Bundling site settings using Features

Note: Features module is still in beta production stage (as of 2000919). Use it at your own risk. Feedback is always welcome!

So, here's the thing: If someone asks you how to make a blog on a Drupal site, you don't tell them to activate the Blog module (which is ready for retirement). You tell them that a blog is easily made with CCK and Views – and some settings that would cover 2–3 pages of fine print.

The Features module shortcuts the work with configuring settings by providing comfortable means for bundling, exporting and importing settings for many of the most used Drupal modules. See this quick intro. Features shifts the site development paradigm from tweak here and there into enabling features.

The main advantages

• Newcomers to Drupal can quickly deploy a blog, an image gallery and a bunch of other features, while still being able to peek into the fine-print settings.
• Developers can easily reuse settings in some of the most used modules, including CCK (and ImageCache), Views, Panels, Context, and more.
• Developers can easily distribute their configurations to customers and developing sites – and update existing ones. There are interesting discussions on distributed features servers.
• For those of you using Drush: There are some useful Drush commands for managing Features. (Documentation section yet to be written -- se project page for brief documentation.) For those of you not using Drush: Check it out!