Drupal 7.19 and Drupal 6.28, maintenance releases which contain fixes for security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. See the Drupal 7.19 and Drupal 6.28 release notes for further information.

Download Drupal 7.19
Download Drupal 6.28

Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features or non-security-related bug fixes in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement. More information on the Drupal 6.x release series can be found in the Drupal 6.0 release announcement.

Security information

We have a security announcement mailing list and a history of all security advisories, as well as an RSS feed with the most recent security advisories. We strongly advise Drupal administrators to sign up for the list.

Drupal 7 and 6 include the built-in Update Status module (renamed to Update Manager in Drupal 7), which informs you about important updates to your modules and themes.

Bug reports

Both Drupal 7.x and 6.x are being maintained, so given enough bug fixes (not just bug reports) more maintenance releases will be made available, according to our monthly release cycle.

Changelog

Drupal 7.19 is a security release only. For more details, see the 7.19 release notes. A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 7.x branch can be found in the git commit log.

Drupal 6.28 is a security release only. For more details, see the 6.28 release notes. A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 6.x branch can be found in the git commit log.

Security vulnerabilities

Drupal 7.19 and 6.28 were released in response to the discovery of security vulnerabilities. Details can be found in the official security advisory:

• SA-CORE-2013-001

To fix the security problem, please upgrade to either Drupal 7.19 or Drupal 6.28.

Known issues

None.

6-9 February 2013
Crowne Plaza Coogee Beach
Sydney, Australia
http://sydney2013.drupal.org

DrupalCon Sydney, our first DrupalCon in the Asia Pacific region, has sold out!
We are so excited by the positive response from attendees, we wish we’d booked the opera house instead!

We’ve opened a waiting list for those who missed out on tickets, and will be releasing tickets as they become available, however there are still many opportunities to participate in all the wonderful events surrounding DrupalCon.

The Business Day program on Wednesday 6 February, keynoted by long-time open source advocate Pia Waugh , targets the conference theme of growing Drupal Downunder, and is a great event for business leaders, evaluators and decision makers to hear real stories and strategies around adopting Drupal. http://sydney2013.drupal.org/drupal-business-day

DrupalCon is a great opportunity to access hands on instruction from some of the world’s top Drupal trainers. Training programs on Git, Drupal Commerce and Building a Drupal site from scratch also kick off the conference on Wed 6 Feb 2013. If you missed on a ticket to DrupalCon why not snap up a ticket to one of these great training workshops.

• Commerce Kickstart with John Kennedy of Commerce Guys
• Blue Collar Git with Mike Anello of Drupal Easy
• Plan, Build, Launch; Real World Drupal with Addison Berry and Jeff Eaton of Lullabot

The main conference on Thursday and Friday is filled with a rich and diverse selection of sessions from speakers from around the world, as well as home grown talent from the Australian Drupal community. Here’s a selection of our featured sessions.

Two “floating” tracks may be unfamiliar to diehard fans of DrupalCon. The Content Authoring and Case Studies tracks are aimed at broadening the appeal of DrupalCon beyond the traditional audience of geeky Developers, to try and engage a broader audience of non-technical Drupal users.

Our Advanced audience is invited to attend the Core Conversations Summit on Friday, which features a D7 to D8 module upgrade demo with webchick and an hour long D8 open forum with Dries and many Drupal Core Contributors.

Keynotes are always a big part of DrupalCon, and what kind of DrupalCon would it be without Dries Buytaert’s famous Driesnote? Dries will set the scene for the true state of Drupal 8 development and give a view of the road ahead.

After hearing about the future of Drupal, attention shifts to our second keynote, the Honourable Senator Kate Lundy, detailing how open source software makes it possible for governments and their people to engage with each other more directly, during her Friday morning keynote, “From Open Source, to Open Government.” Senator Lundy has been a powerful advocate for the adoption of Free and Open source software, and has been internationally recognised for blazing a pathway for a more open approach to government.

The conference concludes with a full Sprint Day on Saturday 9 February, which is open to anyone who wishes to attend. Make the most of the Drupal expertise in town and find out how to make your mark in the Drupal project. Let us know you're coming!

New to contributing or just sprints in general? Come to Community Tools Workshop on Saturday morning get your Drupal Toolbox in order and level up your skills with Sprint leads xjm, ZenDoodles and add1sun, and other leading contributors. Sign up here!

