Drupal 7 Alpha 1 has just been released. Although it's not the definite version, Alpha means that it is stable enough to be tested by the public. And since I'm the public, I downloaded, installed and looked at Drupal 7. These are my first impressions, together with a couple of screenshots.

This blogpost: 40+ Essential Drupal Modules by Nick Lewis (who describes himself as a professional Drupal Hacker) gives you an interesting list, with a short explanation, of many of the modules that are used in Drupal websites. Not all of the modules are for starters (CCK, Views, ..), but even for them the list shows what you're capable of doing with a Drupal-website and a couple of modules. And although I have some personal preferrences, I kind of agree with the list he produced. And that's why I made a permanent link to his blogpost under Modules.

2 short items have been added about modules: The Google Analytics module & Backup and Migrate.

The Google Analytics module, because it makes the connection between Drupal and Google Analytics so that you can measure easily the performance of your site

Backup and Migrate, because I find it a great help for making backups of the database and migrating sites.

To explain the sometimes complicated installation (for beginners) and migration of a Drupal-website, we added screenshots to some pages. It's just a start, as the reference grows we add more. See:

• Installing Dupal locally with Wampserver
• Migrating your local site to the web

Thanks to Christophe I found out yesterday that there were some problems with the feed. (Some?) people who got it through email were confronted with an error (filename not specified).

I use feedburner to redirect, measure and improve the feeds. I saw that the error was produced through content that feedburner adds to my feeds (my logo and links to social media). So, I decided to leave this out for now.

A mistake was made by me also. By copying content into the blog, I lost part of the path of some links. I removed the broken links now, and I'll be more careful next time.

Since this is a very young site (the first post is from 12/12, that's 19 days ago, not even 3 weeks...), I will run into trouble again. But because I want the content to be relevant, the links to work, and everything else to be OK in order to grow towards a professional website, I really appreciate your feedback. So, thank you again, Christophe.

In the page Contact form in the Drupal reference, I explain about adding a contact-form to your website, how to set the permissions, how to avoid spam, how to add a form to one of your menus, etc...

I added 6 more questions (with their solutions) in How to...

How to...

Thanks to a member of www.drupaltist.org, I found an excellent list full of links to different Drupal recourses. It's maintained by a member of the Seattle Drupal Beginners-group.

The list is long and very well structured, it can be of great help for people looking for themes, video's, tutorials, etc... to build up their knowledge about Drupal.

Since it's well maintained, I've put it under Help and documentation in my Drupal reference.

How to...

From 25 two days ago, the list has grown to 66. I also made an extra block in the sidebar (with views) showing the latest additions.

Yes...

The Drupal 6.x Tutorial will be available FOR FREE as PDF-file for all members of the site, end of January. There are no strings attached, it's an offer that is what it sounds like.

Interested in the offer, and no member? Well, it's easy to become one... Just join. That's free also. And twitter, mail or facebook it to your friends.

Filip.

A new chapter has been added to the site: How to... with Drupal 6.x

For the moment, 25 how-to questions are answered, but the list will grow fast

Some examples:

How to...

• enable modules
• set permissions for modules
• configure modules
• configure Pathauto
• configure Mollom
• configure FCKeditor

In the near future (by the end of this week?), how-to will provide lists of questions per subject.