News and announcements

TWAMP is one of AMP software (Apache, MySQL, PHP) bundles for Windows computer platforms; these solution stacks are used to run dynamic Web sites or servers, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP (such like Drupal, Joomla, Magento...) and Perl programming languages.

Need No Installation, Zero Configuration

Not like XAMPP, TWAMP can run from anywhere hdd or media (USB drives, flash disks, etc). It can be activated without any installation and need no configuration, the package download size is under 10MB.

TWAMP is commonly used to test web applications on your Windows desktop, and can also be set up on removable media for a portable web server.

TWAMP Also

• PEAR included
• triple OP code accelerators include eAccelerator, APC and XCache
• SSL ready, you can visit your own web site https://localhost
• PERL ready, visit your own web url https://localhost/cgi/printenv
• Debug ready, xDebug is included.
• fully pass of yii v1.0.6.r1102 test [ screenshot ]

The first release of the Drupala Installation Profile (5.19-1.0) is available for download:
http://code.google.com/p/drupala/

The Drupala Installation Profile is built on the Drupal 5.x Drigg Installation for social bookmarking and the Advanced Profile Kit for social networking. The site architecture makes extensive use of Views, Panels, and multiple content types to build a portal organized around taxonomy terms that includes blogs, articles, social bookmarks, and user profiles. The Drigg base theme has been redesigned to position featured categories in the primary links section and Drigg categories in the sidebar. This allows for an easy customization of the site structure to support virtually any topic. FCKeditor is pre-installed and configured for WYSIWYG blog & article publishing. The Drupala theme is two columns, optimized for APK & Drigg, and cross-browser tested in FF, IE6, IE7, Chrome, Safari, and Opera.

There are two live sites currently based around the Drupala installation profile:

* http://drupala.com
* http://www.seo-mix.com
* Demo: http://demo.drupala.com

Online video provider Lynda.com just released my new six-hour video series, "Drupal 6: Online Presentation of Data". You can check it out with a free one-day pass; it's also available to anyone with a Lynda.com subscription, which starts at $25/month.

The course covers calendars, mapping, charting, and preparing data for tabular export, all built on a foundation of CCK and Views. Since Lynda.com's audience is mostly graphic designers, the course also includes clarification about how to plan data structures. Extra bonus: For giggles, check out the Introduction video, which includes some live-action video of the author looking goofy. :)

One wag in IRC questioned the need for such a course. "Presentation of Data?," he said. "Isn't that what Drupal does anyway?" He's right -- in the same way that a car is a tool for going shopping.

But I believe that many people who would benefit from Drupal's data-presentation features simply don't know about them, because their knowledge of it stops at Stories, Pages, users, and blocks. They need a bit more information to make the leap, and could become fierce advocates for Drupal when they see all it can do in this area.