Brandon's blog

2010 is already shaping up to be a banner year for Drupal. While Drupal 6 flourishes and continues to build on its devoted base of followers, the release of Drupal 7 is imminent. Drupal 7 is currently in alpha and many are speculating an official release sometime in the Spring, perhaps at DrupalCon San Francisco in April. I put together a list of things to look forward to in 2010.

Drupal 7 Release
The latest release of Drupal will have major usability improvements. The Drupal 7 User Experience Project had four main goals for the release of Drupal 7:

This year has turned out to be quite a year for Drupal. Landmark websites were launched, great educational resources were made available in both book and online instructional format, and awards were won. With the release of Drupal 7 just around the corner, now is a good time to look back at the Drupal highlights of 2009.

As an Account Manager at LevelTen, my primary responsibility is to bring in new accounts and help grow existing accounts. Whether it be attending specialized meet up groups like the , or general networking events around the Dallas/Fort Worth area, I’m counted on to bring in new business. Occasionally, a client will shift priorities or impose a tight deadline causing everyone in the company to hunker down and put on multiple hats.

Just how does one go about making money with their Drupal website? The quick and obvious answer: sell something online. Taking into account Drupal’s steep learning curve, this is much easier said than done; however, it’s not entirely impossible. There are many Drupal websites that have integrated online stores.

A few recent clients requested image galleries to feature their projects on their new Drupal websites. Last year, we had similar requests and looked for modules that would meet the client’s requirements, but we could not find anything that worked well enough to keep them happy. I did another search to see if any new modules had come out that would meet the client’s needs, and again, I could not find anything suitable. After consulting with a few Drupal experts, I was lead to believe there are not any.

There’s nothing worse than going to a website on your iPhone and finding out it’s not mobile friendly. I used to accept all of the horizontal scrolling and zooming in on text that was necessary to view website while on the go, but that’s not the case anymore. If I end up on a website that is not optimized for mobile, I’ll just leave most of the time.

We're discovering useful new Drupal resources every day. My last post highlighted a few websites that offer great tutorials on a variety of Drupal topics; however, I forgot to mention one of my favorites. Bob, over at Mustardseed Media, does great work. His videos are succinct and have top notch production values. I found his podcasts on Imagefield and Imagecache & Building A Video Gallery to be very helpful.

Daunting, overwhelming, and frustrating are just a few of the words that come to mind when I think back to my initial experiences with Drupal. When we first made the shift to Drupal, most of us were pulling our hair out. In the past, we had developed our own CMS, used Wordpress, and toyed with SilverStripe, but Drupal was a beast. It was all so foreign and at first glance didn’t seem intuitive. Views, anyone?

I have been eagerly awaiting March 19, 2009 for several months now. New album being released? No. Criterion Collection DVD of one of my favorite films coming out? No. New movie hitting the theatres? Nope. I’m was finally going to get the giant thorn removed from my side.

Looking for a list of places to walk or bike to in Madison, Wisconsin? Searching for Farmer’s Markets in the Greater Baltimore area? How about a list of all things green in Austin, Texas? There are interactive maps for just about everybody at the Open Green Map.