Willy Dobbe - drupal

ProjectPAAS

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:53:41 +0000

A couple of weeks ago we launched the website of a service we have been working on hard for over half a year. The project started as a SAAS about performance and hence the internal project name was “ProjectPAAS”. As it goes with internal project names, it became the name of the service it self.

12 seconds start now

I still have problems explaining what the service is doing in an elevator pitch. But basicaly one installs a module on a to be tested staging site from d.o with the funky URL /project/paas, configures the service on the portal of projectpaas.com and then wait an hour or two. We start a service to measure your site from the outside and from the inside, analyse the data, make a report and when you check your mail you get an in depth report on all the elements of the chain that are relevant to the performance of the website.

We measure from one or more selectable (EC2) locations in the world with over 150 metrics and we only report on real data, no yslow wisdom. We know what influence speed, we see how it is configured at your site (with the module or from the outisde) and we simulate to find the the optimal value would be for your use case.

The cliché for example that one needs parallel download (images[1-4].example.com) to bypass the maximumum connection a browser can have to a host, is just that, a cliché. When one takes DNS lookup,TCP slow start and the sliding window in to account, for certain usecase, having images[x].example.com might actually be slower. So we are opinionated, we measure, we analyse, we report, you gain speed.

Easteregg

I really like retro future so we used this for a theme around the site and facebook. But since easter (Dutch "pasen" is coming up,
do check the projectpaas.com website, find the easteregg and twitter about it. :-)

This posting isn't as much about the service of ProjectPAAS as it is about why we made the service. To share our experience and to get feedback from you. There are two reasons we made it, one is internally driven and one is externally.

The internal reason is that we have been building some of the most visited sites and webapps in Drupal in the Netherlands. So after some time we got good at performance, we understood what to do and what not to do for the complete stack of elements that define speed, HTML, CSS, Linux, Apache, MySQL and yes, Drupal. Word got out that we were good and siteowners that have been building their site at another company, came to us for advice on how to get more speed in their site.
Once we had done a dozen of these reports, we wanted to make the reports more easily accessible for the site owners and website builders. This is part of why westarted the Performance Reporting

Land here

The external reason might be more interesting for you. We made the SAAS because we think that the CMS landscape will change and our business will change.

The landscape will change. 10 years ago everybody had his/her own CMS, there were more CMS-es then websites it seemed. 5 yeas ago it was clear who were going to be the winners in the consolidation, 80% of the proprietary "solutions" were gone and open source was no longer a dirty word in enterprises. Within the open CMS-es, the global top 5 was visible though especially in Europe there were still many local open source CMS-es. This consolidation perse was good open source and especially for Drupal shops.

However, the market won't stop here. Most of the Drupal websites are not complex, they don't have any connections to backend systems, less than 10k pageviews per day and are relatively expensive to build and most of all expensive to maintain. Here is the business case for open source SAAS, solutions based on open source software like Aqcuia and Wordpress.com offer. These solutions with standard modules and a customisable template is good enough right now for 20% of the Drupal sites out there and will cost a fraction of what building it "by hand" will cost.

The users of these open source SAAS hosting solutions will only grow. Good for the parties offering these services, bad for the Drupal shops that have been building relatively simple portfolio sites. By itself, this trend might have a big impact those coding Drupal core, modules or working in for example the security team. This is not meant in a bad way, but with most of the sites going towards a smaler group of SAAS companies, the number of "independent" individuals adding to core or writing modules might actually get lower, they might have another itch. It will be very interesting to see how this will develop, I might be completely wrong here.

Performance takes time

Traditionally most Drupal shops do projects, do maintenance and do consulting. Some have found a nice niche, a place geographically apart, a specific vertical or a certain service like migration from another CMS. However, most Drupal shops build relatively simple websites for SOHO plus. I know there are many shops that work for high end enterprises. But not all the 280.000 Drupal sites fit in the Alexa top 100.000. So I do think that if you are a Drupal shop, you have to find your sweet spot the next couple of month. On the one hand we have operational excellence (a SAAS to host sites like gardens or a service like ProjectPAAS itself) and on the other hand customer intimacy (the complex sites with lots of integration with backend systems and complex workflow). There might be space between these two, but the portfolio site area will get very crowded and Drupal will not be the best tool to serve this in my opinion. This is part of the reason why we build our first SAAS around a product we understand and is close to our core business. We are already planning next services that might still be build in Drupal but will target a broader audience.

