Although it’s not done yet– it’s just getting into beta– one can see what enormous changes the Drupal core development team has made. Although I found a number of the changes confusing, initial confusion is really fine with me if it represents an improvement in functionality or usability, and I’d argue that that’s what most of this is. So, in no particular order:

• The Views module, which can build customized, sortable lists of content (think blogs, lists of products, or a page with “my posts”), has a great new built-in feature: the ability to let the site visitor set the number of results per page. It used to be (through Drupal 6) that Views out-of-the-box gave the site developer the choice to say, for instance, “I want 9 results to show up, and then I’ll add a pager”. Which was great, but now in addition the site developer can easily add a widget that lets the visitor whether to see, say, 5, 10, 20, or 50 results per page.
• Blocks, which are those small snippets of content that can show up on the sidebar, header, footer, etc., of pages, used to be tied (by default) to specific pages. You could specify that Block X either appeared on a list of given pages, or did not show up on certain pages. This gave substantial functionality, but now in addition you can specify that a block be tied to a given type of content (or, in Drupal-speak, node type). Which means that, automatically, you can make a block appear only on product pages in addition to giving a list of URLs.
• CCK, the central Drupal module that allowed for custom fields in pieces of content (e.g. if a certain type of page needed a date field, or a specialized author field– you name it), has now been enabled not just for site content but also for taxonomy, which is the Drupal categorization system (which means that a category itself can have custom fields) and comments (rather than giving the commenter the default “name”, “email”, “comment body” fields for instance).
• When adding a new page or other piece of content, the “body” field– which is by default the main content area– is now a CCK field. We used to have to delete the “body” field if we wanted to do something really unique with the page’s main content, but now by default it’s a configurable field just like everything else. Only the Title field cannot be changed (although there are modules for that).
• Taxonomy– again, the categorization system– used to be its own separate animal, but now it’s integrated into CCK, meaning that you can add, edit, and configure a category’s display on a page the way you would configure any other field. Also, it appears they’ve gotten rid of those annoying “listboxes”– where you had to hold down the Control or Command key to select multiple categories– and gone with radio buttons and checkboxes when selecting a node’s category (although, again, there were modules for that– but who wants to install extra modules for no good reason?)
• As everyone’s been noting, there’s a new optional Administration theme. For those of you who haven’t used it, Drupal, unlike most systems, does not have a predefined “front end” and “back end”. This is by design: it allows the site admin to create many different “roles”, or permission levels, of user accounts on the site, and give them each access to certain “back-end” functions without leaving the graphic layout they’re used to; thus, there’s no point at which users necessarily have to leave the “normal” site experience and enter the “back-end” which has a completely different layout and navigation system.That said, in Drupal 7, admins now have the ability to use a nicer administration theme and “dashboard” if they want to. Before, you had to build a custom admin dashboard if you wanted it; now, Drupal helps you out a little by giving you a jumpstart.

As endeared as I have become to WordPress’s usability, and even with the release of WordPress 3.0, I’ve got to give a ruling: Drupal has come a long way and now combines its superior functionality with some pretty sweet usability upgrades.

http://www.jccpgh.org - the new Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh. Very solid redesign of a previously outdated and hard-to-navigate site.

http://typekit.com - Amazing font collection at just $50/year. I think I’ll be using these. Sweet site, too.

http://www.markboultondesign.com/projects/drupalorg - This is the mock-up for the new Drupal.org homepage. Isn’t it much nicer than the current one?

Read the whole article here.

• http://www.whitehouse.gov (not a political statement– just a beautiful design, redone recently)
• http://www.glingglo.net
• http://sushiandrobots.com
• http://mobilewebbook.com
• http://www.fishmarketing.net
• http://gb-studio.tv
• http://www.greengreenmud.com

That’s it! Enjoy!

Seriously, though, the term is often misused as a design style (”This website looks so Web 2.0!”) as opposed to what it truly is– “Web 2.0″ … is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs…” (source: trusty Wikipedia)

Which is what we’ve accomplished, at least partly (we’re only in Phase 1) on Peaceburgh, a network for people who want to interact online to promote peace through prosperity, aligning their wallets with their values. Using Drupal, we have created a system where people can buy memberships on multiple levels, giving them access to:

• Create a profile that includes text, imagery, audio, video, and special offers/discounts available to other members.
• Receive unique discounts on events and products offered through the Peaceburgh store.
• Create banner ads for which they pay per click.
• Create audio and video productions which they can sell through the Peaceburgh store.
• Purchase and create calendar event listings, and sell tickets through the Peaceburgh store.
• Purchase advertisements and calendar even listings to appear in the Peaceburgh magazine.

When you dig deeper, though, it is much more, as we demonstrated with our redesign/redevelopment of Pittsburgh Prep– which included a move to the Drupal platform. Pittsburgh Prep is an educational company focusing on standardized test prep classes and private tutoring, and in early 2009 they made the decision to move towards a web-based solution for the selling and management of classes. In 2010, they plan to add online courses and Blackboard-like functionality that will include forums and quiz-taking.

These are built on features available in Drupal, with some modest configuration:

• Content management, including many different types of content from conventional pages and blog posts to complex class offerings.
• E-Commerce, in the form of the Drupal module Ubercart, allowing students and their parents to sign up and pay for classes online.
• Member accounts, which interface with Ubercart such that when a student signs up and pays for a course, they are granted a username and password that comes with a particular set of site access permissions.
• Content access control, including integration with Ubercart which allows students to pay for access to particular areas on the site, such as class forums or online courses, which are “walled-off” from the general public.

As a project manager, I find it harder than ever to keep track of everything and everyone, and of course email and text documents just don’t to projects justice. Enter ClockingIT, a BaseCamp-like solution for logging hours, projects, and individual tasks.

To use ClockingIT, sign up for a free account on their website, which gives you a subdomain on their site to login from. After that, you can create multiple clients, within which you can add multiple projects, within which you can create tasks– a nice hierarchical structure. Sub-user accounts can be created and managed by the admin as well, and the admin has fine-toothed control over which clients and projects can be viewed or edited by these users– a feature I find quite handy, as not everybody that works with me should see– or certainly edit– particular projects.

Logging hours is a breeze– simply click the ‘clock’ icon next to the task name, and an Ajax-based timer begins working. Simply click once more to stop it.

If you’re at all like me, you’ll make hourly use of this fine service.

Whole Advice is the brainchild of Tom Dickson, an experienced financial advisor and marketing expert. This business, though, is unique: it’s not a financial advisor, but rather a “second opinion” on investment and advice. Clients approach Whole Advice to find financial advisors and get an “inside scoop” on the business– so as to be all the wiser, especially in the wake of Bernie Madoff and other less-than-reputable investment “gurus”.

For this website, we decided to stick to a simple design and palette, giving a professional yet “earthy” and “natural” look– consistent with this business’s values. We also developed a custom logo to span the gap between contemporary and timeless. Technically, this site is managed via WordPress, the open source PHP/MySQL content management/blogging platform the visuaLATTE blog uses. We also make use of jQuery, as with most of our recent projects.