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DrupalCon San Francisco 2010

release candidate

Expected improvements coming in ocPortal 4.3

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By Bryan - Posted on 30 November 2009

With a release candidate out for ocPortal 4.3, you can expect a number of improvements in the upcoming official release of ocPortal. This version is a feature release that introduces a number of bug fixes since the last release as well as performance improvements and new features.

The new features expected to be included in ocPortal 4.3:

  • The "What's new" newsletter feature now allows you to easily re-order categories, change what categories are used, is better presented, and allows you to choose the reference date
  • Added link to ocPortal's bookmarks feature on the screen-actions block (commented out by default though)
  • Added Guest forum searching to OCF

Radiant CMS 0.9.0 coming soon

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By Bryan - Posted on 13 October 2009

A new version of Radiant, a Ruby on Rails content management systems, is coming soon. Radiant 0.9.0 has just been released as a release candidate.

In this release the interface for the CMS has been updated to make Radiant more stylish and compact. Apart from the stylistic changes, there are a few other significant changes to the user interface worth mentioning:

  • There are now two levels of tabs. The intent here is to provide more organization for folks that have a lot of extensions installed. The primary top level tabs are now “Content”, “Design”, and “Settings”.
  • Hot-keys have been added for saving. You can now press Ctrl+S to save a page and continue editing, or Ctrl+Shift+S to save a page and return to the index page.
  • The number of flash messages have been reduced in favor of status messages that pop up when you submit a form.
  • Support has been added for the tab key to text areas. On Safari and Firefox there is also support for multi-line indent and unindent.

There are a number of changes that did not make it into this release candidate that still may make it into the final version in one form or another. Additional features that may be added by the developers in the final version include internationalization, asset management, password reset, filter toolbar, and a revamped settings interface.

The original announcement for this release candidate has additional information and can be found at RadiantCMS.org.

Coming Soon: dotCMS 1.6.5

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By Bryan - Posted on 23 September 2008

Curently as a release candidate, dotCMS 1.6.5 is shaping up to be feature packed.  While you may want to wait for the official release, there is no reason to wait on finding out what's new with dotCMS.

The new 1.6.5 version includes almost 200 improvements and fixes.  Highlights include:

  • Widgets
  • Major Performance Improvements
    • Now uses enterprise ready JBoss Cache.
    • Velocity Files cached in memory across cluster for speedier parsing.
  • Simplified Configuration, Maintenance, Installation and Upgrades
  • webDAV file access
  • User Interface Improvements / Simplified Inline Editing
    • Less user confusion:  new user interface cleanly distinguishes content from widgets/dynamic pulls.
  • PDF export
  • Web Form Improvements
    • Online webform builder allows end users to create forms without knowledge of HTML.
  • Other Improvements:
    • Google Maps Macro.
    • TinyMCE WYSIWYG upgraded to 3.1.
  • Over 120 bugs squashed.

Another weekend with Drupal 6

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By Bryan - Posted on 09 February 2008

Yesterday evening, I spent about two hours updating my site from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 RC 4 for another weekend test at my site. About 30 minutes was spent backing up the site and installing Drupal 6. The rest of my time was spent with tweaking things via Drupal's admin menus as well as looking at the contributed modules and themes available for D6. I'm currently using the Salamander theme and only two contributed modules, Image and CAPTCHA. I also spent some time placing snippets of PHP code in my blocks to replace many of the functions I was doing with Views. The end result is that with only two hours of work, I am just fine running CMSReport.com on Drupal 6

As I said last week, it's amazing how many people overlook the power of Drupal...even without its contributed modules. Yes, I'll be glad when the Views, Panels, and even the TinyMCE contributed modules are ready to use with Drupal 6. But I've always looked at contributed modules as modules of convenience and not necessity. I'm convinced that most people do not have to wait for Views to move onto Drupal 6. Views only automated a number of SQL tasks that can easily be done with PHP. Some Drupal users are going to object when I say it is "easy" because they are not PHP developers, but you know what, I'm not a PHP developer either. In fact, I'm kind of slow, but I seem to manage along just fine with D6.

As usual during this period of the development process, people are wondering if the new version of Drupal is ready to be released or if there will be another release candidate. Whether this is the last release candidate or not for Drupal 6 I'm not sure anyone can really say. All I will say is Drupal 6 feels ready to me.

Running Drupal 6 on the weekend

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By Bryan - Posted on 02 February 2008

As most Drupal users already know by now, Drupal 6 is currently at a Release Candidate 3 stage of development. For the Drupal community, this is a time when the developers are wanting people to test, report, and help fix any bugs found in these development version of the Drupal software. At this stage of development, Drupal.org still does not recommend Drupal 6 to be ran on the production server.

As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Although, I started CMS Report with a beta version of Drupal 4.7, I was a little more cautious when it came time to upgrade to Drupal 5. During the past few months, I've been very cautious in running the site live with Drupal 6 as I haven't wanted to distract visitors to this site from their routine due to a Drupal meltdown.

However, I have found that I'm lousy at testing software if the software is not being used "live". There just isn't the adrenaline rush I need when I play it safe. So I've decided, when time allows, that I'm going to start running my site on Drupal 6 during the weekends.

While some of the contributed modules such as Views and Panels are not yet ready to be used for Drupal 6, I'm amazed and reminded just how much the Drupal Core can support a site such as mine. Just how far along is Drupal 6 RC3? Consider this...I spent my first two hours this evening running with very few problems. To my embarrassment, I realized later in the evening that I wasn't running Drupal 6 RC3, but in fact has accidentally loaded and installed Drupal 6 Beta 3.