Drupal 7 First Impressions

The Alpha for Drupal 7 has been out for a week now so I had to download and install it to see what this new version is going to be like. I installed it on my Mac running MAMP as that is the sytem I used for development and testing. The install went easily enough. Enter the Database name, username, and password and you are on your way. There were a couple more choices for options during the initial install but those are pretty self explanatory.

The first thing I noticed when I logged in was the Dashboard and admin menu. I am really liking that this is now part of Drupal Core since I always installed the admin menu module as one of the first things I did whenever I install Drupal. I love the new menu overlays. They make things much easier to find.

The other thing I noticed right away is that it seems faster. Granted I am running with a very Basic system with no extra modules enabled yet but it seems faster out of the box to me. I am going to take more time this weekend to setup a copy of my Website running on the new version to see how well it works and go through all of the options to see what else i can find.

Based on what I have seen so far, I can't wait for Drupal 7 to get to a Release version so I can convert my existing sites to it.

Good Drupal Training

I have been using Drupal to manage several websites for a couple years now but really have not spent as much time as I should have in learning more about CSS and Drupal theming. I have been relying on Drupal themes that others have put together and just making some very minor changes to the themes for the sites that I am maintaining. I spent some time over Christmas break working on a new theme for my Blog site and for my 3 Day Team site. To learn more about theming in Drupal I ordered some downloadable video tutorials from a group call the Lullabots that do training on how to do things in Drupal. I have not made it all the way through both videos yet but they are already helping me understand the theming much better than I had before and I consider them a good investment. The only problem I have now is having enough time to make all of the changes that I want to.

 

Back to Chicago in 2010

After having walked in San Diego in 2009, I look forward to walking with the team in Chicago again in 2010. San Diego was an awesome time but I did decide to go there because I could not walk in Chicago because of work and my Family Reunion. I really did enjoy the experience of walking in another city though and think that I might have to make that a somewhat regular practice. Maybe I will end up doing every other year in another city. Here is for hoping for non tropical weather in August in Chicago