In this post, we describe some of the issues facing large or complex software projects using Drupal's CCK content type extension facilities. We then propose a remedy in the form of CoCKTaiL, a high-level language for CCK types and associated UI elements and relations. Tools and potential applications will be described in future work.

Drupal's Content Construction Kit (CCK) is a powerful feature, much loved by Drupal developers, who use it to rapidly define data types and relations for applications. Using a UI, developers can easily create new content types by specifying fields, UI widgets, relations, and more.

The ability to interactively create new types and supporting UI's is a great timesaver in the early stages of many Drupal development projects.

For larger projects, however, the nature of the design and implementation process for CCK types leads to difficulties in evolving and maintaining projects which include CCK components, and these difficulties contribute to the lifecycle cost of large Drupal applications.

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Jay just announced Acquia's plans to get into the hosted search business. By doing so, we hope to provide Drupal sites a (i) faster, (ii) more scalable search solution that (iii) can work across multiple sites, that (iv) can handle broader content, (v) that offers faceted navigation and more.

Content management systems with basic keyword search are going nowhere but out of style. Content management systems that do search really well can improve a site's navigation in new and significant ways. We want Drupal sites to be in the latter category.

As we've learned with big sites like drupal.org, it is extremely difficult to do search well from within Drupal, hence the need for a powerful hosted search service. By offering a hosted search service, Acquia continues to tear down barriers for adoption so Drupal can fulfill its full potential.

We're still working on this new service, and we don't know yet when it will be ready, but let us know if you're interested in being an early private beta tester.

Cu?c b?u ch?n CMS ngu?n m? hàng n?m c?a NXB Packt ?ã ??t ??n ??nh ?i?m khi có thông báo v? CMS ngu?n m? t?t nh?t n?m 2008. Drupal ?ã v??t qua Joomla! và DotNetNuke ?? b?o v? thành công danh hi?u ?ã giành ???c trong n?m 2007.

K? t? khi Dries Buyaert công b? d? án d??i d?ng mã m? vào n?m 2001, Drupal ?ã có nh?ng b??c l?n m?nh v??t b?c. 1,5 l??t l??t t?i xu?ng trong 12 tháng, 20.000 phi?u b?u ch?n, Drupal hi?n là CMS ???c s? d?ng b?i Warner Brothers Music, MTV UK và New York Observer.

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Trong s? các h? qu?n tr? n?i dung (CMS) ph? bi?n hi?n nay, n?i b?t lên hai ?ng viên sáng giá nh?t là Joomla! và Drupal. Hai h? qu?n tr? n?i dung này thay nhau làm m?a làm gió trong các cu?c thi. ??c bi?t ? cu?c bình ch?n uy tín nh?t c?a Packt Publishing, Joomla! và Drupal luôn chi?m gi? hai v? trí ??u b?ng.

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Hôm nay, 27/10, nhà xu?t b?n Packtpub ?ã công b? nh?ng g??ng m?t sáng giá nh?t trong c?ng ??ng CMS (h? qu?n tr? n?i dung) ngu?n m?. ?ây là cu?c thi th??ng niên, bao g?m nhiêu h?ng m?c gi?i th??ng. K?t qu? b?u ch?n g??ng m?t sáng giá nh?t (MVP) d?a theo t?ng CMS.

MVP c?a Joomla! không ai khác h?n Johan Janssens, nhân v?t ch? ch?t trong nhóm phát tri?n, ng??i ph? trách n?n t?ng c? b?n c?a Joomla!. Chính Johan là ng??i ??ng sau t?t c? các thi?t k?, ?? t?o thành m?t môi tr??ng phát tri?n trên PHP v?ng ch?c.

Nhân v?t sáng giá nh?t n?m nay c?a Drupal chính là Earl Miles, bi?t danh eaton. Anh tham gia vào hàng ch?c module quan tr?ng c?a Drupal, là nhân t? chính trong hai module Views và Panels. S? ?óng góp c?a Earl trong Views 2 ?ã làm module này tr? thành m?t ph?n thi?t y?u c?a Drupal.

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Question: What framework would you set up to support a relatively small but diverse community of practice, mixing academics and city governments, allowing good practices to be qualified, shared and translated into practical expertise.

A knowledge management system would seem to form part the solution. It doesn’t have to be complex, in fact needs to be cheap to implement and run - we are talking less than 20 members and a few hundred documents at most. I can think of such functional requirements for the system as:

• Document uploading, searching
• Some form of categorisation system
• System for tracking issues and questions and linking them to the body researching them and then providing answers

It’s probably information management rather than knowledge management, but some consultants believe they can create a viable solution using Drupal:

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At Mollom, we're focused on blocking spam. To do that, we've built a world-class (and world-wide) infrastructure that evaluates your site's comments and posts in real time, freeing you from moderation duties to spend your time on more satisfying pursuits.

Mollom is built on the freemium business model, and our customers have a variety of different needs. While many of our clients take advantage of our free filtering service to protect their site, a growing number use our Mollom Plus subscription service. We're always looking for new ways to add value for all of our customers, especially those with Mollom Plus subscriptions.

To that end, we're pleased to announce our new 99.9% availability standard for the back-end network available to our Mollom Plus subscribers. With 99.9% availability, we guarantee to keep our infrastructure working on your behalf. Those guarantees are in writing at http://mollom.com/standard-service-level-agreement and part of the updated web service agreement for paid subscriptions.

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The search technology area is highly important to people with websites. As a result, I've spent serious time looking at it. Several things have come from this time spent:

• The important thing: We'll soon be adding "hosted site search" capabilities to the Acquia Network for our subscribers. More about this below.

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Last weekend I blogged about openQRM 4.2 being released.

This morning Matt finally let me know the long waiting fresh and new Drupal based openQRM.com is live !

Feed Added!

FFmpeg wrapper just got a nice little utility for testing FFmpeg conversion settings. For most people the knowledge of video and audio codecs is a bit of an arcane science- what settings go with what codec, much less the rules about audio formats... it is all a bit messy.

So I've put together the beginnings of an interface that lets an admin select a file uploaded to the server and run tests to their hearts content on it. Bitrates, codecs, and all the other options that FFmpeg Wrapper provides are available for use.

Perhaps the most important aspect, however, is the debugging data that the FFmpeg provides when the conversion fails. If you are converting a 48khz wmv file to flv and wondering why the conversion keeps failing, this will help you see that you need to set the audio bit rate to 44.1khz.

The interface is not perfect, and certainly the ability to pass the testing function a file path as an argument would be very helpful (especially off the Drupal attached files list), but these are all things to come.

Code is CVS DRUPAL-5 branch, will get ported up to 6x sometime soon.

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The stereotype of an author, solitary and banging away at their typewriter, is only a little bit different in the digital age. Although the typewriter has been swapped out for a keyboard and a monitor, the solitary nature of writing for print is still true. Your work is your own and you are responsible for it. Editors give feedback and sometimes they are right and you are wrong, and sometimes they are right and your ego doesn't care. Sulking is (often) inevitable.

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So far we have gathered our resources, blocked out the site, set up content types, and created some simple views to display that content. In this post, we'll look at:

• Targetting a landing page
• Basics of setting up a Google ad
• Basic user permissions
• Terms and Conditions

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