New Version of Content Management System Drupal Released

Drupal 4.7.0 Contains AJAX-Based Usability Improvements

WebKnowHow
Tuesday, May 2, 2006; 01:33 AM

After more than a year of development, the Drupal development team announced the release of Drupal 4.7.0.  From the official announcement: "More than five years, 13 major releases, 30+ servicing firms employing 100+ Drupal professionals, 300+ third party modules, and over 55,000+ Drupal powered sites later, Drupal 4.7.0 is finally here and it rocks!"

Drupal is an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from the personal weblog of Tim Berners-Lee, interactive sites like Zimmer Twins, podcast sites like TWIT.tv, community driven sites like SpreadFireFox.com, artist communities like Terminus 1525 to large media sites like TheOnion.com, and even sites for NASA.

2005 has been explosive for the Drupal community. Drupal.org usage has almost tripled in terms of page views, downloads, and number of users. There have been over 338 contributors to this latest release with over 1500 patches which is almost triple the previous record with Drupal 4.6 of 523 commits by 50 developers. These new contributions are seen in the major usability improvements, new Drupal core functionality, and expansion of the Drupal development framework that will afford themers and contributing developers even greater flexibility and power.

The AJAX usability improvements include auto-complete forms and improved file upload.  A full list of new features is available at http://drupal.org/drupal-4.7.0 .

In order to run Drupal, users need a web server, PHP4 (4.3.3 or greater) or PHP5 and either MySQL (http://www.mysql.com/) or PostgreSQL (http://www.postgresql.org/).  The Apache/MySQL combination is recommended.