Many in the Aussie Drupal community have made the pilgrimage North to attend DrupalCon in Europe or North America, so we are incredibly excited to welcome the world to join us in February Downunder.

See you on the beach!

PS. If you're coming from overseas - Don't forget you need a visa!

Ever since node 4877 in 2003 we have a “prediction” post up on Drupal.org, where Drupal coders and users can share their vision on what will happen the year ahead with their beloved tool. Ever? Well, we skipped 2012, so we can not look back to the predictions you made last year on this site.

But that should not stop you from making some predictions for 2013. And you are welcome to do so in the comments below. Will parts of Drupal end up in another CMS or framework? Will "WSCCI first” be the slogan or will the consolidation in the CMS landscape and the trend to leave our small island make new bridges towards other PHP projects or even make a new Pangaea, beyond PHP and the web? Will Drupal be the answer in Jeopardy on the question “what is the best CMS?”. Time will tell.

Or you.. In the comments below

Update: Drupal 7.19 and Drupal 6.28 are now available.

Drupal 7.18 and Drupal 6.27, maintenance releases which contain fixes for security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. See the Drupal 7.18 and Drupal 6.27 release notes for further information.

Download Drupal 7.18
Download Drupal 6.27

Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features or non-security-related bug fixes in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement. More information on the Drupal 6.x release series can be found in the Drupal 6.0 release announcement.

Security information

We have a security announcement mailing list and a history of all security advisories, as well as an RSS feed with the most recent security advisories. We strongly advise Drupal administrators to sign up for the list.

Drupal 7 and 6 include the built-in Update Status module (renamed to Update Manager in Drupal 7), which informs you about important updates to your modules and themes.

Bug reports

Both Drupal 7.x and 6.x are being maintained, so given enough bug fixes (not just bug reports) more maintenance releases will be made available, according to our monthly release cycle.

Changelog

Drupal 7.18 is a security release only. For more details, see the 7.18 release notes. A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 7.x branch can be found in the git commit log.

Drupal 6.27 is a security release only. For more details, see the 6.27 release notes. A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 6.x branch can be found in the git commit log.

Security vulnerabilities

Drupal 7.18 and 6.27 were released in response to the discovery of security vulnerabilities. Details can be found in the official security advisory:

• SA-CORE-2012-004

To fix the security problem, please upgrade to either Drupal 7.18 or Drupal 6.27.

Known issues

None.

We will be having a very short downtime at 5PM PST (01:00 UTC) this Thursday December 13th. The outage should be no more than 2-3 minutes while we reboot a switch. Thank you.

On Nov 1 2012, we tested the Views UI (7.x-3.5) with intermediate-level Drupal users at the BADCamp UX/UI Summit to provide the community with a clear picture of the usability bottlenecks in the Views UI, which is now in development in Drupal 8. We have identified a number of major problems and a large number of small ones, each of which now has an issue in the Drupal Core issue queue, where we discuss solutions, provide code patches with screenshots of the changes, come to agreement and put these changes into Drupal 8.

The study planning, participant profile, findings, videos and more are explained below.

Contents

Overall findings
Study summary
Screeners and study guide
Findings from study
Next steps
Video recordings (YouTube)

Overall findings

Participants thought that Views was “powerful” but complained about the steep learning curve to understand the concept and using the Views UI when they were first introduced to it. They relied on extensive Googling, face to face explanations from colleagues and video tutorials to learn Views. When they were thrown into unknown territories, their frustrations with using the UI were palpable.

Study summary

• Number of participants: 8 (1 advanced user, 6 intermediate users, 1 beginner user)
• Session length: 45 minutes
• Study Focus: Using Views in Drupal 7
• Understand existing user’s views usage & experience [behavior focused]
• Uncover critical/major issues with existing users [UI focused]
• How users navigate and operate the advanced settings
• Gather data quickly so that actionable improvements can be incorporated into Drupal core before the feature freeze
• Compensation offered: Google Open Source t-shirt
• Recruitment method: Twitter (from BADCamp, @lisarex, @dcmistry), email to BADCamp UX Summit attendees. The email was quite successful.
• Date: November 1, 2012
• Type of study: Moderated usability study (in-person)
• The sessions moderated by Dharmesh Mistry (dcmistry) and Lisa Rex (lisarex). Our volunteer note takers were Olga Biasotti, Angie Byron, Neerav Mehta, Lewis Nyman, Bojhan Somers, and Brian Young. Other volunteer contributors to the usability study planning include Bohjan Somers, Becky Gessler and Garen Checkley. Special thanks to Jen Lampton for coordinating the UX/UI Summit and putting up with us!
• All the sessions were streamed live on Google+ and are available on YouTube (linked below)

