There is https://bugguide.net/ which tracks the ecology and distribution of insects. Volunteers submit insect photographs which are identified and categorized and mapped.
Um...if you're upgrading from one major version to another you'll want to use the correct version of the module. If you're not familiar with Drupal's mechanisms for updating, perhaps you should become more informed. Most competent people use CVS or one of the contributed modules like CVS deploy.
I think you are confused as to what an API is. And the "home brewed objects" you speak of are not "real" PHP objects because PHP's object implementation has sucked until PHP 5.2.x. Now that it is better, Drupal's next release (Drupal 7) will be PHP 5 only and have more use of PHP 5's objects. In the meantime, Drupal has been able to run on the huge number of hosts that resisted PHP 5.
Drupal does have the same problems other CMS's have, but in most cases Drupal has an elegant solution for it. For example, module writers have the ability to write update functions so that any changes they make in data schema, persistent variables, etc. are executed when the module is upgraded. This whole "consultants want Drupal to stay difficult" argument is thrown around occasionally, and it is not what I have experienced at all in the Drupal community, which does not consist primarily of consultants.
MVC has nothing to do with security and scalability (other than "separation of logic and presentation makes them both easier"). Drupal uses a separation of content and presentation sometimes called PAC.
Scalability has to do with intelligent caching, of which Drupal has plenty. Its pluggable cache system lets you use a database, flat files, or memcache for caching.
Security has to do with how code is written and how many eyes are on it. Code is written according to Drupal's coding standards, and developers learn to write secure code or they are slapped around by Drupal's dedicated security team.
The terminology is not vague. Modules are modular code components. Themes are the way things look. Slashdot itself was the originator of the term "block". And a view is...just what you'd expect.
Open source in general suffers from "good enough for my site". If you want great code you either become a developer and write it or you sponsor a developer. Drupal's community is like any in open source. There are superstars who write awesome code, and people just getting started who are finding their way. A site like drupalmodules.com can help you tell which modules were written by which people.
Drupal's tagging was one of the first to do full taxonomic implementation with multiple controlled vocabularies, not like most CMS's that thought a single "Categories" or "Tags" was enough. The simple "free tagging" option was added later.
Drupal's releases are getting farther apart and with the advent of commercially supported Drupal API stability is growing.
BTW, I got those instructions for installing Drupal from cvs from here.
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs /drupal checkout -r DRUPAL-5 drupal
Pro Drupal Development covers Drupal 5. However, I think many of the concepts laid out in the book are helpful in getting familiar with the "Drupal way" of thinking.
I like Drupal. It has a dedicated security team. That helps me sleep at night.
I like that each bit of HTML content that Drupal puts out (like the user login form, for example) and be easily overridden or modified without changing any core code (I just make a template file and do it there and Drupal automatically sees it).
I like that the output from Drupal is already in semantically meaningful CSS classes. If I want to tweak the way the breadcrumbs look, I just override the breadcrumb class in my own style.css file. Ditto for titles, menus, etc.
Or they might want to read the 22nd chapter of the book. It's titled Optimizing Drupal and deals with performance and scalability. Many high-profile sites, such as ubuntu.com, have scaled Drupal. You can see some of them here.
Drupal can be used for blogging, but it's more likely to be used as the framework for a community site. If all you want is a blog, you're better off with Wordpress. If you want a site that starts out as a basic "about us" site then morphs into a discussion forum that sells shoes and plots the resulting sales using Google Maps (only for users living in Ohio; users living in other states get different permissions) then Drupal is the way to go.
Slashdot Mirror
There is https://bugguide.net/ which tracks the ecology and distribution of insects. Volunteers submit insect photographs which are identified and categorized and mapped.
Agree that Drupal is not bug-free.
Agree on the need for a new node access implementation.
With Dries' emphasis on support for the semantic web lately, perhaps real ontology support is not far off.
Um...if you're upgrading from one major version to another you'll want to use the correct version of the module. If you're not familiar with Drupal's mechanisms for updating, perhaps you should become more informed. Most competent people use CVS or one of the contributed modules like CVS deploy.
