France 24 is a public 24/7 international news channel broadcast in three languages: French, English and Arabic. Its mission is to cover international current events from a French perspective and to convey French values throughout the world. The channel provides keys to understanding complex events through in-depth analysis. France 24 also puts culture at the forefront of its programming. France24 is part of the AEF (the "Audiovisuel Extérieur de la France" or French foreign media), along with RFI (a radio station) and TV5 (a TV station).

Launched in December, 2006, the website was originally based on a Java CMS, Magnolia. But due to stability problems, we switched to Drupal 5 in mid-2008. We have just migrated to Drupal 6 and a brand new codebase. This case study covers this migration, focusing on the technical part, and describes some of our homegrown modules to be open-sourced.

The monthy traffic of the France 24 websites is around 5 million unique visitors. A more geeky metric is that the site runs 300-400 concurrent active Apache threads at all times.

It was a close race to the finish -- or rather the beginning -- of the Drupal 7 code freeze process a couple of weeks ago. Now that we're in the middle of the code freeze, I wanted to update everyone on the current status of the freeze, and provide some guidance about where we go from here.

First and foremost, I know that both Angie (my Drupal 7 co-maintainer) and I want to express how excited we are about how everyone really pulled together as a team at the end, and who, by working together, got a lot of great stuff in before the deadline for the "code slush" passed. Of the exceptions we had previously noted (see slides for details), eight of the ten made it in. The two stated exceptions that didn't are (1) allowing user profiles to use the field API, and (2) the administrative overlay. Since the overlays patch got incredibly close, Angie and I are committed to having this as part of the final release. There is now a further exception for getting overlays in, and I encourage everyone to keep working on it as fast as possible.

Other than changes necessary for the overlay, and a few left-over patches that were ready by the 10/15 deadline, we have now entered the next phase of the code freeze: no more API changes and no additional features. At this point, we focus exclusively on usability, accessibility, and performance. (If a performance, accessibility, or usability patch requires an API change, webchick and I will make a decision on a patch by patch basis.) This current phase was originally said to be four weeks from API freeze, but we're extending it to six weeks instead. The new deadline is December 1st, instead of November 15th.

My guidance at this point: depending on your strengths, and how involved you've been with the various issues in the past, please devote some time to the overlay patch, to D7UX issues and Usability issues, to accessibility issues, or to performance-related issues. For the remaining five weeks, that's where the action is. Get involved now!

Lullabot is pleased to announce the second annual Do It With Drupal Seminar. This 3-day event is focused on the configuration, architecture, and processes behind building successful Drupal websites and communities.

The event is geared at attendees with a wide range of Drupal experience. For new site-builders and decision-makers, DIWD will offer a great introduction to Drupal and the Drupal community. For more experienced Drupalers, DIWD will offer a great chance to pick up tips and tricks straight from the module developers themselves and a chance to connect and socialize with other Drupal professionals.

The Do It With Drupal Seminar will feature the following highlights:

• Examine and dissect successful Drupal sites
• Discover new site-building strategies
• Learn from Drupal's top developers
• Hear from social media and social networking experts
• Connect with other Drupal professionals
• Expand your Drupal knowledge

This commercially produced event takes place at the Marriott Hotel in New Orleans' French Quarter, December 9, 10, 11, 2009 and features sessions by many "big names" from both inside and outside of the Drupal community (see list of current speaker list below).

The current list of speakers includes...

Whether it's for pleasure or business, or both, Twitter automation is a must for anyone who wants to use Twitter effectively. GoTwitr is a new site whose primary goal is to make it easy for people to grow and manage their Twitter communities.

It’s also a tool to help new Twitter users get started quickly and easily. GoTwitr’s unique invitation model makes it extremely easy for any Twitter user to get his friends and family connected to Twitter. GoTwitr uses a unique new concept to deliver quality followers, and promote you to other twitter users that share common interests and passions.

GoTwitr was built in Drupal 6. Drupal’s external site integration tools made it easy to bypass the normal Drupal registration and login and use the “Login with Twitter” service.

Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization is a new Drupal book authored by Ben Finklea and published by Packt Publishing. It’s a practical, step-by-step guide that takes the mystery out of Drupal search engine optimization (SEO) by showing you the tricks of today's top marketing pros to achieve top ranking in the search engines.

Packt Publishing is generously offering a 15% discount to any Drupal.org readers. To purchase Drupal 6 Search Engine Optimization with this discount, visit www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-search-engine-optimization-seo/book and provide the code DrupalSEO15 (case sensitive) at check out. Also, keep in mind that Packt contributes a portion of every book sale right back to Drupal!