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and her wierd and wonderful thoughts.. :)

Drupal 7 Release Party

Monday, January 10th, 2011

The Drupal 7 Release Party Johannesburg edition was held on the 7th of January 2011. Sponsored by eConsultant and held at their offices premises at the Dome, in Northgate, those who attended were treated to a great evening spread.

The rest of the world also celebrated this event with Drupal 7 release parties being held across the world – www.drupal7releaseparty.org. - with a decent number of parties happening in Africa itself :)

In preparation

With the actual worldwide release happening on wednesday 5 January 2011, the build up to the event and the release party was a special one. Drupal supporters and users were encouraged to Blue themselves (http://d7blue.me/), and use these images on the social media profiles, including Twitter, and Facebook.

Here is my blue picture:

Blue for Drupal 7

The actual  release party

The Drupal 7 Release Party, had a great turnout and those who attended were treated to a spread of chip and dip to begin with, champagne and sherry shots, beer and ciders, and two servings of pizza; and not just any pizza, bul Calcachinos ;)

We also had the privilage of  having our own DJ at the event. Big ups to DJ Caz for some great mixes!

Changes in Drupal 7

As part of the release party, we watched an intoduction to Drupal 7 video (twice) and were then given a short presentation by two of South Africa’s Drupal custodians George from Springfisher and Anton from Telamenta.

George discussed and demonstrated 21 features of Drupal 7. Some of these features are listed below:

  • Easier installation – including command line install option
  • The use of overlays for the admin section
  • The admininstration interface is built in; the shortcut bar can also be optimized
  • Permissions improved
  • New hooks available
  • More secure passwords
  • Built in image handling

Anton then also gave his view of the progession of Drupal to this point and its open source origins.

After the presentation we were all included in a few group photos, one of which will be official Drupal 7 release party photo for the Drupal group – hopefully!

A video taken of the event and the people at the event can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/0Ln05tHoYqc?a

Get started with Drupal 7

10.01.2011 Thoughts 1 Comment

Response to the Challenge by WordPress to Post Daily Blog Posts

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

On the very first day of 2011, WordPress issued a challenge to the users of its blogging platform to make an effort to write and publish a post daily (or weekly).

Users wishing to participate in this challenge needs to include the appropriate post tag with each blog post: postaday2011 or postaweek2011.

For the blog post on Mashable regarding this challenge, click here >>

For me blogging daily is is a “mission impossible type challenge” and for more than one reason; even blogging once a week, consistently, for the entire duration of 2011, might be also be slightly unattainable.

For one I feel I don’t have enough subject matter to write even weekly posts, as this would constitute 52 posts for the year.

Thankfully WordPress have launched a guide with ideas, suggestions and blogging motivation as a means of assistance to those of us who are writing for their own personal blogs called The Daily Post.

Secondly, my  posts tend to be long winded, so I would need to change my style of writing or learn to write using a different structure.

Then there is the time issue. I do not have enough time to set aside dedicated hours for blogging, especially now as I am moving into a different direction career wise and that I am currently getting into the serious business of breaking in my filly (www.mysaddlefund.co.za). Plus I love my sleep to much.

After all is said and done, and the excuses are so paper thin, they blew away with the wind (courtesy of Eminem), it all comes down dedication. I can either decide to accept the challenge or not. Part of my goal set for 2011 was to blog more often, I’m just not sure this structured deadline type format is going to work for me, self-disciplined or not.

Time will tell. To those who decide to accept the WordPress challenge, all I can say is Good Luck!

04.01.2011 Thoughts 7 Comments