Screeners and study guide

Potential participants filled in a screener survey to see if they matched our profile, and a followup screener was used to help us clarify, when the scope of the study was narrowed.

We wrote a Views usability study guide (like a script), with the input from the Views in Core team.

Participant profile

• Participants were targeted to be intermediate users who have done Drupal site building and have familiarity with Views (They have created basic Views and have dabbled with the advanced views). To keep the data focused, this is a report of findings of 6 intermediate users and 1 advanced user only. Data from the beginner participant will be added to future beginner level study data.
• All participants were screened to be fluent in English.
• Participants are comfortable with technology in their personal and professional lives.

Detailed findings Positive comments

• The first screen of Views UI get’s the user’s foot in the door
• Participants rated their experience ratings higher as they got more exposure to views
• Participants like the ability to preview and create custom CSS
• Participants found theme template information useful

Critical, major and moderate usability issues

1. Critical Lack of guidance: The views UI wizard page helps participants get the foot in the door but provides little guidance when they land on the second page. This is because the terminology is unclear and the visual hierarchy is flat. The problem gets severe under “Advanced” section.

   Possible solutions:

   • Use the Views UI wizard anytime a new display type is created.
   • More visual hierarchy on labeling and/or positioning
   • Contrib module with guided tour of Views
   • tooltip on hover of difficult labels

   [needs exploration + design]

2. Major Too many items under configuration options for fields/ filters/contextual filters/ relationships: Participants feel “overwhelmed” when they see the long scrolling list of options. The problem gets worse because the participants do not necessarily see the “Search” option. The search option is visible only when you are on the top of the modal.

   

   Possible solutions:

   • Limit initial list to user created fields/filters.
   • Reduce visual clutter caused by descriptions.
   • Divide ‘filter’ (e.g. content, global) and criteria (e.g. Body, Comment count) into two columns, making the criteria more scannable
   • Search box has no visual weight and/or fixed positioning.

   #1832862: Users feel overwhelmed by handler listings

3. Major Using “Contextual Filter” is difficult: When a participant selects a field in contextual filter, they are presented with a lot of options in a flat structure making them unsure how to proceed. This is mostly because of lack of workflow. The expectation was to select a default argument first and then move into related steps based on the choice. A related issue is the help text was unclear “Also look for node and node author ID” The advanced tools like contextual filter, relationship, exposed form require more guidance because it is a harder thing to do.

   Possible solutions:

   • Progressively disclose the functionality instead of all at once
   • Revise the text to be less Boolean, more human
   • Provide short UI / help text in a standard help block on these section to explain what they are

   [needs exploration + design]

4. Major Several participants forgot to save/didn’t realise they need to save in order to see their changes to the view when they click “view page”. On smaller screens you can’t see the drupal_set_message() warning of unsaved changes.

   Possible solutions:

   • Provide an ‘Unsaved changes’ signal/notification within the main area of the Views UI, where they are looking [needs design]
   • Move save to button towards the bottom of the page (between preview, or at the end, or both)

   #1831894: Users miss "save" button and can't distinguish "editable" and "preview" areas

5. Major Participant had difficulty determining where the view showed up. If it’s a Page you can see the path. If it’s any other display type, you have no way of knowing where those displays appear on the site (P4).

   Possible solutions:

   • Show on the views listing the region where the block appears
   • Show in the views ui where the block appears (Attachment does this!)
   • Show when there’s an attachment in the Views listing (Block, Feed, Page appear in alphabetical order)

   #1834576: Improve details on the Views listing page

6. Major Disconnect in the workflow of adding a block, as you have to create the block display, then save, then go out to the Blocks UI.

   Possible solutions:

   • Add “place block in region’ to the Views wizard.
   • Add “place block in region”to the advanced views.

