CMS | Website Content Management Systeem » Planet Drupal http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl Reclamebureau Connexx CMS weblog Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:46:04 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Docs Team 3rd Quarter 2011 update http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/docs-team-3rd-quarter-2011-update/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/docs-team-3rd-quarter-2011-update/#comments Tue, 27 Sep 2011 22:44:18 +0000 jhodgdon 1286542 at http://drupal.org Hello from Jennifer and Ariane, your friendly Drupal Documentation Team co-leads! It’s time for a quarterly update on what’s happening in the Documentation Team—we've been working on some major restructuring of documentation and the Docs Team since our last update (June 28, 2011), and we'd like to get you up to date on our plans, and other events and news.

Docs restructuring

The big news for this quarter is that we are in the midst of some restructuring of the online Drupal documentation, as well as of the Documentation Team itself. Nothing has been completely settled yet, but here is an outline of our plans, reasoning, and links to more information and where you can get involved in the discussion.

Community documentation

The main issue we need to resolve is that the current online documentation on Drupal.org is way too overwhelming for one coordinator to manage. Having one coordinator is a single point of failure, and has led to several past Docs Team leaders getting burned out and leaving the post.

The current documentation has many features of a wiki: anyone can edit most of the pages, and anyone can add new pages... Yet we have found that potential documentation contributors are timid about actually editing and adding pages. So what we would like to do is turn responsibility over to the community as a whole, and make it abundantly clear that everyone can edit and contribute. The plans have been solidified on this issue: #1278256: Develop a plan to make it more clear that the current Documentation on drupal.org is community maintained., and if you'd like to help with the infrastructure changes (site building and module development), we are currently coordinating docs infrastructure work on http://groups.drupal.org/node/174499 . Follow-up changes to the infrastructure are being discussed on #1287784: Follow-ups to improve the community docs.

Curated documentation

Once we have those changes deployed, the next idea is to start a new section of documentation that will be more directly curated and maintained by the official Documentation Team leadership—and therefore, more limited in scope. The idea here is that careful decisions will be made about what are the "essentials" that belong in this documentation (which might be called "official documentation" or "user manual" or "curated documentation" or "essentials" or ...), and a small team will be responsible for maintaining the documentation. This idea has not been completely fleshed out yet; it's being discussed on issue #1291058: Make a curated docs section if you'd like to join the discussion.

Outside documentation

Another idea that's in development is to make it possible to search external documentation—for instance, Drupal tutorials on blogs, and curriculum on Drupal company web sites. Lin Clark is currently exploring ideas for automatic collection of posts involving RDFa/microdata and SPARQL, and there will hopefully be more ideas and discussion about this in the next few months. Watch the Documentation Team on groups.drupal.org for updates!

API reference

We don't expect anything to change in the process, maintenance, or location of the API reference site on api.drupal.org. That process is actually working fine, and Jennifer is pleased to report that there have been many new contributors stepping up to submit patches lately. (Note: sprint coming up—see below!)

July - September events

Here are some events that the Documentation Team participated in during the third quarter of 2011:

    DrupalCon London - BoF Gathering
  • At the end of August, many from the Docs Team were at DrupalCon London. We had BoFs ("Birds of a Feather" informal discussions) about DITA (a standard for documentation), the proposed new Help system for Drupal 8, and Lin Clark's ideas about using RDFa or microdata to build an index to documentation from Drupal Planet (see above).
  • At DrupalCon, there was also a Core Conversation session about DITA and the new help system.

    • DrupalCon London - Sprint

  • And of course we also had a very successful Documentation Sprint on the last day of the conference, with three tables of participants helping each other become knowledgeable documentation contributors. Thanks to all who participated!
  • We are holding weekly "Documentation Office Hours"—one-hour IRC meetings on Tuesday afternoon (North American time), open to anyone for questions and discussions about contributing to documentation. It seems like it's been very helpful to have a definite time when people can find us on IRC, and we plan to continue with this schedule for the foreseeable future.

Upcoming API docs sprint

The API documentation on api.drupal.org has been improving slowly but surely over the past couple of years (I think/hope). But there are still quite a few areas where the documentation does not conform to the API documentation standards. Unfortunately, patches that do wholesale changes to documentation headers are disruptive to the ongoing improvements of the Drupal code, since they often require that many patches be "re-rolled" so that they will apply to the new code-base. So, we've been told several times that we needed to postpone these types of large-scale updates.

However, in early November, a patch is scheduled to go into Drupal 8 that will move all of the core Drupal files into a "core" directory. This will be a huge disruption, as every patch for Drupal 8 will need to be re-rolled. Because of this, it's a great time do other disruptive work, and we plan to have an API Documentation sprint just after that patch goes in, where we'll do a defined set of wholesale improvements to the in-code docs for Drupal 8. Mark your calendar—I'm hoping that we have lots of participants (including new API docs contributors) so the work for each person will be manageable!

Process, communication, and infrastructure milestones

Aside from the infrastructure and team reorganization mentioned above, there were some smaller initiatives in the Documentation Team this quarter:

  • In July, Neil Drumm (drumm), with help from a few others, deployed a new feature to your Drupal.org user profile and Drupal.org company profile, aimed at recognizing documentation contributions: there is now a line in the History section of user profiles and the right sidebar of the new Marketplace company profile that says something like “Over 100 edits”, reflecting how many documentation page revisions you have made since joining Drupal.org. This is a small way of recognizing documentation contributions to the Drupal project.
  • At DrupalCon Chicago, Dries suggested that in Drupal 8 development, each change would have to pass through a series of "gates" in order to be accepted, and Documentation was listed as one of his "gates", but it wasn’t defined what the gates really meant. So, a conversation was started with Jennifer, Angela Byron, and other members of the community, and in July, the Documentation gate standards were adopted. The adopted gates are listed on the gates page.
  • In July, Angela Byron and Jennifer (along with many others) finalized two changes to the Drupal issue workflow: Issue Summaries and Change Notification nodes. With issue summaries, anyone can now edit the node body of any issue, to use the body as an Issue Summary, and we have a suggested issue summary template to use when filing or updating issues. With change notification nodes: for Drupal Core (and any other project that chooses to use them), after an issue is fixed, if the committed fix involves changes to the user interface or programming interface, a Change Notice node should be created to document the change. Then the Documentation Team, Coder module team, Examples module team, module developers, and theme developers can all visit http://drupal.org/list-changes (simple view) and http://drupal.org/list-change-updates (maintainer view) to find relevant changes that affect them or that need to be acted upon.
  • Jennifer mentored Google Summer of Code student Tamás Demeter-Haludka (Yorirou) over the summer, who created the Conditional Text module. We expect to use this for the new Help system and probably the curated docs as well.

Next steps

If you're interested in helping with Drupal documentation:

That's all for now—we hope that your fall (or spring, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere) goes well, and we'll be in touch!

]]>

Hello from Jennifer and Ariane, your friendly Drupal Documentation Team co-leads! It’s time for a quarterly update on what’s happening in the Documentation Team—we’ve been working on some major restructuring of documentation and the Docs Team since our last update (June 28, 2011), and we’d like to get you up to date on our plans, and other events and news.

