April 2011
Google announces Summer of Code results Drupal gets 20 projects!!
We are thrilled to announce that Google will be sponsoring 20 Drupal projects for Summer of Code 2011. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Google, who are investing over $110,000 in the Drupal project.
Drupal Usability Testing: We need your help!
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.
Building a Brand Ambassador System with Drupal
Brands are increasingly turning to brand ambassadors to market their products. Ambassadors are individuals with credibility in a given area who are hired by a brand to introduce consumers to a given product and educate them about its advantages.
Liquor companies, for example, often hire bartenders as brand ambassadors. The bartenders / brand ambassadors then tell their customers about the company’s brand of gin, and train other bartenders in making signature cocktails with that gin.
Brand ambassadors provide companies and products with valuable credibility. Wouldn’t you trust a liquor recommendation that came from a bartender over one that came from a salesperson?
The downside is logistics. Creating a regional or national team of brand ambassadors requires big investments in recruitment, training and management.
With Drupal however, you can create an online system that helps recruit, manage and monitor brand ambassadors with much less investment.
This project was another collaboration between design and development shop ISL Consulting in San Francisco, and ClearMetrics digital agency in New York.
Short downtime on Tuesday 2011-04-12, 18:00 UTC
We will be deploying forum2 and this requires the full attention of the database, so we'll take drupal.org down. This should take about 20 minutes. The subdomains will not be affected, but you will not be able to log on during that time.
Docs Team spring 2011 update
Hello from Jennifer and Ariane, your friendly Drupal Documentation Team co-leads! It’s time for another quarterly update on what’s happening in the Documentation team—a lot has been going on since our last update (December 24, 2010), and we’d like to take this time to review the past quarter, talk a bit about the future, and let you know how to get involved! (Be sure not to miss the info at the very end about the April 2011 month-long documentation sprint priorities!)
Joomla! 1.5.23 Released
The Joomla Project announces the immediate availability of Joomla 1.5.23 [senu takaa ama baji]. This is a security release, and we recommend users upgrade immediately.
The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community.
Joomla! Community Magazine | April 2011
The April issue of the Joomla Community Magazine is here!
IN THIS ISSUE:
A special thanks to the members of our Joomla! community who contributed articles to this month's issue: Eric Lamy, Dmitry Strizhov, Andrew Eddie, Hagen Graf, Sean Redfearn, Victor Drover, Jarrod Nettles, and Chad Windnagle.