After three years of open source development, Drupal 7 has finally been released to the public. As Ric Shreves previously mentioned in his article, there are literally hundreds of changes in Drupal 7. I've included below a list of the more significant changes from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7. I've also included a nice Drupal 7 marketing video via Jeff Robbins at the bottom of this post. Also there is always official Drupal 7 announcement for additional information on this latest version of Drupal.

Barring any unforseen changes to how I manage this site, I expect we will be upgrading CMSReport.com from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 within the next few months. I've been playing with Drupal 7 off and on this past year, but I must confess I haven't been as aggressive in my testing of this version of Drupal as I was with Drupal 6.

Some of the more significant changes in Drupal 7 since the release of Drupal 6 include:

1. Overhaul of the User Interface

Work has been done to improve the user experience and administration interface. The new administration theme "Seven", the overlay module, the dashboard and the configurable shortcut bar, all lead to a much more user-friendly interface.

2. Custom Fields

Drupal 7 bundles in the ability to add custom fields, similar in functionality to the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module. However, fields are no longer limited only to content types; they can be added to users, taxonomy terms, and other entities. Fields also have support for translations.

3. Image Handling

Drupal 7 brings native image handling to core. Image fields may be added to content, and have image styles applied to them, such as scaling, cropping, and other effects.

"Suffice it to say, we’re in the middle of one of the most important computing shifts in history. And as has happened before with other major paradigm transitions, new businesses will emerge to define and dominate markets."

- Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net, 2011: The Enterprise Resets, TechCrunch, January 2, 2011.

Editor's Note: The following aritlce is authored by Ric Shreves and first appeared online at  Open Source CMS Pro. Permission has been granted to repost the article here at CMSReport.com.

Now that Drupal 7 has gone through a couple of Release Candidates, we feel confident that what we can see on the screen today represents very closely what everyone can expect in the final Drupal 7 production release. So, with some certainty at our backs and the release date just around the corner (we hope!), we thought it was time for us to present a Drupal 7 “first look,” that is, an overview of what everyone can expect from the new Drupal 7.

There are literally hundreds of changes in Drupal 7. Many of those changes are “minor” in the eyes of most users, indeed, they are essentially invisible. This doesn’t mean those small changes aren’t important, simply that they aren’t on the radar for the average user. In this article we are going to focus on just the highlights, in three key areas:

On the Surface

The first thing you notice when you fire up Drupal 7 is a new look and feel. For the first time in years, the release includes new themes. The only holdover from previous releases is the Garland theme, which has been updated to be Drupal 7 compatible. The new themes include:

• Bartik: The new default theme. Shown in the screenshot on the left.
• Seven: The new admin theme, seen in several of the screenshots, below.
• Stark: A new starter theme, intended for jumpstarting theme creation efforts via sub-themes.

Of the four themes (three new ones + Garland), only Garland and Bartik are ready to use on the front end of the site. Stark is purely a base theme, barren of all styling excepting only the default system styles. Garland remains, well, Garland; it's basic and offers not a lot. Bartik is a big improvement with more than a dozen regions (module positions) available. Still, visually, Garland and Bartik are not worlds apart. Some additional variety would have been nice. (We note that the theme Corolla, which was included in earlier Drupal 7 beta releases did not make the final cut, sadly.)

The inclusion of a base theme (Stark) is a nice move -- giving themers who don't want to use Zen (or other external starter themes) an easy way to build their own themes via sub-theme creation. One of the most welcome changes in Drupal 7 is the revision of the administration interface. This is not a minor tweak – this is a complete revision of both the interface and the information architecture. Long overdue, I think we all can agree…

The new admin interface includes not only its own dedicated theme (Seven), but also a new overlay, toolbar and shortcuts menu, as shown in the screenshot, at right. The overlay gives you a light box approach to the admin layer, preserving in the background the front-end theme. Having a dedicated theme for the admin system is a huge improvement in usability for the system and that alone would be reason to celebrate, but changes don’t stop there.

The new toolbar is anchored to the top of the browser window, reminiscent of the popular Admin Menu module many of us used in the past. There is also a configurable shortcuts menu present on the bottom edge of the toolbar; you can add your own favorites to the shortcut menu. A related improvement in look and feel is the inclusion of the Vertical Tabs functionality in the core. The functionality improves usability and reduces admin system clutter.

The Drupal team has also taken a fresh look at the admin system’s labels and information architecture. They’ve cleaned things up, eliminated redundancies and clarified labels. All in all, the admin system changes finally bring Drupal into a state of usability that will make the system much more accessible for many non-technical users.

