21 August 2012 At DrupalCon Keynote in Munich!

We write to you today from DrupalCon Munich 2012. Dries Buytaert, Drupal's founder, talked about the plans for the future. Drupal 8 is scheduled for release mid 2013 (August-ish) with a feeature freeze this December and a code freeze in February 2013. He also talked a bit about how he views Acquia vs Drupal. Acquia is his company, which obviously benefits from Drupal, but it also benefits Drupal. He sees a fear of competition in the Drupal community, which he finds unfounded since there is a lack of Drupal developers when it comes to the growing market for Drupal sites. It is not unheard of for Drupal projects to get halted or switched to some other framework due to lack of enough developers. We need more competition, not less!

09 June 2012 Geo-targeted blocks based on visitor IP (Drupal 7)

Middle East / North Africa

<?php
$detectedcountry = module_invoke('ip2country','get_country',$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']);
$mideast = array(
'AM','AZ','BH','GE','IR','IQ','IL','JO','KW','LB','NT','OM','QA','SA','SY','TR','TM','AE','YE','SO','DZ','MA','TN','EG','LY','CY'
);
if(in_array($detectedcountry,$mideast)){
return true;
} 
 
?>

07 June 2012 Image slideshows with Drupal 7

We are frequently tasked with creating custom image slideshows for Drupal sites.

We work mainly in Drupal 7, and for simple home page sliders we like to use this combination;

• New content type called Slide
• Use Link Image Field and add that as a field in your Slide content type. Allow for unlimited images. This will allow you to link your slides to custom URLs and add titles, rel attributes etc.
• A View (using Views) showing all results for nodes of type "Slide". Use fields display in combination with Nivo or Slideshow.
• Try either Views Nivo Slider or Views Slideshow. We have had more luck with Views Slideshow. 
• If using Views Slideshow, also consider Views Slideshow Configurable Controls, which enables next/pause/previous icons instead of just text links.
• Create a new Slide node - let's call it "Home Slides". Add as many pictures as you need, and provide links for them as needed (thanks to Link Image Field). Save.
• Edit your view and add a new display page or block. Add a filter for "nid" and restrict it to only the node ID of the "Home Slides" node you just created. Since we are including multiple images within a single node, we do not need to show multiple nodes. In the image field's settings make sure to NOT have it show multiple field results in a single row. We want them as separate rows so each photo will be separate. 
• Add sorting as needed. Nodequeue isn't an option here, but you don't need it since you can drag and drop the images when editing the node. 
• Your node is now essentially an image gallery exposed to Views. You could now also theme your Slide nodes to show thumbnail images in a gallery format, but you don't need to display the node. We only need it for Views.

07 June 2012 Headed to DrupalCon Munich!

There are some very interesting sessions lined up. Have a look: http://munich2012.drupal.org/

16 December 2011 Drupal 8 Roadmap

Drupal 8 has been in the works for some time now, and looks pretty exciting. We're particularly excited about web services becoming part of Drupal core, rather than being something you can add on. We have built custom web services applications for Joomla & SouthWare e-commerce sites, but would love to be able to do that more easily in Drupal too. 

Check out the Drupal 8 initiatives currently underway. Drupal 8 is still under pretty heavy (but steady) development and may be released some time during 2012. You can read up on the various Drupal versions here.

Drupal 6 is the most widely used version and is very stable at this point, with many modules available. Drupal 7 has been out since January 5th 2011 and took three years to develop. There are still many modules that do not yet work in Drupal 7, but that is a given considering how young it is. As a casual user the main difference you'll notice between Drupal 7 and 6 is Drupal 7's very attractive interface, which is reminiscent of WordPress. That is mainly due to its use of lightbox / modal effects and well-designed UI. User interface was definitely an area in which Drupal 6 was lacking, and as a result it became a main focus for Drupal 7. With that under control, we're very pleased to see Drupal 8 focused on more business-oriented features such as web services.

05 December 2011 Drupal 7.10 Released

Drupal 7.10, a maintenance release with numerous bug fixes (no security fixes) is now available for download. Several major bugs, including one causing errors with the 5.x branch of Drush, have been fixed this release. See the Drupal 7.10 release notes for a full listing.

Read more: http://drupal.org/drupal-7.10