Docs restructuring

The big news for this quarter is that we are in the midst of some restructuring of the online Drupal documentation, as well as of the Documentation Team itself. Nothing has been completely settled yet, but here is an outline of our plans, reasoning, and links to more information and where you can get involved in the discussion.

Community documentation

The main issue we need to resolve is that the current online documentation on Drupal.org is way too overwhelming for one coordinator to manage. Having one coordinator is a single point of failure, and has led to several past Docs Team leaders getting burned out and leaving the post.

The current documentation has many features of a wiki: anyone can edit most of the pages, and anyone can add new pages… Yet we have found that potential documentation contributors are timid about actually editing and adding pages. So what we would like to do is turn responsibility over to the community as a whole, and make it abundantly clear that everyone can edit and contribute. The plans have been solidified on this issue: #1278256: Develop a plan to make it more clear that the current Documentation on drupal.org is community maintained., and if you’d like to help with the infrastructure changes (site building and module development), we are currently coordinating docs infrastructure work on http://groups.drupal.org/node/174499 . Follow-up changes to the infrastructure are being discussed on #1287784: Follow-ups to improve the community docs.

Curated documentation

Once we have those changes deployed, the next idea is to start a new section of documentation that will be more directly curated and maintained by the official Documentation Team leadership—and therefore, more limited in scope. The idea here is that careful decisions will be made about what are the “essentials” that belong in this documentation (which might be called “official documentation” or “user manual” or “curated documentation” or “essentials” or …), and a small team will be responsible for maintaining the documentation. This idea has not been completely fleshed out yet; it’s being discussed on issue #1291058: Make a curated docs section if you’d like to join the discussion.

Outside documentation

Another idea that’s in development is to make it possible to search external documentation—for instance, Drupal tutorials on blogs, and curriculum on Drupal company web sites. Lin Clark is currently exploring ideas for automatic collection of posts involving RDFa/microdata and SPARQL, and there will hopefully be more ideas and discussion about this in the next few months. Watch the Documentation Team on groups.drupal.org for updates!

API reference

We don’t expect anything to change in the process, maintenance, or location of the API reference site on api.drupal.org. That process is actually working fine, and Jennifer is pleased to report that there have been many new contributors stepping up to submit patches lately. (Note: sprint coming up—see below!)

July – September events

Here are some events that the Documentation Team participated in during the third quarter of 2011:

    DrupalCon London - BoF Gathering

  • At the end of August, many from the Docs Team were at DrupalCon London. We had BoFs (”Birds of a Feather” informal discussions) about DITA (a standard for documentation), the proposed new Help system for Drupal 8, and Lin Clark’s ideas about using RDFa or microdata to build an index to documentation from Drupal Planet (see above).
  • At DrupalCon, there was also a Core Conversation session about DITA and the new help system.

    • DrupalCon London - Sprint

  • And of course we also had a very successful Documentation Sprint on the last day of the conference, with three tables of participants helping each other become knowledgeable documentation contributors. Thanks to all who participated!
  • We are holding weekly “Documentation Office Hours”—one-hour IRC meetings on Tuesday afternoon (North American time), open to anyone for questions and discussions about contributing to documentation. It seems like it’s been very helpful to have a definite time when people can find us on IRC, and we plan to continue with this schedule for the foreseeable future.

Upcoming API docs sprint

The API documentation on api.drupal.org has been improving slowly but surely over the past couple of years (I think/hope). But there are still quite a few areas where the documentation does not conform to the API documentation standards. Unfortunately, patches that do wholesale changes to documentation headers are disruptive to the ongoing improvements of the Drupal code, since they often require that many patches be “re-rolled” so that they will apply to the new code-base. So, we’ve been told several times that we needed to postpone these types of large-scale updates.

However, in early November, a patch is scheduled to go into Drupal 8 that will move all of the core Drupal files into a “core” directory. This will be a huge disruption, as every patch for Drupal 8 will need to be re-rolled. Because of this, it’s a great time do other disruptive work, and we plan to have an API Documentation sprint just after that patch goes in, where we’ll do a defined set of wholesale improvements to the in-code docs for Drupal 8. Mark your calendar—I’m hoping that we have lots of participants (including new API docs contributors) so the work for each person will be manageable!

Process, communication, and infrastructure milestones

Aside from the infrastructure and team reorganization mentioned above, there were some smaller initiatives in the Documentation Team this quarter:

  • In July, Neil Drumm (drumm), with help from a few others, deployed a new feature to your Drupal.org user profile and Drupal.org company profile, aimed at recognizing documentation contributions: there is now a line in the History section of user profiles and the right sidebar of the new Marketplace company profile that says something like “Over 100 edits”, reflecting how many documentation page revisions you have made since joining Drupal.org. This is a small way of recognizing documentation contributions to the Drupal project.
  • At DrupalCon Chicago, Dries suggested that in Drupal 8 development, each change would have to pass through a series of “gates” in order to be accepted, and Documentation was listed as one of his “gates”, but it wasn’t defined what the gates really meant. So, a conversation was started with Jennifer, Angela Byron, and other members of the community, and in July, the Documentation gate standards were adopted. The adopted gates are listed on the gates page.
  • In July, Angela Byron and Jennifer (along with many others) finalized two changes to the Drupal issue workflow: Issue Summaries and Change Notification nodes. With issue summaries, anyone can now edit the node body of any issue, to use the body as an Issue Summary, and we have a suggested issue summary template to use when filing or updating issues. With change notification nodes: for Drupal Core (and any other project that chooses to use them), after an issue is fixed, if the committed fix involves changes to the user interface or programming interface, a Change Notice node should be created to document the change. Then the Documentation Team, Coder module team, Examples module team, module developers, and theme developers can all visit http://drupal.org/list-changes (simple view) and http://drupal.org/list-change-updates (maintainer view) to find relevant changes that affect them or that need to be acted upon.
  • Jennifer mentored Google Summer of Code student Tamás Demeter-Haludka (Yorirou) over the summer, who created the Conditional Text module. We expect to use this for the new Help system and probably the curated docs as well.

Next steps

If you’re interested in helping with Drupal documentation:

That’s all for now—we hope that your fall (or spring, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere) goes well, and we’ll be in touch!

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/docs-team-3rd-quarter-2011-update/feed/ 0 Core office hours http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/core-office-hours/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/core-office-hours/#comments Mon, 08 Aug 2011 14:41:52 +0000 catch 1242856 at http://drupal.org Drupal core needs more eyes and more contributors to decrease the very high amount of unresolved issues.

We hold the first core "office hours" each week in #drupal on freenode:

Why office hours?

There are currently a large number of unresolved issues in the core queue, and we want to get more organised dealing with the backlog, and encourage new people to help out.

Current numbers:

How will office hours help?

If you've been wanting to get involved in Drupal core development, but aren't sure where to start, coming to the office hours. You will find experienced contributors who will help you find something to work on.

If you have patches or bug reports against Drupal core, and want to get your patch reviewed or figure out where to take the issue next, this should be a good time of the week to trade reviews on IRC.

Things we will do

Office hours are for both experienced contributors and developers as well as newcomers, expect some of the following:

  • Triaging the core queue - understanding status, priority of issues, closing duplicates etc.
  • Co-writing issue summaries.
  • Co-writing change notifications for needs work issues tagged with "Needs change notification".
  • Writing SimpleTests for bug reports that don't have them.
  • Swapping patch reviews.