For the moment, if you are intersted in our product, dont be shy and talk to us on twitter or faces us. Potential resellers or users are welcome to fill out our form. We really do hope that our product can help you build faster websites and thereby push Drupal even more ahead of the curve.

get your ticket to the Frontendunited Event in London now

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 19:05:28 +0000

A small plug, if you want to attend the Drupal event about design, frontend development and usability, be sure to take a look at frontendunited.org, London, April 13-14. I do think there are some of the best speakers lined up both from within our community and related communities, for example Christian Heilmann. The venue must be the coolest one ever to house so many Drupalistas. So think about ordering a ticket (free hugs from mortendk when you select community sponsorship) or become a sponsor and get some free tickets.

Order now and win a pony.

Frontend United, From Amsterdam to London

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 15:46:14 +0000

Last year, I was one of the coorganizers of Frontend United In Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I have organized dozen of events, DrupalCons, DrupalJams, DrupalCamps totaling a dozen of events. The best and most funny to organize of them all however was the Frontend United conference with good friends Jesper, Marek, Morten, Philippe and angel Isabelle. The weekly conference calls quickly became a selfhelp group and the best comedy channel available.

The fun we had organizing the event, clearly payed off and turned the event in to the best event I ever attended. Mostly because Fronten United is different. We have some rules to live by and these rules help us organize it and give the best value possible to the attendees. In fact, we try to be for Drupal what TED is for technology! Our rules are simple

Outside in, not inside out
Attendees first, not the sponsors (or mobile :-)
Grow horizontally, not vertically
Maximum value for attendees
Nerds rule

These are simple rules, resulting in a great conference. Outside in means we will look at technology, design. The unimportant stuff and then but only then Drupal. We look at speakers who are architects, painters, people whose actions or ideas are completely irrelevant for Drupals community in the narrow sense but if mapped on our community, code or license of great influence. We value attendees above sponsors. We do *heart* our sponsors, they are the best. But in the end the sponsors and the organizers work for the attendees, not the other way around. We will never do a sponsored talk, an opening by a sponsor or a case-study, mixing content and sponsors is the best way to kill a brand in our opinion. We believe in growth, but not that a number like “attendees” has anything to do with growth. We aim at 250 people max per conference and grow in quality from there. We will never have 2.000 attendees but will have the best sessions available. As for the nerds part, the group photo was taken at 13:37 time.

We succeed in all of these rules last year. All but one. Despite the fact that one sponsor went belly up and did not pay our fiscal agency, the Drupal Association (thanks!), we still made money. And thereby did not give the maximum value for our attendees.

Or did we? If you look at this blog by friend Baris Frontend-United was awesome or at the blog of the king it looks we succeeed in givin the attendees the best con ever! It was great to hear jan Willem Tulp talk about data visualization and the story of how Jeroen Wijering sold his a license for his video player to YouTube for $25 is still great to hear. No matter what your question was (“$25 per server? Client? Month?”) his answer would be $25.

Here are some snapshots of the money we made with sales and the hat-round, the venue “Pakhuis de Zwijger”, the banner with the sponsors, the excellent t-shirt with the infamous astronaut and the drinking venue with the Druplicon as a logo.

So far for 2012. On with 2013. With the help of a great all-female team in the UK, we are pulling the best Drupal conference of once again, backed by the Drupal Association (thanks), in London, 13 and 14 of April, in Cargo. Ticket sales will start shortly, great keynote speakers are already lined up but we need you as a speaker and as a sponsor! So please earmark the date in your agenda, think about an inspiring talk Frontend related and download the attached sponsor brochure. And mail we if you are interested in sponsoring, bert AT boerland DOT com.

Now lets rock London!

Prediction for Drupal in 2013

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 21:32:56 +0000

Ever since node 4877 in 2003 we have a “prediction” post up on drupal.org where Drupal coder and users can share their vision on what will happen the year ahead with their beloved tool. Ever? Well, we skipped last year on drupal.org. so we can not look back to the predictions you made last year on this site.

