Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS) platform and is supported by a large developer/user community. Its popularity as a CMS is ever-growing, and its usage in the private and government sectors is consistently praised for its flexibility and richness of features. Through its large developer/user community Drupal has been able to expand its capabilities and usability through the many modules that can be incorporated into it.
Drupal 7 Is Coming & It’s Just Around The Corner
Drupal 7 is the long-awaited successor of the already widely popular Drupal 6 – 2009 alpha releases for Drupal 7 have been released and showed just how different, better and powerful it will be compared to its predecessor. Currently the Drupal 7 development is in Code Freeze, which means it has stopped core development, meaning any large / major changes for features/functionality will no longer be considered; the Drupal development team is now concentrated just on major bugs and issues to pull Drupal 7 into the Beta phase. A Beta is expected sometime soon and an optimistic goal has been set for the first release candidate to come out during DrupalCon 2010 in San Francisco, April 19th – 21st.
Killer Drupal 7 Features
User-Friendly Back-end UI – Drupal 7 is sporting a new user-friendly interface, make it easier for users to navigate and work on their Drupal-based site. The improved and more user friendly feature set is one of the main goals for the new Drupal 7. This is based around the Drupal 7 UX project, which spelled out the new interface and usability features that would benefit all levels of Drupal users.
Quick Glance at the new Administration Bar and UI.
New Configuration UI – more organized and better categorized.
Administration Bar / Dashboard – Drupal’s back-end now has an administrator bar which consolidates and provides all the site’s configuration and settings into one convenient toolbar. This also includes a very customizable Dashboard, which allows you to manage your site in your own customized task pane.
The Dashboard- Allows for flexible management with your custom needs.
Shortcut Bar – In addition to the Administration Bar, Drupal 7 also now provides a Shortcut Bar, which allows the user to add their own shortcut to handle and manage their site. An example is to add a shortcut for Creating Graphic Content or view reports. It even allows you to save variations of your shortcut bar, so you can utilize different shortcuts bars based on your activity.
Edit on Page – Allows the user to now edit an element/content on the page without being sent to another page to edit it. This first allows the user to have an interface integrated on the web page they’re viewing and will be given the option to edit the element. Second it will launch an overlay with the editing tools to edit the element. This feature provides a nice simple interface and seamless capability with editing the content on pages.
Edit on Page – creates a light highlight box and contains a familiar zen template feel for editing the content elements.
Overlay edit window and a look at the new edit page.
Popular Modules Integrated now with the Core – The Drupal community has provided many useful and vital modules that have made Drupal better and better, so Drupal 7 will now include some of those popular modules directly in to its core framework.
To name a few:
The core will now utilize a basic feature specific variation of Content Construction Kit (CCK) into its core; this will provide quick and advanced construction of content allowing creation of custom fields without having to code them and all through the browser interface.
Image cache and Image API have been integrated into the core; providing a feature set for resizing and cropping images for your site.
Path is also integrated into the core, which allows you to set a URL path name for the node.
Module Unit Testing – Drupal will now have integrated into its module system a unit testing system, which will test and indicate problems for users with module integration, and for compatibility of developer’s code for module development. This will provide better stability of the Drupal framework and prevent side-effects of new code wihtin the Drupal framework.
Themes – The theme system will be getting additional features such as integration of jQuery UI. The theme system will include a theme builder, which allows theme building options such as panels, grids, etc. The Drupal 7 theme will also be integrating popular features of the Zen template into its theme framework. The new theme system will provide greater customizable flexibility for all users.
Appearance Section (aka Theme section) – New look for managing themes and settings.
Conclusion
So, Drupal 7 has demonstrated with its many new features and functionality that it is better, far more flexible and has taken its usability to a whole new level. This is very true and better reflected through the establishment of Drupal Gardens, which uses Drupal 7 as the base framework for the social site-building resource. Drupal Gardens currently running in Beta commits to the creation of a website within a few minutes, which puts to the test Drupal 7′s ability to be fast and flexible for development. Therefore, look forward to Drupal 7 being a greater and more powerful CMS to power your websites.
