installation, a feature generally referred to as multisites . Creating a new site is just a matter of creating a settings.php file and (optionally) a database to go with your new site. That's it. More importantly, there's no need to set up complicated Apache Virtual hosts, which are a wonderful feature of Apache, but can be very tricky and tedious, especially if you're setting up a large number of subsites.

No worries, there is a solution.

This article explains a practical implementation of a technique outlined in the article "Sharing Drupal tables between databases using MySQL5 Views".

Problem

You have multiple (multisite) Drupal sites and you would like to manage the content for all of these sites through a single interface. Depending on the nature of a given piece of content, you may want the content published on one, several or all of your subsites, but you do not want to have to create copies of the same content for each site.

Solution

Taxonomy plus MySQL5 views. (NOTE: this solution will not work with versions of MySQL prior to 5.)

Ok, ok, maybe there actually is something to this Web2.0 business. A lot of the Web2.0 hype stems from the maturation of blogging, the software that helps people blog and RSS. All of these are good and bad things. Good in that there's more information available to more people today than ever before. Bad because there's more information available to more people today than ever before. Even before the term "blog" was coined, people were publishing personal journals, ramblings and general rants on the web. It was as true ten years ago as it is now, most of this content is... well... not very interesting to most people.