But that should not stop you to make new some new predictions. And you welcome to do so in the comments on the posting on d.o.

Will parts of Drupal end up in another CMS or framework? Will “WSCCI first” be the slogan? Or will the consolidation in the CMS landscape and the trend to leave our small island make new bridges towards other PHP projects or even make a new Pangaea, beyond PHP and the web? Will Drupal be the answer in Jeopardy on the question “what is the best CMS?”. Time will tell. Or you.. In the comments on the prediction 2013 posting.

Drupal release cycles, time will tell

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 10:24:24 +0000

Today, it is 614 weeks ago that Drupal 1.0 has been released, 4.295 days in the past, or 103.080 hours ago. During this time period, the Drupal community released 14 major versions, from 1.0 to 7.0. The new release is planned around mid august 2013 and hence will be the 15th major release. For those less in to the history of Drupal releases but can count and think that 8.0 as the 15th major release doest add up, it doesn't. Between 4.0 and 5.0 we spend 5 years releasing 4.1 up to 4.7, in our numbering scheme back then major releases.

During all these versions the Drupal community supported the current version and the version before. So with 7 being the current major release, we also support the 6 release that first saw the light of day on 13 february 2008 and will continue to do so up to around 15th of august 2013. Work on Drupal 6 started around december 2006, six and a half years ago by the time Drupal 8 will be released.

During all these versions the Drupal community had a no backwards compatibility philosophy. Modules that work in version 6 will not work in version 7. So for many of the thousands of modules we host on Drupal.org we have a stable and a development release for version 6 of Drupal and for version 7.

Today is also the day that people are using SaaS for all kinds of services. People and companies rely on the Google mail and experience a new version of this product on a daily basis, even without knowing it or seeing the difference cosmetically. Today people have hundreds of apps installed on their tablets and phones and upgrade those on a weekly or even daily basis at a touch of a finger.

Today is also the day that a manufacturer like Apple releases new major OS versions every year at extremely low prices and with a low barriers when it comes to the upgrade pain. Ubuntu -a leading Linux distribution package company- releases new versions of their product time boxed, complete predictable. Every 6 month users have the latest supported Linux distribution available and can update and upgrade with great ease.

I often explained Drupal’s lack of backwards compatibility towards users and customers as “Breaking with yesterday, building tomorrow”. Comparing it to Windows 7 that contains code of Windows XP, windows ME, Windows 95, Windows 3.11 and even all the way up to emulating code of MS-DOS 6.2. In order to move forward, we break with supporting the past unlike that product of Microsoft. Where Microsoft had to put every piece of history in its backpack when stepping forwards and carry all the weight of the history around towards the future, the Drupal community could break with yesterdays code and API’s and jump towards a brand new tomorrow.

Today I have problems saying so. Microsoft isn't the dominant example anymore and as stated, the competitors like Google, Apple and Linux are moving towards a “real time” experience of their products where users can enjoy the tools of today that have been build for them today on technologies available today.

With this in mind, it is good to look back at Dries’ last talk during the most excellent DrupalCon Munich. In a small room that was completely packed, Dries hinted around on what Drupal might be in the future. As always, he choose his words wisely and made sure what he said could be a thought experiment and might or might not happen, no promises no demands.

One of the things Dries hinted at that not many people seem to have picked up on, was that Drupal should be shortening it’s release cycles, towards for example half a year. And when you shorten your release cycle like that, you have to make sure that upgrades are cheap. Meaning you must stop our mantra of breaking compatibility between major versions. I do think that a new way of looking at our releases (what) and cycles (when) is more then needed.

Today planning and sticking to the plan is just as hard as it was yesterday. And hence even when we aim at an 18 month release cycle we end up with twice the amount in a code slush. Note though that even the18 month was derived from looking at the past, like steering a car by looking rearview mirror. It is possible, but assumes conditions remain constant.

