News and announcements

After half a decade of being the lead of the best code any Content Management Framework has, Dries' personal site has been Drupalised at last.

GUADEC is the main event of the GNOME community, celebrated once a year. We have recently adopted Drupal as the platform of the GUADEC's website (http://beta.guadec.org) and we have decided to launch a contest to choose a GUADEC logo and Drupal theme: Artists Wanted.

PHPArchitect is a printed magazine devoted to spreading information about PHP and related projects like MySQL, PHPMyAdmin and... Drupal! Look at the cover of the current issue and you will see 70% of the frontpage is taken by our beloved Druplicon.

Organizations, these days, are demanding content management applications, from company homepages to large, community websites. Author Titus Barik shows you how you can let Drupal help you build these sites quickly and efficiently by building on a common, modular framework.

On this page, Druplicon is introduced to the public as:

If you've already seen the cover (and if not, take a look!), you may be wondering what that raindrop-type-character is all about. It's called the "Druplicon," and it's the mascot and logo for a PHP content management system that is gaining more and more momentum: Drupal. Titus Barik takes you through the basics of how to use Drupal to create a real website, in short order, and without rewriting that same form-processing code.

Today I received a very nice package in the mail; my Drupal book is finally available!

When I first met Dries Buytaert, in February in Antwerp, we discussed the need for a book explaining how to use Drupal. We agreed that such a book would be a great asset to the many people who are becoming interested in our great software. Since I had already decided that it was my goal to write a Drupal book, I expressed this to Dries.

Soon after the conference, Dries was approached by Matt Wade, an editor at Apress, about writing 1/3 of a book about building online communities. The other 2/3 would discuss phpBB and WordPress, two other immensely popular projects that address different niches. As Dries was too busy with his studies to write a book, he introduced me to Matt.

The result was a project that lasted until October; writing the first book about Drupal. I knew that I would need lots of support, and therefore asked James Walker to be the technical editor. This turned out to be a very good move, as James is a "Drupal Rockstar" who always knows the smallest technical details, and has worked with many many clients and other people to know which parts of Drupal are hard to grasp, and where the hidden sticking points are. He helped me decide how to present the many concepts and capabilities that are not always intuitive.