The final area I want to highlight is a set of minor changes that will be meaningful to old Drupal users. Drupal 7 has “cleaned house” and done away from some of the legacy features that, frankly, weren’t of much utility. Gone in Drupal 7 are the Mission Statement functionality and the Footer Message. The site Search is now simply a block, instead of having two different versions of the same functionality. Also gone is the Theme Switcher option for users. Again, changes that clean things up, reduce complexity, and improve usability of the system as a whole.

What a great year 2010 was for content management. Open source CMS projects seemed to have grown up this year while proprietary systems appeared to continue in their evolution. While social publishing systems may not have conquered the traditional content management system, the CMS definitely took notice by integrating as many social media features developers could come up with.

Below are the top ten stories of 2010 that were posted here at CMSReport.com. The stories in this list were ranked by the number of views per month since the articles first appeared at CMS Report. 

Top Ten Content Management Stories of 2010

1. Someone does another Drupal vs Joomla comparison
2. Open Source versus the Enterprise Solution
3. Ten Content Migration Tools to SharePoint Platform
4. Drupal themes go nuclear with Fusion
5. SilverStripe CMS becomes the first Microsoft Certified open source web app
6. Denial of Service on an Apache server
7. Guidelight Business Solutions video of DrupalConSF 2010
8. Sharepoint 2010 vs WCM Platforms
9. We Hear You: Our spam filtering needs to be improved
10. The MODx Revolution 2.0 Interviev

As you can see, stories on Drupal, Joomla!, Sharepoint, SilverStripe, and MODx brought a lot of visitors to the site. Not all the stories listed above would have been one of the ten I would have personally picked, but I'll respect the numbers behind their ranking. I personally, don't like "versus" articles yet readers seemed to flock those articles. Unfortunately quality of writing doesn't appear to always matter as there were some very well written articles we posted in 2010 that didn't make this list.

The year 2011 will undoubtedly bring change and new stories to the world of content management systems. I think the year will also be a year of decision for the direction we take CMSReport.com. I feel as if this site of ours is stuck somewhere between our roots as a niche blog and a potentially popular CMS news site. I'm hoping we make some changes in the new year that all our readers can appreciate and value.

In his well-known book “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” which is regarded for its timeless insights, Robert Fulghum reviewed some basic lessons of life we all learned as children that are universally true, even at the places where we work and within our social interactions. There’s a reason we invest a good portion of our educational funds in early learning: what we absorb and come to believe during our formative years influences our thoughts and decisions throughout our lives.

If you haven’t thought about each of the ten timeless truths listed below in terms of your business process automation goals, it may be time to rethink your ECM strategy. The payoff for ‘getting it right the first time’ is significant.

Here they are, rephrased a bit to help you make the connection:

1. Remember that everything dies. Hamsters, mice, people, and even company projects have limited life spans. Routine business processes, too, ultimately outgrow or outlive their usefulness. Take time to put everything in perspective. What are your company goals? Are your processes still relevant and in line with your vision? Are there processes you maintain purely because things have ‘always’ been done a certain way? Is anything ripe for change?
    
2. Be prepared. Remember the first day of kindergarten? Probably not, but chances are good that you carried a backpack or bag with everything you needed to address the routine challenges of the day. If you’re investing in technology, give yourself and your staff the time and resources they need to be prepared. You can’t expect miracles from even the best software and hardware. However, if you give your people sufficient time for analysis, planning, and improvement, ECM technology can produce phenomenal results.
    
3. Play fair. Be considerate. Even if you’re starting with a small project, keep the company’s enterprise goals and other departments’ needs in mind. Although you need to remain dedicated to your own vision, being selfish about your needs, simply refusing to make your project transparent, insisting on your own way of doing things, and similar self-centered practices will hurt your company in the long run. You’ll also miss great ideas for improvement that others could offer. You may have terrific ideas and plans, but someone else’s contributions might help them to prosper more fully.

Two security vulnerabilities were just discovered and a new release has been published to address them. The ImpressCMS Project has just released ImpressCMS 1.2.4 as a stable release - site administrators are strongly encouraged to upgrade their sites.

The imagemanager plugin used by the TinyMCE wysiwyg editor was bypassing the permissions system, allowing unauthorized creation of categories and folders within the image folder. The second vulnerability was a potential cross-site scripting, but required elevated permissions and access to the administration area of ImpressCMS.

David Bobzien: WordPress Analytics: What You’re Doing Doesn’t Measure Up via WordPressTV for WordCamp Las Vegas 2010.
 

"There is no best content management system. But there is probably a good CMS for what you’re trying to do. You need to do your homework and find the right fit. It's not something you put on a wishlist for Santa to take care of."

- Irina Guseva, 10 Common CMS Implementation Mistakes, CMSWire.com, December 16, 2010