Drupal

While doing a site with lots of custom node types for a client, I decided to isolate some features into a generic and reusable module, and the favorite nodes module was born. This is a relatively straight forward module. The admin chooses which node types to enable favorites for, and users with the correct permissions see a link saying "add to favorites" at the bottom of the node. When they click that link, the node is added to a list of their favorites.

Due to some change of plans, things turned out for the better, and I will be travelling to Vancouver, British Columbia to attend the Open Source Content Management System Summit (OSCMS-Summit), which is mainly a Drupal event, but with other CMS sessions peppered in. This will be my first time in Vancouver. I wish it was in some better season though, and I could take the whole family there. Anyone up for fishing? I know it is not a geek thing, but ...

Sami Khan's DrupalShowCase.com has been operating for a while, but only today did I notice that he has something to say about Baheyeldin.com.He says:

Khalid is a Drupal module developer and works in general on the Drupal content management system. He's brought Drupal many great modules including the AdSense module and the nodevote module.

Here is another web application framework written in PHP.

WASP is a "powerful web application framework built on PHP5". It is object oriented, and strives to be suitable for enterprise class applications with less code.

What is interesting is that  WASP uses Drupal to power its site. 

Resources

•  ONLamp article on WASP.

Robin Miller is an author and columnist on technology whose writings appears regularly on Slashdot and Newsforge.His blog runs Drupal at roblimo.com. Plain vanilla BlueMarine theme look.

Some sites like to run as an outsourced service. For example, a payment service, a support ticket system, or an event registration is not something every site wants to run. As a solution, they want to pay some other specialized site for this service.Let us say that Widgets Inc wants a support ticketing system, and contracts Support Corp to do this service over the web for its clients. Support Corp's site wants users who come from Widgets Inc's site to have the same branding and look and feel as Widgets Inc's site. At the same time, Support Corp has been contracted by other companies like ACME, Sprockets, ...etc. Each company wants Support Corp's web site to look like its own web site for its own clients.

This is both good and bad news to web site developers and theme designers.Many of us have read the phrase: "First impressions are the most lasting" on fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants, or heard it elsewhere. While it seems unfair to judge a book by its cover in a second or two, research shows that humans mentally rate web site by their looks in less than half a second, and often less than that.

Update 2006-02-01: User Referral Module has been released for 4.6. Get it from Drupal.org.A client recently commissioned a user referral module whereby an existing user of a site can refer another user and get some sort of credit for it.The module is conceptually similar to the affiliate module, but instead of a "site-to-user" model, it is a "user-to-user" model.Users in designated roles have a referral link that others can click on to register to the site. Once the new user registers, a database link is recorded as to which user referred them.

Exactly one month ago, I posted on how many sites run Drupal. My estimate using "node/feed" in Google yielded 54,000.Today, the same query shows 58,400.Is it plausible to have 4,400 new Drupal sites in one month?

Bloggerparty.com launched yesterday. They use Drupal, the Adsense module I wrote, and the new revenue sharing features that were recently sponsored by Bloggerparty.Brenda, the owner of BloggerParty, is elated with the success so far, in just two days. Read about it on her post on the first day.