New contributors should already be prepared to do the following:

  • Have a local environment to review and test core patches.
  • Get familiar with the documentation at http://drupal.org/patch

Mentors/co-ordinators possibly available

We'll try to make sure at least one person is online during each slot.

catch
sun
linclark
Dave Reid
marcingy
cweagans
xjm
beejeebus

See you there!

See the original proposal for more discussion, and to volunteer for helping out with office hours on a regular basis. Comments have been disabled on this post to keep discussion in one place.

]]>

Drupal core needs more eyes and more contributors to decrease the very high amount of unresolved issues.

We hold the first core “office hours” each week in #drupal on freenode:

Why office hours?

There are currently a large number of unresolved issues in the core queue, and we want to get more organised dealing with the backlog, and encourage new people to help out.

Current numbers:

How will office hours help?

If you’ve been wanting to get involved in Drupal core development, but aren’t sure where to start, coming to the office hours. You will find experienced contributors who will help you find something to work on.

If you have patches or bug reports against Drupal core, and want to get your patch reviewed or figure out where to take the issue next, this should be a good time of the week to trade reviews on IRC.

Things we will do

Office hours are for both experienced contributors and developers as well as newcomers, expect some of the following:

  • Triaging the core queue – understanding status, priority of issues, closing duplicates etc.
  • Co-writing issue summaries.
  • Co-writing change notifications for needs work issues tagged with “Needs change notification”.
  • Writing SimpleTests for bug reports that don’t have them.
  • Swapping patch reviews.

New contributors should already be prepared to do the following:

  • Have a local environment to review and test core patches.
  • Get familiar with the documentation at http://drupal.org/patch

Mentors/co-ordinators possibly available

We’ll try to make sure at least one person is online during each slot.

catch
sun
linclark
Dave Reid
marcingy
cweagans
xjm
beejeebus

See you there!

See the original proposal for more discussion, and to volunteer for helping out with office hours on a regular basis. Comments have been disabled on this post to keep discussion in one place.

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/core-office-hours/feed/ 0 Submit Your Session Proposals for DrupalCon London 2011! http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/submit-your-session-proposals-for-drupalcon-london-2011/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/submit-your-session-proposals-for-drupalcon-london-2011/#comments Fri, 06 May 2011 17:05:54 +0000 Isabell 1149236 at http://drupal.org drupalcon londonThere are 9 days left to submit your session proposal for DrupalCon London 2011, which will be held August 22-26, 2011 at the Fairfield Halls in South London. This is your chance to share your knowledge and experiences with DrupalCon attendees. Deadline for session submissions is 15th May, 2011 at 11:59 GMT+1.

You can submit sessions at http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions under the following tracks:

Check out what others have proposed so far.

There will also be a separate "Core Conversations" track, which will open session submissions next week.

Make sure to also read the Speaker FAQ, which has information on the timeline for session selection process and other tips. Also, for the first time, selected speakers, giving a full session, will receive free admission to the conference and the opening party on Tuesday night.

To be able to submit session proposals you need to register. Once you're registered, you'll have the opportunity to purchase your conference ticket and sign up for the DrupalCon London opening party.

If you already have a drupal.org user account, you can use it to automatically sign in to the DrupalCon website.

The Early Bird price is at 230 GBP and will last until May 31st. After that, ticket prices will increase to 280 GBP. All tickets are subject to 20% British VAT.

You can keep up-to-date with the latest information about DrupalCon London by going to http://london2011.drupal.org/ or following us on Twitter @drupalcon.

]]>

drupalcon londonThere are 9 days left to submit your session proposal for DrupalCon London 2011, which will be held August 22-26, 2011 at the Fairfield Halls in South London. This is your chance to share your knowledge and experiences with DrupalCon attendees. Deadline for session submissions is 15th May, 2011 at 11:59 GMT+1.

You can submit sessions at http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions under the following tracks:

Check out what others have proposed so far.

There will also be a separate “Core Conversations” track, which will open session submissions next week.

Make sure to also read the Speaker FAQ, which has information on the timeline for session selection process and other tips. Also, for the first time, selected speakers, giving a full session, will receive free admission to the conference and the opening party on Tuesday night.

To be able to submit session proposals you need to register. Once you’re registered, you’ll have the opportunity to purchase your conference ticket and sign up for the DrupalCon London opening party.

If you already have a drupal.org user account, you can use it to automatically sign in to the DrupalCon website.

The Early Bird price is at 230 GBP and will last until May 31st. After that, ticket prices will increase to 280 GBP. All tickets are subject to 20% British VAT.

You can keep up-to-date with the latest information about DrupalCon London by going to http://london2011.drupal.org/ or following us on Twitter @drupalcon.

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/submit-your-session-proposals-for-drupalcon-london-2011/feed/ 0 Drupal Usability Testing: We need your help! http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-usability-testing-we-need-your-help/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-usability-testing-we-need-your-help/#comments Wed, 27 Apr 2011 15:35:10 +0000 Bojhan 1140082 at http://drupal.org During the Drupal 7 release cycle we had two usability tests, one at the University of Minnesota and one at the University of Baltimore. These tests helped us understand the fundamental issues that Drupal site-builders face and set the direction for many of the major usability improvements in Drupal 7. These tests also triggered a cultural shift within the Drupal contributor community: we now consider user experience design a top priority in all major development efforts.

As the next step in this effort, we are running new usability tests to inform Drupal 8 development!

From May 17-19, the University of Minnesota has once again offered to host a formal usability test in their lab facilities, this time targeting Drupal 8 (as well as Drupal 7 contrib). These tests will give us the chance to see how far we’ve come in solving issues we identified previously. They will also give us a chance to evaluate the new interfaces and tools we added to Drupal 7 core, including the Overlay, Contextual Links, and Toolbar modules.

Attending community members will analyze the test data and produce actionable issues to work on by starting discussions and bringing the problems we find to the issue queues. All test results, including much of the data (e.g., videos), will be made publicly available on the web and in presentations at DrupalCamp Twin Cities and DrupalCon London.

While the Drupal 7 user experience movement focused on improving things for content editors, we now want to specifically work on making it easier to build out a site structure in Drupal 8. We will test Drupal site-building tools like blocks, menus, content types and module pages. This is an area with serious problems which keeps many people from using Drupal.

Who's involved?

This test will be attended by members of the Drupal community including: Drupal 7 co-maintainer, Angie Byron (webchick); key members of the Drupal UX Team: Bojhan Somers (Bojhan), Brad Bowman (beeradb), Dharmesh Mistry (dcmistry), Jen Lampton (jenlampton), David Rothstein (David_Rothstein), Chad Fennell (cfennell) and Erika Stenrick (estenrick).

How can I help?

We are asking you to help fund the costs of bringing these amazing contributors together. While several attending members will be fully or partially sponsored by their employers, others are coming in from overseas, do not directly benefit financially from Drupal, and need help.

Your donation will help sponsor an important effort that will help set the direction for an even better drupal 8.

