Over the past weeks I've been working on extending the project module and CVS module. The former is responsible for managing projects on drupal.org while the latter lets us track development. As of a few minutes ago, the improvements went live so read on for an overview of what changed.

After using XOOPS for the past year and using Mambo for another site, I discovered Drupal via the urlgreyhot.com site. I have a few sites, but I decided to pilot Drupal on my personal web site, Nautis Project. My day job is management consulting (IT Strategy and Knowledge Management) - so I work with information architects quite a bit. I'm impressed by Drupal's taxonomy core. This system seems to have been built correctly from the ground up. Some of the most sophisticated content management systems out there (Interwoven, Vignette, Documentum) have still not mastered this idea very well. I've written quite a bit about Content Management elsewhere, here and here. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to the development team for making this freely available. It's a remarkable product.

Nautis Project: When I'm not working, I study evolutionary biology. I'm a big fan of Henri Bergson, Rupert Sheldrake, Carl Jung, etc. In addition to my personal blog, it's a collection of papers (thanks to the articles module) by academic types writing on similar subjects.

http://www.nautis.com/

Theme inspired by the negen9 theme and SimpleBits' cool, green rollovers. Thanks.

In preparation of the Drupal 4.6.0 release, development of Drupal core will be frozen on February 1th. During the initial stage of the code freeze, documentation updates, usability improvements and performance improvements will be accepted. New functionality, on the other hand, will not be accepted unless deemed important. Thus, as of February 1th, the focus is to strengthen the code base's performance, usability and stability. As we progress, focus will shift towards stability and near the end of the code freeze, only bug fixes will be allowed, until no release critical bugs are left.

It will take several weeks before Drupal 4.6.0 can be released, however, one or more release candidates will be made available during the code freeze.

I am interested in spearheading the development of a module that allows the creation of quizzes, administers them and keeps records of users' performance. This module would be aimed at educational sites where users come to test thier skills and understanding. I would like initial feedback from the community to guage interest and to find out if anybody has already begun work in this direction.

I realise that I'm likely to get a biased report from here, but I'll ask anyway - how does Drupal stack up to Mambo? What are the advantages and disadvantages? I'm looking strongly at either Drupal or Mambo as a solution, and I don't want to invest time and learning in a CMS I won't end up using long term.

The website is going to be mostly information rather than community (so no need for forums, comments, etc). It is for an educational institution, including course information and other details like that.

Thanks

Exactly four years ago, on January 15th 2001, I released Drupal 1.0.0. The following snippet is taken directly from the original announcement:

Today, drop.org announces the release of drupal 1.00 after an extensive period of testing. Drupal is a full-featured content management/discussion engine using Apache/PHP/MySQL and suitable to setup a news-driven community or portal site similar to kuro5hin.org and slashdot.org. Current features include discussion forums, web-based administration, theme support, an open submission queue, content management, a modularized design, PHP sessions, user management with access control and username/profanity/hostname filters, error logging, a public diary module, an affiliate site module, backend/headline generation (RSS/RDF) and much more.

Well, happy birthday Drupal!