While we know that the Ceteris Paribus world is not real, the world is continuously changing and the constant being that people constantly say that the change is only going faster. And in fact, even if the conditions in the future are the same, fact is that we as a community are in the risk of being overtaken by the past, proprietary CMS-es and other open source CMS-es that have been looking up towards us up to now.

Today I don't know what the answer is for the best release date of Drupal 9 and higher. But I do know that the current release cycles are breaking us up. I have seen very talented frontend designers quit Drupal because they didnt want to work anymore with outdates templates systems or jQuery versions. But, didn’t they want to “scratch their own itch?”. Sure they did, they just scratched it on another place, not in Drupal. I think Dries and others know that something has to change, I do not know the answer, but I would welcome a timeboxed (half a year) cycle and 3 older versions supported with backwards compatibility. Or an Long Term Support version next to more cutting edge version. Or something Dries will come up with on the next month.

Blue Piles of Shit On The Horizon

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 09:27:47 +0000

Last week I travelled from the Netherlands to the United Kingdom. Doing so I crossed two other countries, Belgium and France before taking the ferry to the Island I love so much. Let me tell you a story about one of these borders I crossed, the one between Belgium and The Netherlands. When one drives from the Netherlands towards the Belgium, one can see the border from kilometres away.

Not that there is a huge fence. There is no borer patrol or customs at all.
Not that there is a life size doted line that separated both countries, there is just a blue sign welcoming you in Belgium.
Not that the landscape changes dramatically from flat Low Lands to the Belgium Alps, there is very gradually change of culture, language and landscape.

Still one is able to spot the border from far. Simply by the fact that all what is ugly in a country is moved as far away from the country as possible and placed at the edges of the geographical boundary. So high windmills delivering electricity are stacked up to pollute the horizon, nuclear power-plants are tactically moved to the edge as well as other unpopular geographical activities, all moved towards this area from both sides.

Think about this. Just as many people life in this area like any other inner country area, maybe even more. So the impact of these activities is just as big as it would be in the centre of The Netherlands or Belgium. But there are less voters in the border area for Belgium and for The Netherlands. If you don't aggregate the voters that is.

Just as many people have hinder, only half the number can complain to their local / federal government. From “The Big Picture” Point of View, doing stuff like this is complete nonsense, just as many people are impacted. From a political point of View it makes perfect sense, Not In My Back Yard!

So is this relevant for Drupal one might ask and why or how? It is relevant. And I’ll try to explain the why and how here.

I see the same happening in our community, both geographical and political wise piles of shit are shifted towards The Other. And it is not that I see this happening, I think I am one of he persons who is guilty of shifting the shit I don't want to the edges of my comfort zone and thereby maybe to you. This post is a “Sorry” for that. And a start to make sure that we all try to do the best we can for the Drupal Universe. Not just the part of the universe you (I!) are (am) located in.

If one looks at the last 5 years, there has been a clear trend that there is more friction between the EU (excluding the UK) and USA. Due to different political backgrounds, due to “oversee” wars, due to different visions about how to solve international terrorism and for example Guantanamo Bay, there is growing scepticism in many countries in the EU towards the USA. Triggering a similar reaction of those stupid fat Yankees towards the fine High Culture citizens of the EU. That was a joke. My statement is that if you cant make a joke about an argument, you are in real trouble.

This scepticism and the friction between the old and the new continent is also visible in the Drupal community, like it is in any other bilateral relationship between these two continents. While we share the four world languages (Love, Money, English, PHP) in our community, we differ in so many things we often forget to give some room to each other. It was visible from the reaction on the Paris DrupalCon silhouette to your mothers’ CMS remark, the so called Americanisation of the Drupal Association and for example the struggle to get a Code of Conduct for DrupalCons. Mind you, I have an strong opinion in all of these matters, but this posting is not here to redo these arguments, it is a posting to make room for other others. To seek for what binds us, not what separates us. I think John Postel (“two four six eight, there is someone I appreciate”) said it best when he said “Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept”. This robustness principle that is the heart of all technical protocols we use on the net, should also be the core of our genes in the Drupal community.
Not just USA vs EU, the world is bigger then those two continents and smaller then all continents.
Not just XX chromosomes vs XY. There is so much more the two genders and it is so unimportant what toilet you use.
Not just gay vs straight. Love and passion can be so much more in a community then .. Ohh, forget that last part...