]]>

During the Drupal 7 release cycle we had two usability tests, one at the University of Minnesota and one at the University of Baltimore. These tests helped us understand the fundamental issues that Drupal site-builders face and set the direction for many of the major usability improvements in Drupal 7. These tests also triggered a cultural shift within the Drupal contributor community: we now consider user experience design a top priority in all major development efforts.

As the next step in this effort, we are running new usability tests to inform Drupal 8 development!

From May 17-19, the University of Minnesota has once again offered to host a formal usability test in their lab facilities, this time targeting Drupal 8 (as well as Drupal 7 contrib). These tests will give us the chance to see how far we’ve come in solving issues we identified previously. They will also give us a chance to evaluate the new interfaces and tools we added to Drupal 7 core, including the Overlay, Contextual Links, and Toolbar modules.

Attending community members will analyze the test data and produce actionable issues to work on by starting discussions and bringing the problems we find to the issue queues. All test results, including much of the data (e.g., videos), will be made publicly available on the web and in presentations at DrupalCamp Twin Cities and DrupalCon London.

While the Drupal 7 user experience movement focused on improving things for content editors, we now want to specifically work on making it easier to build out a site structure in Drupal 8. We will test Drupal site-building tools like blocks, menus, content types and module pages. This is an area with serious problems which keeps many people from using Drupal.

Who’s involved?

This test will be attended by members of the Drupal community including: Drupal 7 co-maintainer, Angie Byron (webchick); key members of the Drupal UX Team: Bojhan Somers (Bojhan), Brad Bowman (beeradb), Dharmesh Mistry (dcmistry), Jen Lampton (jenlampton), David Rothstein (David_Rothstein), Chad Fennell (cfennell) and Erika Stenrick (estenrick).

How can I help?

We are asking you to help fund the costs of bringing these amazing contributors together. While several attending members will be fully or partially sponsored by their employers, others are coming in from overseas, do not directly benefit financially from Drupal, and need help.

Your donation will help sponsor an important effort that will help set the direction for an even better drupal 8.

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-usability-testing-we-need-your-help/feed/ 0 Drupal.org Scheduled Downtime Thursday, February 24, 23:00 UTC http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-org-scheduled-downtime-thursday-february-24-2300-utc/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-org-scheduled-downtime-thursday-february-24-2300-utc/#comments Mon, 21 Feb 2011 21:34:29 +0000 nnewton 1068664 at http://drupal.org Drupal.org will have approximately 12 hours of scheduled downtime, Thursday, February 24, 23:00 UTC (3PM PST, 6PM EST). We will be performing the CVS to Git migration. This is the most comprehensive and extensive change to Drupal.org in recent history - perhaps ever, therefore, the Infrastructure & Git Migration teams need an adequate time buffer to perform the migration, verify the data, and check for and resolve any issues.

What does “downtime” mean?

The following parts of the *.drupal.org will be inaccessible for the duration of the migration:

  • The main drupal.org website, including all download pages, issue queues, forums, and search.
  • Write access to cvs.drupal.org.
  • Account creation on any of the Drupal.org sub-sites, including groups.drupal.org, api.drupal.org, and chicago2011.drupal.org.

We regret that it was not feasible to provide a read-only copy during the downtime and apologize for the inconvenience this extended downtime will cause to the community, but it’s hard to overstate the incredible transformation this move will enable for our community’s collaboration. With Drupal 8 development kicking off soon, and code sprints happening in DrupalCon Chicago in just over a week, having a strong platform from which to work is vital for our project’s future.

Some areas of the drupal.org infrastructure remain unaffected, including:

  • Drush commands such as drush dl.
  • Read-only access to cvs.drupal.org. CVS repositories will be maintained in read-only mode for at least a year following the migration.

We apologize for the inconvenience this extended downtime will cause to the community, but it’s hard to overstate the incredible transformation this move will enable for our community’s collaboration. With Drupal 8 development kicking off soon, and code sprints happening in DrupalCon Chicago in just over a week, having a strong platform from which to work is vital for our project’s future.

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding. Please keep your eyes on https://twitter.com/drupalgitgremln and http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-git-migration-team for updates.

]]>

Drupal.org will have approximately 12 hours of scheduled downtime, Thursday, February 24, 23:00 UTC (3PM PST, 6PM EST). We will be performing the CVS to Git migration. This is the most comprehensive and extensive change to Drupal.org in recent history – perhaps ever, therefore, the Infrastructure & Git Migration teams need an adequate time buffer to perform the migration, verify the data, and check for and resolve any issues.

What does “downtime” mean?

The following parts of the *.drupal.org will be inaccessible for the duration of the migration:

  • The main drupal.org website, including all download pages, issue queues, forums, and search.
  • Write access to cvs.drupal.org.
  • Account creation on any of the Drupal.org sub-sites, including groups.drupal.org, api.drupal.org, and chicago2011.drupal.org.

We regret that it was not feasible to provide a read-only copy during the downtime and apologize for the inconvenience this extended downtime will cause to the community, but it’s hard to overstate the incredible transformation this move will enable for our community’s collaboration. With Drupal 8 development kicking off soon, and code sprints happening in DrupalCon Chicago in just over a week, having a strong platform from which to work is vital for our project’s future.

Some areas of the drupal.org infrastructure remain unaffected, including:

  • Drush commands such as drush dl.
  • Read-only access to cvs.drupal.org. CVS repositories will be maintained in read-only mode for at least a year following the migration.

We apologize for the inconvenience this extended downtime will cause to the community, but it’s hard to overstate the incredible transformation this move will enable for our community’s collaboration. With Drupal 8 development kicking off soon, and code sprints happening in DrupalCon Chicago in just over a week, having a strong platform from which to work is vital for our project’s future.

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding. Please keep your eyes on https://twitter.com/drupalgitgremln and http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-git-migration-team for updates.

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-org-scheduled-downtime-thursday-february-24-2300-utc/feed/ 0 Drupal 7.0 RC 4 Released http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-4-released/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-4-released/#comments Thu, 30 Dec 2010 19:22:35 +0000 webchick 1010384 at http://drupal.org Release candidateWe are proud to present to you the fourth (and likely final) release candidate of Drupal 7.0. This is a bug fix release for some critical upgrade path issues.

  1. We're back down to 0 critical issues again!
  2. We've announced a January 5 release date for Drupal 7!
  3. There are release parties being thrown worldwide on January 7. Please set one up in your town! (tips)

So. It's officially GO time for final testing!

Since the last release candidate a week ago, we have fixed numerous bugs, including bugs with PostgreSQL and a critical issue with the password upgrade path which corrupts password hashes. Affected sites' users will need to reset passwords after their second log-in. Sorry about that!

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.

How do I help test the release candidate?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on Drupal 6.x (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package for some important instructions). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Module and theme developers

If you have not done so already, now is the time to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal. The updating your modules and updating your themes pages have plenty of information to help you with the migration to Drupal 7, and the Coder Upgrade module can help automate many of the most tedious changes. Consider signing up for the #D7CX pledge, to have a stable release of your module available when 7.0 ships!

Please help ensure that your users will have a smooth and well tested upgrade path in the not to distant future! Be sure to file any core bugs that you may find while updating your module or theme.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are officially frozen now. Only critical fixes, and corrections may be made to the interface text from this point forward. Read more about how localize.drupal.org works and how can you contribute in the drupal.org handbooks.