   #1836390: Add “place block in region’ to the Views wizard to help workflow and #1836394: Add “place block in region’ to the Blocks settings in Views UI

7. Moderate People often forget to add a path on a page, and if they hit save, they don’t see see the dsm() letting them know. If they haven’t saved, they still don’t realise the path is missing because the default / is very small and subtle. It’s also a very small target area for such a critical step in creating a page view. (P3)

   

   Possible solution:

   • Replace the / with text such as ‘path is undefined’

   #1831142: Path is never empty in option summary.

8. Moderate ‘View page’ link goes to the home if the path isn’t set, causing confusion because people think that is what they created when in fact its not.

   Possible solution:

   • ‘View page’ is not an active link until the view has been saved

   #1831696: View page link goes nowhere, if you have not saved

9. Moderate ‘All displays” is the default option, even when there’s only a single display. This is unnecessary and is one more decision a new user has to fret over.

   Possible solutions:

   • Hide “all display/This page” options e.g. filtering when there is only one.
   • Significantly decrease the visual importance of this functionality.

   #1836384: The views UI should display "All Displays" option only when there are more 1 displays.

10. Moderate Other related issue to “All displays”/ “Override this display”: In order to override a display you have to go to the drop down on the top left of the modal and to apply the display you have to go to the bottom right. As users are focused on the task at hand, they don’t realize that they have to change the filter and may accidentally apply to all displays. What makes the matter worse is that when it is changed to "Override this display", the label changes to "Apply (this display)" but the difference is so subtle that the user did not register the difference.
    #1836392: In the Views UI, the interaction pattern of “All displays”/ “Override this display” is confusing
11. Moderate Participant did not understand the Preview was updated automatically. They didn't use it, and just went straight to 'view page'.

    Possible solution:

    • Show when the last time the preview was updated

    #1836470: Participant did not understand the Preview was updated automatically

12. Moderate On Views listing, participants have trouble determining what’s active and what’s disabled.

    Possible solutions:

    • Split them into two tables, with disabled underneath
    • Have the inactive views on a separate page, which is a gallery of possible views.
    • Change them to a tabbed display, with Active being the default tab
    • Fix the accessibility of the listing:

    #1830822: Split the Views UI listing into two tables for enabled and disabled

13. Moderate The More section only contains the Administrative title. The “More” area is perceived as this magical area, where you might find something magical. Participants opened it and were disappointed to only find the administrative title.

    Possible solutions:

    • Move it out of this section until there’s more than one item, or label it with something less vague.:
    • Only show it upon clicking a checkbox using states, e.g. Add administrative title.

    #1831080: Remove the "More" area from the bottom of handler configuration

14. Moderate 'Theme: information' label is misleading.

    “Theme information name is misleading because we are talking about templates. I have been on this page so many times and it’s still complicated. How are you supposed to know that this has theme’s real output?” (P4)

    Another participant didn't know what Theme: information meant.

    Possible solution:

    • It should be relabeled to something like Theming: templates (P4)

    #1833834: Theme: information label is unclear

15. Moderate People often click the “Settings” link when they see “HTML list | Settings” which causes them to miss how to change the main formatter settings.

    Possible solutions:

    • Merge the two settings
    • Make settings a tab of HTML list.
16. Moderate When adding a field, “Create a label” is checked by default but we observed most people deselecting this. It’s only mostly useful for table display. (P4, P6, P7, P3). Needs more discussion to determine if this observation is accurate.

    Possible solution:

    • Deselect by default, collapse options. Limit # of items isn’t labeled so participant was unsure how to limit items on a block display. Assumed Pager label was specific to pages.

    #1831674: "Create a label" should be off by default, with an opt-in for style plugins

Less-actionable issues

• There are 3 places the user sees for titling the page. (P2) http://screencast.com/t/S3BL6wdcflj
• Medium: Help text is not helpful “also look for node and node author” (P4)
• Large: Participants arent’ clear on what contextual filters are or when to use them (P2, P4)
• Large: Participants arent’ clear on what relationships are or when to use them (P2, P4)
• Medium: Grouping on fields is not widely understood
• Grid display is not responsive because it is table based (P1)
• Format level doesn’t signal about display (HTML/settings) (P6 & P7)
• Preview contextual filter doesn’t have format settings (P6)
• Large: observed people applying changes to All displays when they meant to override

Next steps

We will discuss the issues and explore other alternatives in the Drupal core issue queue. Relevant issues are tagged BADCamp2012UX.