But for all, everywhere. Independent what you are or where your local airport is located, we should think about the place where you want to go and how you can fly over-there. Not on how you / I can shift the pile of shit towards the end of your / my zone.

When I ask my 5 year old son what his favourite colour is, he answers “Blue”.... “And purple.. And yellow... And gold..” And the he continues some more. Let us remember that the global colour locale we share is blue. And pink. And black. And white. The complete rainbow. And 50 shades of grey, if that is your cup of tea. But mostly, it is blue.

Frontend United, Call for speakers

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 19:08:07 +0000

As Morten announced some time ago, there will be a Frontend Conference in April in Amsterdam targetting all (EU) Drupal themers. Apart from Morten, it is organised by Isabell Schulz, Jesper Wøldiche, Marek Sotak and me.

It will be held at Pakhuis de Zwijger, a rather nice old warehouse in the center of Amsterdam. More information on the conference can be found on frontendunited.org

One of the speakers will be Jeroen Wijering. Who you ask? Well, what Dries is for Drupal, Jeroen is for video on the web. See this whois JW video on Youtube. JW knows all about HTML5, mobile, video and even what browser minor version has what bug and how to get past this. His knowledge matches our themes perfectly:

Drupal on every device
Frontend performance
The Drupal experience
Getting visual with data

You know you have some expertise in one or more of these field as well. And if this is the case, please do submit a session. The conference is all about people like you ;-) Even if you don't think you can add anything, please to take something. Like a ticket, hopefully the "community support" one to get extra Awesomeness. Buy your fresh ticket with a couple of clicks. Oooh, and do stalk your employer that (s)he should sponsor the conference, see for yourself what the advantages are.

We hope to see you in April in Amsterdam. It will rock!

Coffee Module, Spotlight meets Drupal

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:03:39 +0000

If you own a mac, you use spotlight daily. Or even better, use Alfred. A great way to navigate faster with a keyboard towards the app or data you need.

A very long time ago a Boy Wonder made something like this for Drupal 5, navigating through the /admin pages using a simple spotlight alike interface, see the menuscout module. Unfortunately, Boy Wonder, he wandered off and the module gained dust.

Then some time ago co-worker Michael Mol showed me a module he has been working on. Since he was doing D6 and D7 development at the same time and since the URL's changed and developers use URL's as well for navigation, he decided to d a spotlight alike search on the admin pages so he could remember the name, not the URL. It ended up being coffee, for now a sandbox project but anyday now a real project in d.o. To see it in action, take a look at this screencast.

Think of coffee as spotlight for the admin interface. And if you want an easter egg like the do a barrel roll, get active in this issue.

Drupal conference for CxO's in the EU

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 11:46:31 +0000

Two years ago the Drupal Association organised a meeting for the local Drupal "leaders" in the EU during the DrupalCon Copenhagen. This meal paid by the DA might have been one of the best investments they made. A lot of events were organised as a direct result of this meeting including the DrupalDevDays and the CxO days as well as the Frontend United conference. I am co organising this Frontend United event and will post more soon, just be sure to be in Amsterdam, The Netherlands during the end of march:-) And follow @frontendunited.

On a related note, there will be a Drupal process meet-up in Amsterdam as well. After last years extremely successful CxO days there is now the process. Be sure to sign-up for this event sponsored by and held at the venue of Microsoft and meet your peers.

On 27, 28 and 29 January we are organizing the next Drupal executives meetup (CXO) in Amsterdam. This meetup aims to facilitate peer-to-peer learning about business processes between leadership of Drupal shops. What are the best practices? What kind of processes do you need? How do you grow from a entrepreneur centered culture to a process driven culture?

The myth of the Drupal Learning Curve

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 20:21:06 +0000

The Drupal Learning Curve. A much debated issue. Drupal was up to 2005 mainly build by people who didn't perse need the tool, were not scratching their own itch but explored the waters of what we call now the semantic web. Creating a tool we love, with a node system that is still ahead in many ways of other systems and with hooks that catch anything. But also a system that up to at least seven didn't give "the user" the best experience when it comes to the interface.