Testers

Are you gifted with the "Poison Finger"? Does seemingly normal code collapse into a flying mess of errors as soon as you get hold of the mouse? If so, why not have a run at breaking Drupal? When you discover a bug, check the issue queue to see if someone else has already found it. If your suspected bug hasn't been reported yet, please submit a bug report (remember to search first)! The more bugs we can find and fix before the final release, the better.

When will Drupal 7 get released?

On January 5th! http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-to-be-released-on-january-5th-with-one-gino...

Then, once Drupal 7 comes out, we can all start adding fancy new features to Drupal 8! So please help out where you can, and let's make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet! :D

]]>

Release candidateWe are proud to present to you the fourth (and likely final) release candidate of Drupal 7.0. This is a bug fix release for some critical upgrade path issues.

  1. We’re back down to 0 critical issues again!
  2. We’ve announced a January 5 release date for Drupal 7!
  3. There are release parties being thrown worldwide on January 7. Please set one up in your town! (tips)

So. It’s officially GO time for final testing!

Since the last release candidate a week ago, we have fixed numerous bugs, including bugs with PostgreSQL and a critical issue with the password upgrade path which corrupts password hashes. Affected sites’ users will need to reset passwords after their second log-in. Sorry about that!

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we’ll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you’ve grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.


How do I help test the release candidate?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on Drupal 6.x (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package for some important instructions). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Module and theme developers

If you have not done so already, now is the time to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal. The updating your modules and updating your themes pages have plenty of information to help you with the migration to Drupal 7, and the Coder Upgrade module can help automate many of the most tedious changes. Consider signing up for the #D7CX pledge, to have a stable release of your module available when 7.0 ships!

Please help ensure that your users will have a smooth and well tested upgrade path in the not to distant future! Be sure to file any core bugs that you may find while updating your module or theme.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are officially frozen now. Only critical fixes, and corrections may be made to the interface text from this point forward. Read more about how localize.drupal.org works and how can you contribute in the drupal.org handbooks.

Testers

Are you gifted with the “Poison Finger”? Does seemingly normal code collapse into a flying mess of errors as soon as you get hold of the mouse? If so, why not have a run at breaking Drupal? When you discover a bug, check the issue queue to see if someone else has already found it. If your suspected bug hasn’t been reported yet, please submit a bug report (remember to search first)! The more bugs we can find and fix before the final release, the better.

When will Drupal 7 get released?

On January 5th! http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-to-be-released-on-january-5th-with-one-gino…

Then, once Drupal 7 comes out, we can all start adding fancy new features to Drupal 8! So please help out where you can, and let’s make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet! :D

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-4-released/feed/ 0 Drupal 7.0 RC 3 Released http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-3-released/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-3-released/#comments Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:25:46 +0000 webchick 1005984 at http://drupal.org Release candidateUpdate: Drupal 7.0 Release Candidate 4 is available now!

We are proud to present to you the third (and likely final) release candidate of Drupal 7.0. Big news since last time!

  1. We're back down to 0 critical issues again!
  2. We've announced a January 5 release date for Drupal 7!
  3. There are release parties being thrown worldwide on January 7. Please set one up in your town! (tips)

So. It's officially GO time for final testing! Something to keep you busy over the holidays. :)

Since the last release candidate two weeks ago, we have fixed numerous bugs, improved the AJAX framework, field UI etc. Also alternate database systems have seen serious improvement thanks to http://ci.drupal.org/. PostgreSQL 9.0 now installs without errors, and we have 100% tests passing on SQLite! And files[] is no longer required in .info files for each file! Only if the file in question registers a class or interface. $cruft--;

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.

How do I help test the release candidate?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on Drupal 6.x (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package for some important instructions). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Module and theme developers

If you have not done so already, now is the time to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal. The updating your modules and updating your themes pages have plenty of information to help you with the migration to Drupal 7, and the Coder Upgrade module can help automate many of the most tedious changes. Consider signing up for the #D7CX pledge, to have a stable release of your module available when 7.0 ships!

Please help ensure that your users will have a smooth and well tested upgrade path in the not to distant future! Be sure to file any core bugs that you may find while updating your module or theme.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are officially frozen now. Only critical fixes, and corrections may be made to the interface text from this point forward. Read more about how localize.drupal.org works and how can you contribute in the drupal.org handbooks.

Testers

Are you gifted with the "Poison Finger"? Does seemingly normal code collapse into a flying mess of errors as soon as you get hold of the mouse? If so, why not have a run at breaking Drupal? When you discover a bug, check the issue queue to see if someone else has already found it. If your suspected bug hasn't been reported yet, please submit a bug report (remember to search first)! The more bugs we can find and fix before the final release, the better.

When will Drupal 7 get released?

On January 5th! http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-to-be-released-on-january-5th-with-one-gino...

Then, once Drupal 7 comes out, we can all start adding fancy new features to Drupal 8! So please help out where you can, and let's make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet!

]]>

Release candidateUpdate: Drupal 7.0 Release Candidate 4 is available now!

We are proud to present to you the third (and likely final) release candidate of Drupal 7.0. Big news since last time!

  1. We’re back down to 0 critical issues again!
  2. We’ve announced a January 5 release date for Drupal 7!
  3. There are release parties being thrown worldwide on January 7. Please set one up in your town! (tips)

So. It’s officially GO time for final testing! Something to keep you busy over the holidays. :)

Since the last release candidate two weeks ago, we have fixed numerous bugs, improved the AJAX framework, field UI etc. Also alternate database systems have seen serious improvement thanks to http://ci.drupal.org/. PostgreSQL 9.0 now installs without errors, and we have 100% tests passing on SQLite! And files[] is no longer required in .info files for each file! Only if the file in question registers a class or interface. $cruft–;

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we’ll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you’ve grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.


How do I help test the release candidate?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on Drupal 6.x (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package for some important instructions). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Module and theme developers

If you have not done so already, now is the time to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal. The updating your modules and updating your themes pages have plenty of information to help you with the migration to Drupal 7, and the Coder Upgrade module can help automate many of the most tedious changes. Consider signing up for the #D7CX pledge, to have a stable release of your module available when 7.0 ships!

Please help ensure that your users will have a smooth and well tested upgrade path in the not to distant future! Be sure to file any core bugs that you may find while updating your module or theme.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are officially frozen now. Only critical fixes, and corrections may be made to the interface text from this point forward. Read more about how localize.drupal.org works and how can you contribute in the drupal.org handbooks.

Testers

Are you gifted with the “Poison Finger”? Does seemingly normal code collapse into a flying mess of errors as soon as you get hold of the mouse? If so, why not have a run at breaking Drupal? When you discover a bug, check the issue queue to see if someone else has already found it. If your suspected bug hasn’t been reported yet, please submit a bug report (remember to search first)! The more bugs we can find and fix before the final release, the better.

When will Drupal 7 get released?

On January 5th! http://buytaert.net/drupal-7-to-be-released-on-january-5th-with-one-gino…

Then, once Drupal 7 comes out, we can all start adding fancy new features to Drupal 8! So please help out where you can, and let’s make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet!