Video recordings (YouTube)

Participant 1
Participant 2
Participant 3
Participant 4
Participant 5
Participant 6
Participant 7
Participant 8 (new user)

The OSL's network provider is preparing to upgrade a core router. This is a large upgrade, but they have devised a plan to limit impact to us. All network outages should be short (5-10Min), but there will be a few of them. The first will be Saturday Nov. 10th at 10PM PST (0600 UTC). This will be a single outage to setup the new core. Following this, there will be scheduled move windows for individual sets of servers. This will impact us 4 times (we have a few servers). The first will have an "impact window" of Monday Nov. 12th 5PM PST (0100 UTC) and the window will stretch for an hour and a half. Each individual server port move should take less than 10Min, so this is certainly not a downtime window, but the network will be unstable during this period as servers are moved. We will have a similar window at 8PM PST (0400 UTC) on the same day.

The next outage window that will directly impact us will be Wed. Nov 14th from 8-11PM PST (0400-0700 UTC). Again, this shouldn't be considered a downtime, there will just be some network instability during this period. The last window is Friday Nov 16th from 8-9:30PM (0400-0530 UTC). This window includes two of our servers, but more importantly includes several important central services. This last window may have more impact than the proceeding ones. We plan to work with our provider to reduce impact.

This upgrade is quite exciting for us and we hope it goes smoothly. The following is a brief summary of the windows:

11/10 at 10PM PST (0600 UTC): Cut NERO connection to OSU 5k's; 5 minute outage
11/12 at 5-6:30pm PST (0100-0230 UTC): Move ports from old 10/100 card to OSL 2K switch
11/12 at 8-9:30pm PST (0400-0530 UTC): Move ports from line card #3 to new router
11/14 at 8-11pm PST (0400-0700 UTC): Move ports from line card #4 & #8 to new router
11/16 at 8-9:30pm PST (0400-0530 UTC): Move ports from line card #7 to new router
TBA: Cut NERO connection to OSU 7k's with port channels; 5 minute outage

Update: Drupal 7.18 is now available.

Drupal 7.17, a maintenance release with numerous bug fixes (no security fixes) is now available for download. See the Drupal 7.17 release notes for a full listing.

Download Drupal 7.17

Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 sites is strongly recommended. There are no major new features in this release. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement.

Security information

We have a security announcement mailing list and a history of all security advisories, as well as an RSS feed with the most recent security advisories. We strongly advise Drupal administrators to sign up for the list.

Drupal 7 includes the built-in Update Manager module, which informs you about important updates to your modules and themes.

There are no security fixes in this release of Drupal core.

Bug reports

Drupal 7.x is being maintained, so given enough bug fixes (not just bug reports), more maintenance releases will be made available, according to our monthly release cycle.

Changelog

Drupal 7.17 is a bug fix only release. The full list of changes between the 7.16 and 7.17 releases can be found by reading the 7.17 release notes. A complete list of all bug fixes in the stable 7.x branch can be found in the git commit log.

Update notes

See the 7.17 release notes for details on important changes in this release.

In addition, Drupal 7.17 makes a change to the Update Manager module to allow Drupal.org to collect usage statistics for individual modules and themes, rather than only for entire projects. The usage statistics will remain anonymous. (For more information on how usage statistics are collected from your site, see the online handbook entry for the Update Manager module.)

Known issues

• #1836082: Drupal 7.17 breaks some form redirects (including views exposed filters): This affects sites which use a "Reset" button on exposed filters in the Views module. The button will not work correctly and will lead to a browser redirect loop unless the fix mentioned in that issue is applied.

Click to view slideshow.

The first time I have done photos for someone who wasn’t a band or some sort of event, and his first corset piercing. More later.

Click to view slideshow.

 

So I went to a show last night and decided to do photos just for the fun of it. The place had terrible lighting so I tried my hardest to edit them into something usable. Next time I’ll have to bring a better flash and a different lens. Oh well. Here are four okay shots.

I’ve had a great time at the beach while it has lasted but now, alas, I have to go back to Tampa and do a large amount of homework.