....

And here is where the normal rant ends. Because we need to stop thinking as "Drupal has a high learning curve for the user". Simply because it is false and by saying so we lie, scare of potential "users". Adding content in Drupal 7 is not harder then in for example Wordpress or Joomla; some fields, a preview, a sumbit and you are done. Sure, there is the everlasting WYSIWYG dilemma, and while Drupal does not deal with this in core it is as easy 'solved' as it is in a CMS where the editor is integrated.

There are at least two problems with "Drupal has a steep learning curve for the user".

A fool with a tool, is still a fool

First and foremost, we forget to define "'user". Drupal always has the vision to cut the middleman, make the webmaster obsolete, drop the database administrator and give the power of these roles to "the user", the content editor.

The user was traditionally the person responsible for adding content. Now, this person is not just able to create content with adding some data to some field and press submit. This person is also able to make lists of most read items, create new content types and rearrange blocks on the site.

When I said, First and foremost, we forget to define "'user", I meant, First and foremost, we redefined "user". And by redefining "user", by enabling a normal person to do things he (m/f) had to call IT before, by giving him the tools to excel beyond his normal duties, we created the UX problem. Where the normal User Interface of a database engineer was the command line, we gave the power of a webinterface as the user interface to the one who wants the change. From the database engineer's point of view a great step forward in UX; from the content editor's point of view a complex UI for something he might need only once in a while. Roles and rights to the rescue, one might think. But you can not undo the complex powerfull interface Joe Blogger sees when he installs Drupal under UID 1.

Drupal doesn't have a bad UI, doesn't have a steep lurning curve. Drupal eliminates the middleman and does this by eliminating the process and procedures around change management of the technical backend and trades this for an unpolished frontend.

Up or out?
Second, we traditionally see the learning curve in relation to horizontal growth. We think that one can become a Chx, Unconed or Dries by submitting a blog post, then install Drupal, tweaking the User Interface, making a template, coding a module and then... one becomes a core maintainer. This classic "growth is seen from left to right" diagram tells it all:

(copyright Dries)

The truth is we have hunderds of thousands of people on the left and only a handful of people on the right. And most people who are on the right side of the diagram, didn't grow horizontally, they grew vertically. They came in with a background in programming, had programmed on other systems and choose Drupal because of it's code, community or license.

And most people on the left are fine to be on the left and don't want to "grow" horizontally, they want to grow vertically. They are good at something and use Drupal for it. And might be good in what they do in the Drupal community and grow in that vertically, not horizontally. They want to become the best testers, community members or write the best documentation. The learning curve there has nothing to do with the tool Drupal, but with the commnuity, the person and the tasks at hand.

In 2005 I read a very well written book on how great leaders stimulate vertical growth as well, let a waiter become the best waiter on the block, not the manager of the cafe. Dries, you still have my copy of "First Break All The Rules" :-)

Drupal doesn't have a bad UI, doesn't have a steep learning curve. Drupal should adopt vertical and horizontal growth by eliminating the traditional vision on how people or communities can grow.

So lets do ourselves a favour and stop calling Drupal hard to learn. It is as true as saying "a bike is hard to learn". Biking is not, building or designing a bike is. Ooh, and while we are at it. Stop calling Drupal a WebCMS.

Fingerprinting a Drupal site, what version is that site running?

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:42:01 +0000

Say you want to find out if a site is using Drupal. You could dive in to the headers as was described by Lullabot some time ago and see if it is the birthday of Dries in the headers:
Sun, 19 Nov 1978 05:00:00 GMT

A much easier way and more generic is installing the "BuildWith Technology Profiler" extension in Chrome(ium). This add-on not just finds Drupal sites, but also other CMS-es like WP, Joomla and dozen of others as well as scans to see if for example Google Analytics code is on the page. A must have for the curious browser. If you find a nice site, you might tag it in delicious with "yads" (yet another drupal site) and or "drupalsite", take a look at some of my findings at http://delicious.com/bertboerland/yads.