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-3-released/feed/ 0 Drupal 7.0 RC 1 Released http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-1-released/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-1-released/#comments Wed, 01 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000 webchick 988796 at http://drupal.org Release candidateUpdate: Drupal 7.0 Release Candidate 2 is available now!

Following three beta releases, and with tons of bugs fixed and user interface improvements added, we are proud to present to you the first release candidate of Drupal 7.0. Although there are still a few known issues that we are working on fixing, we are confident that our code is stable enough for wider testing by the community. Since the last beta version was released two weeks ago, we have improved styling in the default "Bartik" theme, numerous bug fixes and improvements to the Update Manager and Search module, revisions to both user interface text and developer documentation to be more understandable and accurate, and we've made final clean-ups to some of the architecture improvements added during the release cycle. The deprecated Profile module is now hidden on new sites and we've substituted it with the ability to put user fields added through Field UI on the registration form.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.

How do I help test the release candidate?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on Drupal 6.x (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package for some important instructions). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Module and theme developers

If you have not done so already, now is the time to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal. The updating your modules and updating your themes pages have plenty of information to help you with the migration to Drupal 7, and the Coder Upgrade module can help automate many of the most tedious changes. Consider signing up for the #D7CX pledge, to have a stable release of your module available when 7.0 ships!

Please help ensure that your users will have a smooth and well tested upgrade path in the not to distant future! Be sure to file any core bugs that you may find while updating your module or theme.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are officially frozen now. Only critical fixes, and corrections may be made to the interface text from this point forward. Read more about how localize.drupal.org works and how can you contribute in the drupal.org handbooks.

Testers

Are you gifted with the "Poison Finger"? Does seemingly normal code collapse into a flying mess of errors as soon as you get hold of the mouse? If so, why not have a run at breaking Drupal? When you discover a bug, check the issue queue to see if someone else has already found it. If your suspected bug hasn't been reported yet, please submit a bug report (remember to search first)! The more bugs we can find and fix before the final release, the better.

When will Drupal 7 get released?

Drupal 7.0 final will be released after (a) there are no more critical bugs and (b) we've had at least one release candidate without adding any more to the list. When will that be? Well, it depends entirely on you! The more you chip in and help out, the faster we can find and fix bugs, and the faster 7.0 gets released. The faster 7.0 gets released, the faster we can all start adding fancy new features to Drupal 8.0! So please help out where you can, and let's make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet!

]]>

Release candidateUpdate: Drupal 7.0 Release Candidate 2 is available now!

Following three beta releases, and with tons of bugs fixed and user interface improvements added, we are proud to present to you the first release candidate of Drupal 7.0. Although there are still a few known issues that we are working on fixing, we are confident that our code is stable enough for wider testing by the community. Since the last beta version was released two weeks ago, we have improved styling in the default “Bartik” theme, numerous bug fixes and improvements to the Update Manager and Search module, revisions to both user interface text and developer documentation to be more understandable and accurate, and we’ve made final clean-ups to some of the architecture improvements added during the release cycle. The deprecated Profile module is now hidden on new sites and we’ve substituted it with the ability to put user fields added through Field UI on the registration form.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we’ll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you’ve grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.


How do I help test the release candidate?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on Drupal 6.x (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package for some important instructions). When setting up a new site, you can use the development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running release candidates on a live site. Also, always be sure to make a backup of your data before performing any upgrade or starting testing.

Module and theme developers

If you have not done so already, now is the time to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal. The updating your modules and updating your themes pages have plenty of information to help you with the migration to Drupal 7, and the Coder Upgrade module can help automate many of the most tedious changes. Consider signing up for the #D7CX pledge, to have a stable release of your module available when 7.0 ships!

Please help ensure that your users will have a smooth and well tested upgrade path in the not to distant future! Be sure to file any core bugs that you may find while updating your module or theme.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are officially frozen now. Only critical fixes, and corrections may be made to the interface text from this point forward. Read more about how localize.drupal.org works and how can you contribute in the drupal.org handbooks.

Testers

Are you gifted with the “Poison Finger”? Does seemingly normal code collapse into a flying mess of errors as soon as you get hold of the mouse? If so, why not have a run at breaking Drupal? When you discover a bug, check the issue queue to see if someone else has already found it. If your suspected bug hasn’t been reported yet, please submit a bug report (remember to search first)! The more bugs we can find and fix before the final release, the better.

When will Drupal 7 get released?

Drupal 7.0 final will be released after (a) there are no more critical bugs and (b) we’ve had at least one release candidate without adding any more to the list. When will that be? Well, it depends entirely on you! The more you chip in and help out, the faster we can find and fix bugs, and the faster 7.0 gets released. The faster 7.0 gets released, the faster we can all start adding fancy new features to Drupal 8.0! So please help out where you can, and let’s make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet!

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-rc-1-released/feed/ 0 Announcing Google Code-In http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/announcing-google-code-in/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/announcing-google-code-in/#comments Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:56:32 +0000 cwgordon7 979284 at http://drupal.org Google Code-InGoogle Code-In (GCI) is an amazing program in which junior high and high school students are encouraged to participate in an exciting open source project, like Drupal!

Open source projects participating in GCI create a list of short-term, high-impact tasks for students to work on.

The last time this project ran (called GHOP) we had a number of new, talented individuals come in to Drupal who are still active community members today. Past GHOP rockstars include Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7), Jimmy Berry (boombatower) and Daniel Wehner (dereine).

Unlike Google Summer of Code, this work is *not* just about code! Tasks can be around any of the following categeories:

  • Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
  • Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
  • Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
  • Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
  • Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
  • Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
  • Translation: Tasks related to localization
  • User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

The GCI contest lasts from November 22 - January 10 and is open for students age 13-18 (read full eligibility requirements). Students will recieve a small compensation for each task that is completed. Are you eligible, or do you know someone who is and can participate? Are you a participant in our community who can envision and mentor tasks for students to work on? Read on to find out how you can help!

How do you participate as a student?

Have you always thought that open source was fun, and wanted to learn more about programming, design, usability, and more, and want to participate in a huge, diverse, distributed community of knowledgeable and friendly people? If so, welcome to the Drupal community! :)

  1. Sign up at Google's Melange site (you will need a gmail account), and also on the Google Code-In group.
  2. Take a look at the rules and the Frequently Asked Questions.
  3. Choose a task that you are interested in and claim it. (exact procedure is described in the FAQs). Each task will have an associated link to Drupal.org where you can interact with your mentor and community members on your task.
  4. If you need help (or just want to chat), you can find other students and mentors on IRC in the #drupal-gci channel on irc.freenode.net. (Setting up IRC). Mentors can also be reached via e-mail.
  5. For the payment process, you will need to verify your identity with Google -- more information can be found at (FAQ)

How do you participate as a mentor?

Are you a contributed module or theme developer, member of the marketing team, documentation team member, or on the internationalization team? Have things on your todo list that for some reason never quite get done, but are nevertheless quite important to the project? Then we need YOUR help coming up with fun, interesting Drupal tasks for students to work on over the next couple of months!

