Drupal 4.7.0 released

Dries - May 1, 2006

After more than a year of development we are ready to release Drupal 4.7.0 to the world. More than five years, 13 major releases, 30+ servicing firms employing 100+ Drupal professionals, 300+ third party modules, and over 55,000+ Drupal powered sites later, Drupal 4.7.0 is finally here and it rocks!

Drupal is an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from the personal weblog of Tim Berners-Lee, interactive sites like Zimmer Twins, podcast sites like TWIT.tv, community driven sites like SpreadFireFox.com, artist communities like Terminus 1525 to large media sites like TheOnion.com, and even sites for NASA.

2005 has been explosive for the Drupal community. Drupal.org usage has almost tripled in terms of page views, downloads, and number of users, and with the release of Drupal 4.7.0 we are seeing this new found energy drive the platform development forward at an amazing pace. There have been over 338 contributors to this latest release with over 1500 patches which is almost triple our previous record with Drupal 4.6 of 523 commits by 50 developers. These new contributions are seen in the major usability improvements, new Drupal core functionality, and expansion of the Drupal development framework that will afford themers and contributing developers even greater flexibility and power.

Download

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/drupal/files/projects/drupal-4.7.0.tar.gz

What's new

Included in the Drupal 4.7.0 release are the following improvements:

Usability improvements

• Updated Documentation for All Modules: All Drupal core modules have been updated to include the latest documentation created by the Drupal documentation team.
• Auto-complete Fields(AJAX): Added support for auto-complete forms.
• Reduced Clutter on Forms(JS): Added support for collapsible page sections within forms. This allows for more streamlined interfaces.
• Easier to Upload Files(AJAX): File uploading is now even more of a breeze.
• Easier to Install and Upgrade Modules: Instead of having to install and upgrade modules by hand you can now simply just copy the files to the modules directory and Drupal will automatically handle the rest.
• Easier 'Request New Password' Process: Users now recieve one time use links in their email instead of a randomly generated password.
• Better Organized Node & Comment Edit Forms: Options are now collapsible which has greatly reduced clutter of forms when editing nodes.
• Added Mass Comment Operations: it is now a snap to modify or delete many comments at once.
• Easier to Make Menu Items: It is now very easy to add pages to the navigation menu right from the page edit form.
• Better Settings Page Organization:Some settings pages have been reorganized to make them easier to find and administer.
• Friendlier Database Error Screens: Database connection errors are now more informative and easier to understand.
• Redesigned & More Informative Update Script: The new update script is much easier to read and provides better instructions for updating Drupal.

New features added

• Multiple Block Regions: Were you feeling constrained by only two choices for block placement? You can now dynamically specify as many block placement locations as you want.
• 'Offline for Maintenance' Configuration: You can now easily configure your site to display a friendly notice to visitors when you have to take down your site for maintenance.
• Free Tagging Support: Free tagging functionality is now built into the taxonomy system.
• Site-Wide Contact Form: You can now easily enable a contact form page that will let you easily collect feedback from your site visitors.
• Author Information Block: There is now a block you can enable that will display author information alongside posts.
• Public/Private Profile Fields: You can now specify permissions for profiles on a per-field basis.
• Block by IPs/Hostname: It is now possible to block users by their IP address or Hostnames. Good bye trolls!
• Aggregator now Supports Atom: It is now finally possible to aggregate Atom formatted feeds like those created by Blogger.
• Aggregator Generates RSS Feeds: It's now easier than ever to use Drupal to power 'Planet' like sites.
• RSS Feed Settings You can now configure how much content and how many items to publish in your RSS feed.
• Better Search Index: The search module indexer is now smarter and more robust
• Advanced Search Operators: You can now search by advanced search operators (e.g. phrase, node type, etc.)
• Custom Search Results Ranking: The search module now lets you weight search results by keyword relevance, date of post, number of comments, and number of views.

For developers

• New Forms API: The forms API has been refactored to make it possible to alter, extend or theme any form in Drupal.
• PHPTemplate Ships in Core: The PHPTemplate theme engine was added and the Xtemplate engine was removed (Pushbutton and Bluemarine have been ported to PHPTemplate).
• Revisions In Their Own Table: Revisions have finally been moved into their own table instead of being serialized in the node table.
• Update.php Supports Contributed Modules: It is now possible for contributed modules to be updated from the main Drupal upgrade script.
• New XML-RPC Library: The old XML-RPC library has been ditched and replaced for obvious reasons.
• Loose Caching Option: It is now possible to enable 'loose caching' which will improve Drupal's performance on sites with lots of posting activity.
• Better Performance for Path Aliasing: Path aliasing performance has been improved significantly, especially when using a large number of aliases.
• Page Creation Time: You can now easily track the page generation time for your site.
• Improved Unicode string handling API: better support for internationalization at the core.
• Support for Multibyte Strings: Drupal now supports for PHP's multibyte string extension for full Unicode support.
• Support for MySQLi: Drupal now supports PHP5's 'mysqli' extension.
• Removed PL/pgSQL Dependency: Drupal no longer depends on the PL/pgSQL language for PostgreSQL. It is now easier than ever to run Drupal on PgSQL.

Developers: all contributed modules must be ported to Drupal 4.7.0 and tagged appropriately in CVS. To learn how to port modules please read the developer documentation. There are still a number of minor bugs to work through. If you are able please help out.

Installation and upgrading

For instructions on installing or upgrading Drupal, please consult the installation documentation and the instructions carried out by the update.php script.

For support, please consult the support page or read up on other people's experiences in either the installation problems forum or the upgrade problems forum.

Upgrading from Drupal 4.6

• For the most trouble free transition, it is recommended that you first upgrade existing installations to Drupal 4.6.
• For the same reason, it is recommended to disable contributed themes and modules before starting the upgrade process. Upgrade them afterwards. Also note that not all contributed themes and modules have been updated to work with Drupal 4.7.0.

For a detailed guide, check the videocast about upgrading to Drupal 4.7.0.

Upgrading from the Drupal 4.7.0 release candidates

• Copy the new sources over your existing installation and run the upgrade script.