Drupal Association blog

The map on the home page of Drupal.org is one of the most-noticed new features. It started with the prototype, which was just that— a Flash-based idea for what might go there. During implementation, we had to figure out what exactly it would be and how it would work.

First, we needed to know where people were. Drupal.org has the advantage of an audience who is more-likely to be using modern browsers, and we don’t need everyone’s location. I decided we should use the new Geolocation API, but didn’t find any existing modules. I wrote a small HTML5 user geolocation module to add a share location option to your profile page. For privacy, it is opt-in and rounded to the nearest 0.1 longitude/latitude. Over 5,000 have shared their location, less than 1% of active Drupal.org users, but still looks impressive on a map:

Some of you may have noticed it, but most probably have not:

the old DrupalCon sites that are still running Drupal are not accessible at the moment, they are locked by a htaccess script.

This is an unfortunate development, but in the end I didn't have any choice but to do this.

The reason for this is quite simple: the sites are unmaintained. With the associated DrupalCon, the various webteams dispersed and software updates weren't done anymore.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

You are all invited to the Drupal Association's second Town Hall meeting!

The Drupal community is one of the strongest open source communities, involving tens of thousands of developers, themers, administrators, and users connecting with each other every day. In 2006, the Drupal Association was formed by a few community volunteers to support the Drupal community. Now in 2011 the Drupal Association is growing extremely fast and we have a lot of exciting events happening.

We are proud to announce the latest additions to the DrupalCon staff; Neil Kent and Megan Sanicki. Neil and Megan come to us with strong backgrounds in event management and fundraising. Their expertise and skill set will help bring the Drupal Association and DrupalCon to the next level in our development.