  1. Join #drupal-gci on irc.freenode.net to help answer questions from students and other mentors.
  2. Begin by suggesting a task in the Google Code-In issue queue. It's fine if the actual issue you want students to work on already exists elsewhere in the queue, but we need a "meta" task (pointing to the other issue) in order to put it into Google's system.
  3. Write it up according to the task guidelines and template, and mark it "needs review". It will probably get kicked back and forth a couple of times to make it more clear and approachable to students.
  4. Once accepted by one of the Drupal GCI admins, it will be moved into Google's tracker as an official task.
  5. To register as the official mentor for said task, sign up at Google Melange and click Apply to become a Mentor. You will need a gmail account, and make sure to check the gmail account for confirmation on your request, after which you'll have to fill out a form and accept a terms of service.

Every Google Code-In task has an assigned mentor, this mentor has to guide the student and also create tasks that challange them. Mentoring is an rewarding experience, where you are able to work with passionate, talented students who you can teach but probally also learn a lot from :)

I have other questions. Who can help?

Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7) and Daniel Wehner (dereine) are Drupal's Google Code-In organizers, and are reachable either on IRC or through their contact forms. There are also folks in #drupal-gci and #drupal-contribute on IRC who can help.

Welcome to the Drupal community / Thank you for mentoring! :D

]]>

Google Code-InGoogle Code-In (GCI) is an amazing program in which junior high and high school students are encouraged to participate in an exciting open source project, like Drupal!

Open source projects participating in GCI create a list of short-term, high-impact tasks for students to work on.

The last time this project ran (called GHOP) we had a number of new, talented individuals come in to Drupal who are still active community members today. Past GHOP rockstars include Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7), Jimmy Berry (boombatower) and Daniel Wehner (dereine).

Unlike Google Summer of Code, this work is *not* just about code! Tasks can be around any of the following categeories:

  • Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
  • Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
  • Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
  • Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
  • Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
  • Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
  • Translation: Tasks related to localization
  • User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

The GCI contest lasts from November 22 – January 10 and is open for students age 13-18 (read full eligibility requirements). Students will recieve a small compensation for each task that is completed. Are you eligible, or do you know someone who is and can participate? Are you a participant in our community who can envision and mentor tasks for students to work on? Read on to find out how you can help!


How do you participate as a student?

Have you always thought that open source was fun, and wanted to learn more about programming, design, usability, and more, and want to participate in a huge, diverse, distributed community of knowledgeable and friendly people? If so, welcome to the Drupal community! :)

  1. Sign up at Google’s Melange site (you will need a gmail account), and also on the Google Code-In group.
  2. Take a look at the rules and the Frequently Asked Questions.
  3. Choose a task that you are interested in and claim it. (exact procedure is described in the FAQs). Each task will have an associated link to Drupal.org where you can interact with your mentor and community members on your task.
  4. If you need help (or just want to chat), you can find other students and mentors on IRC in the #drupal-gci channel on irc.freenode.net. (Setting up IRC). Mentors can also be reached via e-mail.
  5. For the payment process, you will need to verify your identity with Google — more information can be found at (FAQ)

How do you participate as a mentor?

Are you a contributed module or theme developer, member of the marketing team, documentation team member, or on the internationalization team? Have things on your todo list that for some reason never quite get done, but are nevertheless quite important to the project? Then we need YOUR help coming up with fun, interesting Drupal tasks for students to work on over the next couple of months!

  1. Join #drupal-gci on irc.freenode.net to help answer questions from students and other mentors.
  2. Begin by suggesting a task in the Google Code-In issue queue. It’s fine if the actual issue you want students to work on already exists elsewhere in the queue, but we need a “meta” task (pointing to the other issue) in order to put it into Google’s system.
  3. Write it up according to the task guidelines and template, and mark it “needs review”. It will probably get kicked back and forth a couple of times to make it more clear and approachable to students.
  4. Once accepted by one of the Drupal GCI admins, it will be moved into Google’s tracker as an official task.
  5. To register as the official mentor for said task, sign up at Google Melange and click Apply to become a Mentor. You will need a gmail account, and make sure to check the gmail account for confirmation on your request, after which you’ll have to fill out a form and accept a terms of service.

Every Google Code-In task has an assigned mentor, this mentor has to guide the student and also create tasks that challange them. Mentoring is an rewarding experience, where you are able to work with passionate, talented students who you can teach but probally also learn a lot from :)

I have other questions. Who can help?

Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7) and Daniel Wehner (dereine) are Drupal’s Google Code-In organizers, and are reachable either on IRC or through their contact forms. There are also folks in #drupal-gci and #drupal-contribute on IRC who can help.

Welcome to the Drupal community / Thank you for mentoring! :D

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/announcing-google-code-in/feed/ 0 Drupal 7.0 Beta 3 released http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-beta-3-released/ http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-beta-3-released/#comments Sun, 14 Nov 2010 01:05:33 +0000 webchick 971110 at http://drupal.org Today marks reaching Drupal 7's 0 critical bug milestone! We've rolled one final beta release to shake out any last minute problems and fix strings. Please help!

This release includes:

  • Upgrade to jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery UI 1.8.6
  • Numerous upgrade path fixes
  • Numerous accessibility fixes
  • All critical bugs fixed!

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

Hey, wait! But there are 0 criticals! Why another beta?!

As of today, Drupal 7's critical issue queue has reached 0. A huge thanks to the tremendous effort of hundreds of people who have helped bring us to this momentous milestone!

By traditional definition, we should be entering release candidate phase. However, while we have been focused on smashing criticals, we have accumulated a "major" issue queue that's currently 5 pages long, and have been neglecting to prepare for string freeze, which happens at RC1.

So, Dries and I felt that it was appropriate to have one last chance to take a final pass through the issue queue and find any straggler release blockers that might still be buried, and to identify and fix issues that impact string freeze (anything that changes something wrapped within the t() function).

From Here to RC

So. If you're in MAINTAINERS.txt, or otherwise knowledgeable about the issues in the core queue, we urgently need your help in taking one last look at your queues over the next day or two and making sure there aren't any remaining critical issues buried in the "major" list.

Because Drupal is by definition release-ready right now, we are going to strictly timebox the following:

  • Maintainers have until 11:59 PM Pacific US Time Wednesday, November 17 (07:59 AM UTC) to dig up critical issues from their majors queue. Move them from "major" to "critical" so that we can discuss. (Note that these will have to pass an extremely high bar; we've had almost 3 years to identify such issues.)
  • While going through your queues, if you find issues that impact string freeze, please tag them "string freeze."
  • I want to roll RC1 to no later than November 30, 2010 (with the caveat of any new security/data loss issues will block the release if still active at that time). Ideally, we do RC1 even earlier (Dries's birthday is November 19, or failing that, US Thanksgiving represents a GREAT time for many of you to get away from your family and work on Drupal :)).

To be clear, once RC1 happens:

- All strings are frozen.
- All markup is frozen.
- The UI is frozen.
- The API is frozen.
- The theme system is frozen.
- Drupal 7.0's release is imminent.

So please, help do your part to get Drupal 7 DONE!

(What follows is the standard "how to test this alpha/beta release" spiel.)

So when does 7.0 get released?

The release version of Drupal 7.0 will be ready after (a) there are no more critical bugs and (b) we've had at least one release candidate (RC) without adding any more issues to the list.

