I'm looking at a fresh new copy of Drupal 5 Views Recipes. I wrote it, and I'm thrilled to see it in print.

I have a mix of Drupal 5 and Drupal 6 sites out there. If you've got any Drupal 5 sites, consider this book.

Appendices

I'll start by mentioning the appendices, since I think that's one of the most information-rich sections of the book. (The rest of the book consists of 94 step-by-step recipes.)

Appendix A – List of all default views available for Drupal 5
Appendix B – Comprehensive list of Drupal 5 field formatters, by module
Appendix C – Comprehensive list of Drupal 5 style plugins, by module
Appendix D – Views 1 hooks
Appendix E – Modules included in recipe ingredients
Appendix F – Additional resources and modules
Appendix G – Selected noteworthy patches to Views, sorted by topic

Appendix E can serve as an index to the recipes, and also includes a column indicating which modules are available for Drupal 6. Appendix G unlocks a whole host of functionality not available in Views 1 by default.

Recipes

Interesting content includes:
- How to overcome the case of the missing term in taxonomy views
- Views arguments
- Proximity search (Find every trailhead within 6 miles of a Senior Center, for instance)

For the last few months myself and quite a few community members have been working on a larger vision for our beloved Drupal documentation. It has taken quite a bit longer than I had hoped, but I want to put out a draft of an initial "roadmap" for documentation that outlines our bigger issues and an approach to tackling them. I've attached a document which has everything we've hammered out so far in a 10 page document along with three appendices. This post is just a short summary of what is in that document and to let people know that we are gearing up to kick things off and really make Drupal documentation rock.

For starters, we've spent a lot of time identifying problem areas, prioritizing them and setting out some target dates. When looking at the tasks we need to accomplish we recognized that there are two main areas to focus on: the documentation itself and the community of people that create and maintain it.

At DrupalCon DC 2009, an unexpected event happened. While sessions centered on development, writing code, performance, businesses and the community were happening up front, the community of Drupal designers and themers were connecting behind the scenes like never before. It started over Twitter and in small Birds of a Feather (BoF) sessions and ended with the designers and themers taking over a room for the last two days of DrupalCon.

When Zappos.com needed a content management system for its ever-growing content, it looked to Drupal after it was showcased at SXSW '08. Zappos.com built its first Drupal site, About.Zappos.com, as a way to test the features, capabilities and development effort of a Drupal site. With that project Drupal successfully showed itself to be both flexible and customizable and therefore a good fit for Zappos. Since then, Drupal has played a larger role at Zappos in a multitude of projects.

Established in 1999, Zappos.com has quickly become a leader in online apparel and footwear sales by striving to provide shoppers with the best possible service and selection. In 2008, the company’s gross merchandise sales exceeded $1 billion. Zappos.com currently stocks millions of products from over 1000 clothing and shoe brands. Zappos.com was recognized in 2009 by FORTUNE MAGAZINE as one of the “100 BEST COMPANIES TO WORK FOR”, debuting as the highest-ranking newcomer to FORTUNE’s 2009 list. More information about the company’s customer service philosophy, unique company culture, and job openings can be found at About.Zappos.com.