Drupal Planet Rejoice!

Thanks to valiant efforts by community of coders, Drupal 6 is released to the world today (Feb. 13, 2008). This newest iteration of the open source content management system offers significant benefits to the geeks who deploy Drupal and "make it work" for customers around the world.

Join the fun (plus it makes sense):

The Drupal 6 branch is maintained by Gábor Hojtsy with the help of Dries Buytaert based on feedback from the issue queues. The first maintenance release will be 6.1. Please note that as of now, the Drupal 4.7 branch is no longer maintained, so switching to Drupal 5 or 6 is strongly advised.

Noteworthy additions include:

• Improved installer - making for well ... improved (read: easier for newbs) installs
• Multi-language - character handling baked-in (this is huge for global adoption)
• OpenID - built-in to stave off the profile/password overload conundrum
• Admin menus - tuned-up with intuitive organization and handy dropdowns
• Improved templating - theming and templating is one of the biggest jobs in any Drupal deployment; the system has been overhauled and is one step closer to being easier for designers and developers to work with
• Draggable blocks - allowing for instant re-arranging rather than by numerical "weight"
• Transition state Actions - simple workflow actions can be associated with a transition (i.e. send email when this content is published)
• Category revisions - Changes to categories and vocabulary are treated "versions"

So, none of this is news to Drupal enthusiasts who follow the updates carefully or even contribute to the project. So what does this mean for the people who don't know yet? Who don't care? Or who are choosing between other CMS's?

I think these changes (while admittedly lacking in really exciting talking points for the non-geeks) reflect an increased focus on usability and offer ways to do more with less.

Notably, more themes and easier customization means more adoption and creation of sites which move beyond “three columns + header”. Already we see Drupal sites popping up almost unexpectedly in unknown places and these changes (though seemingly small) will mean more huge social web applications using Drupal as well as more small projects with strained resources able to built out quickly and inexpensively.

So how to find out more? From the Drupal 6 page:

For installation instructions, please see the file "INSTALL.txt" in the root directory of your Drupal 6.0 distribution. For a video walk-through, see the videocast about installing Drupal 6.0 by Addison Berry.

For upgrade instructions, please see the file "UPGRADE.txt", in the root directory of your Drupal 6.0 distribution. For a video walk-through, see the videocast about upgrading to Drupal 6.0 by Greg Knaddison.

Coder, a contributed module maintained by Doug Green, provides automated assistance with converting your Drupal 5 modules to work with Drupal 6.

For support options, please see the support page. For questions, or to review the experiences of others, visit the forums for installation problems or upgrade problems.

Drupal 7 is already underway and Dries blogged a wishlist based on his State of Drupal presentation in Barcelona. Here's the crib notes:

• Better media handling
• Custom content types in core
• WYSIWYG editor
• Better performance
• Better tools to structure/organize content
• Basic Views like module
• Automatic upgrade functionality
• Improved node access system
• Better internal APIs
• Better external APIs (import/export, web services)
• Usability

In the meantime, help spread the word about the release of Drupal 6.

How? The Association knows.

• Join the Drupal Association
• Sign up at Drupal.org (no cost)
• Submit your Drupal-tagged feed to Drupal Planet (with over 16,000 subscribers)
• Subscribe to the Drupal marketing group

Then, join other Drupalists embarking on this promotional campaign!

1. Blog about Drupal 6 release and what it means to you and your customers/friends/colleagues/mom
2. Link back to the Drupal.org Drupal 6 post, the press release, and Digg the Drupal 6 post
3. Announce using your preferred social media tools - Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku, whatev ...
4. Bonus: Add and/or blog about Drupal case studies, showcase sites, and success stories
5. Extra Credit: Contact the Drupal Association to help with event sponsorship or advertising

What's this Drupal Association anyhow?

The Drupal Association is an organization dedicated to helping the open-source Drupal project flourish. We help the Drupal community with funding for infrastructure, events, marketing and distribution.