News and announcements

Update: Drupal 7.0 Release Candidate 2 is available now!

Following three beta releases, and with tons of bugs fixed and user interface improvements added, we are proud to present to you the first release candidate of Drupal 7.0. Although there are still a few known issues that we are working on fixing, we are confident that our code is stable enough for wider testing by the community. Since the last beta version was released two weeks ago, we have improved styling in the default "Bartik" theme, numerous bug fixes and improvements to the Update Manager and Search module, revisions to both user interface text and developer documentation to be more understandable and accurate, and we've made final clean-ups to some of the architecture improvements added during the release cycle. The deprecated Profile module is now hidden on new sites and we've substituted it with the ability to put user fields added through Field UI on the registration form.

The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of high level improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

There are a number of modules already ported to Drupal 7 for your testing pleasure. You can keep tabs on whether or not your site is ready for Drupal 7 by using the Upgrade Status module. If you are a translator, now is the time to start working on your translations. If you are a module or theme maintainer, now is the time to start working on the update to Drupal 7! Read on for more details.

Google Code-In (GCI) is an amazing program in which junior high and high school students are encouraged to participate in an exciting open source project, like Drupal!

Open source projects participating in GCI create a list of short-term, high-impact tasks for students to work on.

The last time this project ran (called GHOP) we had a number of new, talented individuals come in to Drupal who are still active community members today. Past GHOP rockstars include Charlie Gordon (cwgordon7), Jimmy Berry (boombatower) and Daniel Wehner (dereine).

Unlike Google Summer of Code, this work is *not* just about code! Tasks can be around any of the following categeories:

• Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
• Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
• Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
• Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
• Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
• Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
• Translation: Tasks related to localization
• User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

The GCI contest lasts from November 22 - January 10 and is open for students age 13-18 (read full eligibility requirements). Students will recieve a small compensation for each task that is completed. Are you eligible, or do you know someone who is and can participate? Are you a participant in our community who can envision and mentor tasks for students to work on? Read on to find out how you can help!