When will that be? Well, it depends entirely on how many people chip in and help out! The more people help, the faster we can find and fix bugs, and the faster 7.0 gets released. The faster 7.0 gets released, the faster we can start adding new features to Drupal 8.0. So help out where you can, and let's make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet! :)

How do I help test the beta?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on a previous version (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package). When setting up a new site, you can use the Development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running pre-releases on a live site. Also, always make sure to backup of your data before performing an upgrade or start testing.

New Drupal Users

Are you completely (or relatively) new to Drupal? Or do you know just enough to be dangerous? Are you used to working with other content management systems and willing to lend your perspective in improving the way Drupal works? If so, you're a perfect candidate to help with usability testing and improving documentation! As you're going through Drupal 7, take notes on things you find difficult or confusing, and translate those notes into an issue which will show up in the issue tracker. Make sure to be as clear as possible about what the problem was and provide suggestions on how to improve it -- this makes it easier for developers to help!

You can also help by testing the D7 Install Guide and noting any mistakes on the issue for this.

Testers

Do people often congratulate you on your ability to break things? Are you a creative individual who likes to experiment in unconventional ways to see what happens? Do you enjoy looking over other peoples' work and picking nits in order to make it as good as it possibly can be? If any of these apply to you, you could make a great tester! We need testers both to try out different aspects of Drupal itself, as well as take a look at the issue queue, checking bugs to see if they're valid and testing patches to verify they work properly. Read more about setting up a testing environment and applying patches.

Module and theme developers

There is no better way to shake out any lingering bugs with the API and to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal than to update your modules and update your themes! Make sure to file any bugs that you find! And try coding some upgrade routines to help make the process smoother for the next person!

Drupal Ninjas and Ninjas-in-training

If you're adept at Drupal hacking, or are eager to learn, a great place to start is with the bug tracker or the patch queue. Even if you don't have a full solution for a problem, often even a step in the right direction can be enough for another developer to take it home! Read up on how to create patches.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are mostly frozen. The days of major changes to the UI strings are over, but we still are changing texts to fix bugs or to lend clarity in the interface. Around release candidate 1, a formal "string freeze" will be declared at which point it should be safe to start translating.

]]>

Today marks reaching Drupal 7’s 0 critical bug milestone! We’ve rolled one final beta release to shake out any last minute problems and fix strings. Please help!

This release includes:

  • Upgrade to jQuery 1.4.4 and jQuery UI 1.8.6
  • Numerous upgrade path fixes
  • Numerous accessibility fixes
  • All critical bugs fixed!

For the full list of changes, see the release notes.

Hey, wait! But there are 0 criticals! Why another beta?!

As of today, Drupal 7’s critical issue queue has reached 0. A huge thanks to the tremendous effort of hundreds of people who have helped bring us to this momentous milestone!

By traditional definition, we should be entering release candidate phase. However, while we have been focused on smashing criticals, we have accumulated a “major” issue queue that’s currently 5 pages long, and have been neglecting to prepare for string freeze, which happens at RC1.

So, Dries and I felt that it was appropriate to have one last chance to take a final pass through the issue queue and find any straggler release blockers that might still be buried, and to identify and fix issues that impact string freeze (anything that changes something wrapped within the t() function).

From Here to RC

So. If you’re in MAINTAINERS.txt, or otherwise knowledgeable about the issues in the core queue, we urgently need your help in taking one last look at your queues over the next day or two and making sure there aren’t any remaining critical issues buried in the “major” list.

Because Drupal is by definition release-ready right now, we are going to strictly timebox the following:

  • Maintainers have until 11:59 PM Pacific US Time Wednesday, November 17 (07:59 AM UTC) to dig up critical issues from their majors queue. Move them from “major” to “critical” so that we can discuss. (Note that these will have to pass an extremely high bar; we’ve had almost 3 years to identify such issues.)
  • While going through your queues, if you find issues that impact string freeze, please tag them “string freeze.”
  • I want to roll RC1 to no later than November 30, 2010 (with the caveat of any new security/data loss issues will block the release if still active at that time). Ideally, we do RC1 even earlier (Dries’s birthday is November 19, or failing that, US Thanksgiving represents a GREAT time for many of you to get away from your family and work on Drupal :) ).

To be clear, once RC1 happens:

- All strings are frozen.
- All markup is frozen.
- The UI is frozen.
- The API is frozen.
- The theme system is frozen.
- Drupal 7.0’s release is imminent.

So please, help do your part to get Drupal 7 DONE!

(What follows is the standard “how to test this alpha/beta release” spiel.)


So when does 7.0 get released?

The release version of Drupal 7.0 will be ready after (a) there are no more critical bugs and (b) we’ve had at least one release candidate (RC) without adding any more issues to the list.

When will that be? Well, it depends entirely on how many people chip in and help out! The more people help, the faster we can find and fix bugs, and the faster 7.0 gets released. The faster 7.0 gets released, the faster we can start adding new features to Drupal 8.0. So help out where you can, and let’s make this the best and most solid release of Drupal yet! :)

How do I help test the beta?

Start by either installing a new Drupal site or upgrading an existing one running on a previous version (see INSTALL.txt or UPGRADE.txt in the package). When setting up a new site, you can use the Development module to generate some test data (content, users, etc) to help you start testing quickly. As with everything still in development, we do not recommend running pre-releases on a live site. Also, always make sure to backup of your data before performing an upgrade or start testing.

New Drupal Users

Are you completely (or relatively) new to Drupal? Or do you know just enough to be dangerous? Are you used to working with other content management systems and willing to lend your perspective in improving the way Drupal works? If so, you’re a perfect candidate to help with usability testing and improving documentation! As you’re going through Drupal 7, take notes on things you find difficult or confusing, and translate those notes into an issue which will show up in the issue tracker. Make sure to be as clear as possible about what the problem was and provide suggestions on how to improve it — this makes it easier for developers to help!

You can also help by testing the D7 Install Guide and noting any mistakes on the issue for this.

Testers

Do people often congratulate you on your ability to break things? Are you a creative individual who likes to experiment in unconventional ways to see what happens? Do you enjoy looking over other peoples’ work and picking nits in order to make it as good as it possibly can be? If any of these apply to you, you could make a great tester! We need testers both to try out different aspects of Drupal itself, as well as take a look at the issue queue, checking bugs to see if they’re valid and testing patches to verify they work properly. Read more about setting up a testing environment and applying patches.

Module and theme developers

There is no better way to shake out any lingering bugs with the API and to ensure that your modules and themes will work with the new version of Drupal than to update your modules and update your themes! Make sure to file any bugs that you find! And try coding some upgrade routines to help make the process smoother for the next person!

Drupal Ninjas and Ninjas-in-training

If you’re adept at Drupal hacking, or are eager to learn, a great place to start is with the bug tracker or the patch queue. Even if you don’t have a full solution for a problem, often even a step in the right direction can be enough for another developer to take it home! Read up on how to create patches.

Drupal interface translators

The interface strings of Drupal 7.0 are mostly frozen. The days of major changes to the UI strings are over, but we still are changing texts to fix bugs or to lend clarity in the interface. Around release candidate 1, a formal “string freeze” will be declared at which point it should be safe to start translating.

]]> http://www.connexx-contentmanagement.nl/drupal-7-0-beta-3-released/feed/ 0