Drupal 7 Feature Review
What Is Drupal?
Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS) platform and is supported by a large developer/user community. Its popularity as a CMS is ever-growing, and its usage in the private and government sectors is consistently praised for its flexibility and richness of features. Through its large developer/user community Drupal has been able to expand its capabilities and usability through the many modules that can be incorporated into it.
Drupal 7 Is Coming & It’s Just Around The Corner
Drupal 7 is the long-awaited successor of the already widely popular Drupal 6 – 2009 alpha releases for Drupal 7 have been released and showed just how different, better and powerful it will be compared to its predecessor. Currently the Drupal 7 development is in Code Freeze, which means it has stopped core development, meaning any large / major changes for features/functionality will no longer be considered; the Drupal development team is now concentrated just on major bugs and issues to pull Drupal 7 into the Beta phase. A Beta is expected sometime soon and an optimistic goal has been set for the first release candidate to come out during DrupalCon 2010 in San Francisco, April 19th – 21st.
Killer Drupal 7 Features
User-Friendly Back-end UI – Drupal 7 is sporting a new user-friendly interface, make it easier for users to navigate and work on their Drupal-based site. The improved and more user friendly feature set is one of the main goals for the new Drupal 7. This is based around the Drupal 7 UX project, which spelled out the new interface and usability features that would benefit all levels of Drupal users.
Quick Glance at the new Administration Bar and UI.
New Configuration UI – more organized and better categorized.
Administration Bar / Dashboard – Drupal’s back-end now has an administrator bar which consolidates and provides all the site’s configuration and settings into one convenient toolbar. This also includes a very customizable Dashboard, which allows you to manage your site in your own customized task pane.
The Dashboard- Allows for flexible management with your custom needs.
Shortcut Bar – In addition to the Administration Bar, Drupal 7 also now provides a Shortcut Bar, which allows the user to add their own shortcut to handle and manage their site. An example is to add a shortcut for Creating Graphic Content or view reports. It even allows you to save variations of your shortcut bar, so you can utilize different shortcuts bars based on your activity.
Edit on Page – Allows the user to now edit an element/content on the page without being sent to another page to edit it. This first allows the user to have an interface integrated on the web page they’re viewing and will be given the option to edit the element. Second it will launch an overlay with the editing tools to edit the element. This feature provides a nice simple interface and seamless capability with editing the content on pages.
Edit on Page – creates a light highlight box and contains a familiar zen template feel for editing the content elements.
Overlay edit window and a look at the new edit page.
Popular Modules Integrated now with the Core – The Drupal community has provided many useful and vital modules that have made Drupal better and better, so Drupal 7 will now include some of those popular modules directly in to its core framework.
To name a few:
Module Unit Testing – Drupal will now have integrated into its module system a unit testing system, which will test and indicate problems for users with module integration, and for compatibility of developer’s code for module development. This will provide better stability of the Drupal framework and prevent side-effects of new code wihtin the Drupal framework.
Themes – The theme system will be getting additional features such as integration of jQuery UI. The theme system will include a theme builder, which allows theme building options such as panels, grids, etc. The Drupal 7 theme will also be integrating popular features of the Zen template into its theme framework. The new theme system will provide greater customizable flexibility for all users.
Appearance Section (aka Theme section) – New look for managing themes and settings.
Conclusion
So, Drupal 7 has demonstrated with its many new features and functionality that it is better, far more flexible and has taken its usability to a whole new level. This is very true and better reflected through the establishment of Drupal Gardens, which uses Drupal 7 as the base framework for the social site-building resource. Drupal Gardens currently running in Beta commits to the creation of a website within a few minutes, which puts to the test Drupal 7′s ability to be fast and flexible for development. Therefore, look forward to Drupal 7 being a greater and more powerful CMS to power your websites.
Want To Test Out Drupal 7?
Resources For Further Reading