Packt Publishing is pleased to announce the release of a new Drupal book called Drupal 6 Site Blueprints authored by Timi Ogunjobi. This is a project-oriented book that provides readers with a starting foundation for 12 powerful Drupal Web site projects that can be tailored to their needs, including community functionality, blog networks, e-commerce stores, photo sharing, Google mashups, and so on..

Packt Publishing is also pleased to offer a 15% discount to any Drupal.org user. To purchase this book with this discount, simply purchase Drupal 6 Site Blueprints through Packt Publishing, and provide the code Dru6SBto. Also, keep in mind that Packt contributes a portion of every book sale right back to Drupal!

This book is aimed at Drupal users in the following categories:

• Students seeking hands-on experience building useful PHP-based Web projects using a rapid development environment.
• Hobbyists looking to build rich Web applications for personal and business use or for their clubs or society.
• Business owners who would like to test the Drupal platform and to see if it meets their immediate and future business needs for a Web application.
• Professionals who like to quickly present prototypes of new Web projects to their clients.

Drupal 6.14 and 5.20, maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as critical security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. Both releases fix some other smaller issues as well.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement, more information on the 5.x releases can be found in Drupal 5.0 release announcement.

After some 82 weeks of development beginning in February 2008, no one should be caught by surprise that we are in a code freeze for a release of Drupal 7, the next and best release of Drupal yet. However, as we all know, some of the best patches always happen at the last minute, and there are always last-minute patches that must happen. As part of my State of Drupal presentation at DrupalCon Paris last week, I talked about the Drupal 7 code freeze.

The Drupal Association has taken the first steps in implementing its new events plan. In this first phase, we will be working to schedule DrupalCons two years in advance, and we have established regional groups to manage this process. We have committed to adding a third annual DrupalCon that will float between regions not currently served by the European and North American Cons.

The Regional Organizing Groups are open to any interested party in the community, and free to choose their own structure and governance. They will select cities, choose local teams, and create programs for future DrupalCons. Australian, European, North American and South American Groups are forming or have formed and can be found on http://groups.drupal.org.

We are making these changes because DrupalCons are growing just as the Drupal community is growing and we expect that growth to continue and accelerate. We have committed to making DrupalCon available to anyone who wants to attend them, and this means that we need to select appropriate venues and work hard to be efficient in order to keep the ticket price affordable. The Drupal Events Plan is a work in progress and is available online for your review.

We are committed to having DrupalCons that serve the entire community while maintaining the sense of community that has been the hallmark of DrupalCon. You can become involved by joining the Drupal Association, taking part in a regional group and in your local Drupal group.

DrupalCon Paris 2009 is over and we want to have your feedback, whether you attended the event or couldn't make it this time around.

You are the ones, that can help us make DrupalCon your conference, by simply filling out this survey.
We have lots of questions for you and you have the answers to them!

In early 2009, The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) embarked on a website redevelopment project with Context, a web development firm based just outside of Philadelphia.

With over 7,000 members and an expansive website consisting of hundreds of pages ranging from informational tutorials to event registration to their national "Find a Photographer" service, the ASMP had quite a project in front of them, and were looking for guidance in determining which system would be able to meet their requirements.

After reviewing the ASMP's 11 page request-for-proposal and the wonderfully clean and organized designs provided by Chicago's Grillo Group, Context decided that Drupal was the only CMS that would make the project practical.