For Drupal 4.5 one of our action points was improving the Drupal.org site itself. As well as making information easier to find for users, we wanted to make the site friendlier for people who are new to Drupal. As part of this, a new look was designed for Drupal.org. The style, called Bluebeach, was inspired by the Bluemarine Xtemplate and was designed by me, Steven Wittens.

In order to keep Bluebeach as a unique style for Drupal.org, the theme will not be made available for download.

I'd like to announce a new Drupal community and documentation project, Purdue University's Open Source Development and Documentation Project (OSDDP). Sponsored by the Professional Writing Program at Purdue, OSDDP is a community of almost 200 instructors and students from business and professional writing classes working together on a variety of projects:

With Drupal 4.5 around the corner, it is time to start talking about Drupal 4.6. If you plan to work on something, or to contribute to Drupal in one way or another, please share your personal battle plan in the comments. We are merely interested in what you plan to contribute, rather than what you'd like other people to work on. So please do not post personal wishlists and read on for more information.

One of the many new features of the upcoming Drupal 4.5.0 release is an improved localization system (locale.module). It provides an easy-to-use interface to upload translated strings into Drupal's user interface using the popular GNU gettext PO format. This will enable users to share their translations and distribute the effort of translating Drupal.

Information on what PO files are and how to use them is provided in the newly created Translator's guide section of the Drupal handbook.

This is worth the read. Check out Jeffrey Veen's critique of open source CMS's which makes some excellent points, some of which apply to Drupal. Note that he does give them credit for being better than their commercial counterparts:

"Open source content management software sucks. It sucks really badly. The only things worse is every commercial CMS I've used. But it really doesn't have to be that way."

For those that want the short version, here are the key points:

• Make it easy to install
• Make it easy to get started
• Write task-based documentation first
• Separate the administration of the CMS from the editing and managing of content
• Users of a public web site should never -- never -- be presented with a way to log into the CMS
• Stop it with the jargon already
• Why do you insist Web sites have "columns"?

Update October 5: Dries offers Jeffrey Veen a deal:

For each hour you or your company Adaptive Path spend reviewing Drupal 4.5.0's usability (free of charge), I spend 4 hours implementing your suggestions (free of charge). The review should be public, and the Drupal community should be behind the proposed changes. If you don't feel like setting up a Drupal site yourself, I'll set one up for you.

Update October 7: Jeffrey Veen responds.

We are pleased to announce that the Drupal 4.5.0 release candidate is available. A list of the major changes can be found in the CHANGELOG file. We fixed most pressing issues during the code freeze, so we'd like you to help polish this release and to help iron out the remaining issues: your comments on the stability, correctness and performance of this release candidate are more than welcome!

You can download the latest release candidate at:

http://www.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-4.5.0.tar.gz