Bit what if you want to know what version a specific Drupal site is running? Well, you could look for the CHANGELOG.txt file in the root but that file is often deleted. For good or for bad reasons. Personally I think it is good practise to give as little information as possible to the outside world, for example not echoing the version of the webserver you are running. This can be done in Apache by two lines
ServerTokens ProductOnly ServerSignature Off
and this was done on drupal.org as well.

There has been some debate if Drupal should hide it's text files as well, like CHANGELOG.txt. Some other CMS-es do this or use a DIE to protect it from prying eyes. In the end consensus was that removing these text files will not make your site more safe; good procedures and adequate updating of core and contributed modules will!

So fingerprinting most Drupal site is easy, one just looks at the CHANGELOG file and knows what version the site is running. Hoewever, if you dont trust the changelog file or it is removed, it is still rather easy to fingerprint a Drupal site.

It can for example be done in the following way:

Download a couple of Drupal core files. Unzip / tar -x them.
Go through all directories to see what files changed. This can be done by something like:
diff -r -q drupal-7.7 drupal-7.8 | grep -iv info >> drupaldiffall
Fingerprinting works best on JS or CSS files so grep the from drupaldiffall and put the in drupaldevjscss
Now find the files that have changed most often.
cat drupaldiffjscss | grep -i "files" | cut -d " " -f 2 | cut -d "/" -f 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 | sort | uniq -c | sort | tail -10 12 misc/autocomplete.js 12 misc/collapse.js 12 misc/drupal.js 12 misc/farbtastic/farbtastic.js 12 misc/jquery.js 12 misc/progress.js 12 misc/tabledrag.js 12 misc/tableselect.js 12 misc/textarea.js 12 modules/color/color.js
So out of these lets pick the color.js file that changed 12 times. Note that with Drupal 7 CSS and JS most of the time don’t change at all where in the late 6 versions, these files changed more and more often. Hence the tail -10 outcomes will differ based on the source Drupal cores you downloaded (and yes I suck at regular expressions)
The next step is to make the color.js file unique identifiable in all version. Here is where our old MD5 friend comes handy, the syntax might be different on BSD based systems versus GNU/Linux, but it will be something like:
find ./ -name color.js | xargs md5 > rainbow
And the rainbow file itself will be
cat rainbow MD5 (.//drupal-5.22/modules/color/color.js) = 61098c218594ab871b48cd43459dc2ed MD5 (.//drupal-5.23/modules/color/color.js) = 61098c218594ab871b48cd43459dc2ed (etc)
Now all we have to do is find the color.js file in a site we want to fingerprint and match it against this rainbow file:
grep `curl http://drupal.org/modules/color/color.js | md5` rainbow MD5 (.//drupal-6.22/modules/color/color.js) = f5ea11f857385f2b62fa7bef894c0a55
So according to this Drupal.org is running the latest stable 6 version. Doing the same for the Belgium/Dutch site will give you less useful information:
grep `curl http://drupal.nl/modules/color/color.js | md5` rainbow | wc -l 7
So all we know now (if we didn't wc the outcome) is that is is one of the latest 7 versions of Drupal 7. So you have to start digging deeper:
more drupaldiffjscss | grep "drupal-7" | grep "Files " | cut -d " " -f 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,910 | sort | uniq -c (or visit http://drupal.nl/CHANGELOG.txt :-)

So why would one need this information you might ask. Since it is clear that in the wrong hands it will lead to... . Well, the bad guy knowing what version you are running. And to be honest, if the bad guy goes through so much trouble finding out what version you are running, (s)he was going to find out anyway.

But like all tools, it can be used for the Good. My employer takes over a lot of sites build by others (comes with the Drupal growing pains, the freedom of the GPL and the fact that the market is getting closure to an adolescent stage). Most of the times we have to give a raw estimate of maintaining and expanding the site, yet the prospect doesn't know what version he is running and doesn't want to ask his current supplier. By doing a quickscan on amongst others what version the site is running we know how well it was maintained and what budget would be needed to upgrade to the latest version. You might have a different usecase. For the Good.

Drupal, it is all about We

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:30:30 +0000

"There is no I in Drupal".. Drupal is about code, license and community. Not about you or me. It is about us.