I think you are confused as to what an API is. And the "home brewed objects" you speak of are not "real" PHP objects because PHP's object implementation has sucked until PHP 5.2.x. Now that it is better, Drupal's next release (Drupal 7) will be PHP 5 only and have more use of PHP 5's objects. In the meantime, Drupal has been able to run on the huge number of hosts that resisted PHP 5.
Drupal does have the same problems other CMS's have, but in most cases Drupal has an elegant solution for it. For example, module writers have the ability to write update functions so that any changes they make in data schema, persistent variables, etc. are executed when the module is upgraded. This whole "consultants want Drupal to stay difficult" argument is thrown around occasionally, and it is not what I have experienced at all in the Drupal community, which does not consist primarily of consultants.
If you are looking for a more technically-oriented book and you already know PHP, you probably want Pro Drupal Development.
MVC has nothing to do with security and scalability (other than "separation of logic and presentation makes them both easier"). Drupal uses a separation of content and presentation sometimes called PAC.
Scalability has to do with intelligent caching, of which Drupal has plenty. Its pluggable cache system lets you use a database, flat files, or memcache for caching.
Security has to do with how code is written and how many eyes are on it. Code is written according to Drupal's coding standards, and developers learn to write secure code or they are slapped around by Drupal's dedicated security team.
The terminology is not vague. Modules are modular code components. Themes are the way things look. Slashdot itself was the originator of the term "block". And a view is...just what you'd expect.
Open source in general suffers from "good enough for my site". If you want great code you either become a developer and write it or you sponsor a developer. Drupal's community is like any in open source. There are superstars who write awesome code, and people just getting started who are finding their way. A site like drupalmodules.com can help you tell which modules were written by which people.
Drupal's tagging was one of the first to do full taxonomic implementation with multiple controlled vocabularies, not like most CMS's that thought a single "Categories" or "Tags" was enough. The simple "free tagging" option was added later.
Drupal's releases are getting farther apart and with the advent of commercially supported Drupal API stability is growing.
Contradiction complete.
On the contrary. I didn't know what self-sacrifice was until we had children.
And I see that this is explained in the book in the Development Best Practices chapter, under Checking Out Drupal from CVS (page 326).
BTW, I got those instructions for installing Drupal from cvs from here. cvs -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cvs /drupal checkout -r DRUPAL-5 drupal
First, installing Drupal is like a three step process.
s /drupal checkout -r DRUPAL-5 drupal
1. Check the latest stable branch out of cvs:
cd htdocs
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.drupal.org:/cv
2. Create an empty database in MySQL.
3. In your web browser, go to http://example.com/drupal/install.php and run the web-based installer.
Secondly, "finding your own posts on the forums can be a nightmare." Here's a complicated algorithm that may help you. Hang on, this is tough:
1. Log in.
2. Click on "My recent posts".
All of your posts will be listed, with the number of replies, and any replies you haven't read will be noted with "new".
Pro Drupal Development covers Drupal 5. However, I think many of the concepts laid out in the book are helpful in getting familiar with the "Drupal way" of thinking.
I like Drupal. It has a dedicated security team. That helps me sleep at night.
I like that each bit of HTML content that Drupal puts out (like the user login form, for example) and be easily overridden or modified without changing any core code (I just make a template file and do it there and Drupal automatically sees it).
I like that the output from Drupal is already in semantically meaningful CSS classes. If I want to tweak the way the breadcrumbs look, I just override the breadcrumb class in my own style.css file. Ditto for titles, menus, etc.
They have been users of both Plone and Drupal. Matt Nuzum has a post here.
Or they might want to read the 22nd chapter of the book. It's titled Optimizing Drupal and deals with performance and scalability. Many high-profile sites, such as ubuntu.com, have scaled Drupal. You can see some of them here.
The examples in the book follow Drupal's coding standards.
It should be noted that the first chapter of the book is available on Dr. Dobb's and gives a good overview of what Drupal is and how it works.
Drupal can be used for blogging, but it's more likely to be used as the framework for a community site. If all you want is a blog, you're better off with Wordpress. If you want a site that starts out as a basic "about us" site then morphs into a discussion forum that sells shoes and plots the resulting sales using Google Maps (only for users living in Ohio; users living in other states get different permissions) then Drupal is the way to go.