Drupal 4.6.3 / 4.5.5 released
The Drupal project has released version 4.6.3 of its open-source content management platform. Drupal 4.6.3 is a maintenance release that fixes problems reported using the bug tracking system. Drupal 4.6.3 also fixes a new security vulnerability in the third-party XML-RPC library that Drupal ships with. Since the same bug is also present in the Drupal 4.5 series, Drupal 4.5.5 is released as well. If you cannot upgrade at once, we strongly suggest that you remove the xmlrpc.php file from your Drupal installation's root directory. The xmlrpc.php file is used only for Drupal to receive XML-RPC calls.
Upgrading your existing Drupal sites is strongly recommended; otherwise your site may get hacked into by malicious persons.
There are no new features in these installments. For more information about the Drupal 4.6.x release series, please consult the Drupal 4.6.0 release announcement.
Drupal 4.7.0 status update
In preparation of the Drupal 4.7.0 release, development of Drupal core will be frozen on September 15th rather than on September 1st as mentioned earlier. The code freeze has been postponed for two weeks so some important changes can make it into the Drupal 4.7 release series (hopefully). Read on for more information about the Drupal 4.7.0 roadmap.
Featured site: The Onion
The Onion is a high traffic US humor site, with parody on just about everything. The humor is often off color, since it is intended for 18 and older. Recently, they moved to Drupal. Here is a humorous post by the editor Phineas Zwiebel on the move.
Featured site: evolt.org
Evolt.org is delighted to announce that it has moved its main site from a bespoke solution to Drupal. When we first launched evolt.org, content management systems cost USD $100.000 and more, so we took the revolutionary step of building our own (and later open sourcing it). For the last 6 years, evolt.org had lived on a custom built CMS, migrating from MS Access and Windows NT, to Oracle and Linux to MSSQL and Windows 2000 along the way. The previous evolution was launched in December 2000 (yes, really), and had served evolt.org extremely well.
Drupal Newsletter for August, 2005
Welcome back to the Drupal newsletter! We have received great acknowledgment from the community, and have had a generous supply of content thanks to our contributors. As always, we are a completely open newsletter. Good Drupal-related content is always welcomed and encouraged!
As you probably already have heard, Drupal 4.6.3 was released this week. The new XML-RPC vulnerability this addresses would allow an attacker to take over the server.
A code freeze in preparation of 4.7 was also announced this month. The freeze, scheduled to happen on September 1st, will move the latest HEAD code into a new 4.7 branch to be worked on, and debugged, before final release.
The Google Summer of Code (SoC) workers has also made some great enhancements to the codebase, adding many new modules and features for Drupal users to enjoy.
There is a lot more to discover this month, so let’s get started...
Drupal.org moved to new servers
The move was successful and we are now running on the new hardware!
The database is now running on the Sun Fire V20z server donated by Sun Microsystems. The web frontend is powered by one Dell 1850, the plan is to add a second one to load balance. Currently we are waiting for the second server to be delivered, and there are still some issues caused by having more than one server that need to be planned out in more detail.
The mail and cvs are still being hosted on the old hardware, again waiting for the new hardware still to move these to their own dedicated machine. Once the rest of the hardware is up and running we will start working on moving the rest over.
Update by Dries: Scott Kveton from the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University has additional details.
Drupal and Greenpeace: FOSS campaigning exposed
Inspired by awsamuel's "stirring first person narrative" on the Telecentre.org's reasons for choosing Drupal, I was compelled to share the experience of choosing Drupal for Greenpeace Canada's Kleercut campaign.
Even though our exploration was mostly in the area of e-advocacy tools and the biggest decision was whether to build on Civicspace or Drupal, the Kleercut camapaigners and I felt that documenting our story would be helpful for the Drupal community at large. The campaign started in November of 2004 with a small budget and big ideas ... and it has steadily grown over the last eight months to include a network of over 10,000 activists and steady on-the-ground wins for this anti-corporate campaign.