So when I^we counted the numbers of "We"-s in the comments of Drupal core with, we found 1741 results. Searching for "I" gave.. two hits.

So there you have the scientific proof; "Drupal 99% community certified .... and a bit of you and me!"

Happy b-day d dot o

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:54:49 +0000

Ten years ago. A decade. Ten years ago I registered drupal.org and gave the domain after a couple of days to Dries. I can still remember choosing between .com (more popular, even then) and .org and decided to register the later. I found it a better fit for the community. If I wasn't so cheap, I would have registered both but the domainname claiming was not where it is today. In the end, everything went well and drupal.com was donated as well.

Now d dot o has a pagerank of 9, many subdomains, an own URL shorter; dgo.to and there are thousands of domainnames -most not complying with the trademark policy- with Drupal.

Ten years ago. A decade. I think someday someone will study the history of our community in an academic way. I also think that we should document our own past; "Project Drupast, documenting the future that was". As an open source community, much of our activity has been very well preserved, in code, documentation and on post on d.o itself. A bit of history can be found on the history page. But it doesnt do justice to our rich culture of ten years rocking the web. So take a look at a small timeline I started on tiki-toki. I know that with drupal core, cck, views, the timeline module and lots of templating, this could be done in Drupal as well and would welcome any initiative like that for "project Drupast". But untill that day, I would like to gather a couple of people who would want to help me putting the most important dates in this timeline. So if I know you, trust you, please contact me to get Drupast kicking like d.o does.

Ten years ago, I wrote Dries "Have fun with the new domainname". He did. We did. d.o rocks!

A young Drupal patch

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 20:06:07 +0000

During the DrupalGovDays conference I got from Roel de Meester from my employer's partner Krimson some iron-on Druplicon patches. And with my kids loving Druplicon as well and lots of Druplicon goodies in the house, Aart wanted the iron-on patches on his old trouwsers. In fact, there was only one knee to be patched but why stop there?

This young boy with Drupal patches got me wondering, what is the youngest and the oldest person in the Drupal community with patches to modules, maintaining a module him or herself and maybe even a core patch?

Drupal, for all ages? Sure. But the general bias is that a Drupal developer is white mail in his 30ies. Not true? Let us debunk one of those and go for the youngest and olderst active person active in the Drupal community. If you are under 20, post the date / link towards your fist patch, first module and /or first core patch. and if you are above 50, do the same in this thread.

Post your data at http://drupal.org/node/1123940 and proof that Drupal is for all ages.

DrupalGovDays, Service connect, Shadow and everything

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 09:34:31 +0000

Yesterday and today there were some 350 people visiting the DrupalGovDays. Only 5 years ago a DrupalCon in Brussels was smaller then a vertical market conference like this one for the Governmental institutions. It shows the growth of the the CMS market, the maturity of OpenSource and the popularity of Drupal. So far, a great conference, not technical but great for networking, meeting old friends and finding new opportunities.

While not directly connected, one of the great opportunities for Drupal and Governments is the opendatachallenge. A competition with some price money behind it for the best ideas, apps, visualisation and datasets for making use of open data by governments. Something like the OpenSource modules behind itdashboard.gov would be great for making easy to understand visualisations of open governmental data.

This is also a good moment to announce two new modules build and maintained by my employer Dutch Open Projects and contributed by the manucipality of Breda:

Service connect a pluggable way of using OAUTH identity service providers. Currently Facebook, Twitter and a Dutch site "Hyves" are supported but your own plugins / code and feedback is welcome in the issue queue
Shadow, if you ever build a high volume site and have lots of slow queries caused by the complexity of views but want to keep the flexability of views, be sure to take a look at this module. The module optimizes SQL queries or views by using index tables which (partially) shadows the original query output. It is capable of automatically rewriting SQL queries to speed them up using the shadow tables.

A big thank to Breda for releasing this code and sharing / contributing to the Drupal community. And a very big thank you to the to the organisers of DrupalGovDays , Ivo Radulovski, Hanno Lans, Kristof Van Tomme, Bart Van Herreweghe, and Christine Copers and the sponsors Chancery of the Prime Minister of Belgium and the Federal ICT of the Belgian government and well as the Drupal Association!