Version 5 of CMS Drupal has been released.

After a rather long wait (the previous version 4.7 was released on May 1, 2006) the fifth version of the rather popular CMS / CMF Drupal was published.

The number of Digg'ov at the time of publication - 1056

Drupal is written in PHP and has several DB-backend'ov, the most popular and basic of which, of course MySQL. Drupal has a good modular structure and theme engine, so many modules have been written for it and also a fairly large number of topics, mainly for blogs. However, the use of Drupal is not limited to blogs. The mechanism of the modules and the possibility of the theme of HTML output of data by various modules allows you to create both corporate and community sites on it - the site of the geek podcast twit.tv , the community sites SpreadFireFox.com , Terminus 1525 and TheOnion.com , the site MTV.co.uk and many others, like the blog of the notorious Tim Berners-Lee and the NASA website . From the Russian-language sites mention designcollector.ru and the site of the Russian-speaking Drupal-community - Drupal.ru .

What appeared in Drupal 5:
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Improvements in usability and user interface:

• Administration pages: completely redone. Now, instead of a somewhat confusing tree of links to the settings pages of different modules, they are displayed on the same page with the division into tasks , as well as the division of links into modules is made as an option.
• Settings pages: the settings are now divided into smaller pages, making finding the desired setting easier.
• Tables: settings pages, user list and comment administration now has a 'check all' checkbox and the ability to select a range of entries, while holding Shift.
• Improvements in typography: great attention was paid to the observance of the general style of displaying text and text labels in forms throughout Drupal.

New opportunities:

• Status and installation requirements page : a page with a site status report has been added with detailed information about PHP / MySQL / Drupal and whether all installation requirements have been fulfilled.
• Web-based installer: added <a href = " drupal.org/node/109489 " ability to install from a browser

Basic theme: a new theme for the site has been developed by default, called Garland (rubber layout), and a fixed-width counterpart - Minnelli . The theme uses the new Color module, which allows you to change the color scheme of the site through the browser, choosing the desired colors for the background, title , etc. in the AJAX color picker .
Native page types: the kernel now includes part of the functionality of the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module, which allows you to add new simple page types (to basic Page, Story, Blog Post). To expand the ability to configure new page types (add new field types, etc.), you need to install the full module from the repository.
URL filter: the base filter module now converts all links and e-mail addresses in the text into their clickable analogs.
Block display depending on role: added the ability to show blocks on pages depending on the role (rights) assigned to the visitor (user) and the ability to control the display depending on the URL and the PHP code is also left.
Editing block headers: in Drupal 5, it is now possible to change all block headers (formerly, the basic headers for embedded blocks like “Latest posts” were hard-wired) and even make them empty.
User management enhancements: added auto-complete to user profile forms. Added the ability to filter users by roles, rights and status. Checking new users by e-mail during registration is optional.
Improved module administration: the list of modules is now displayed by categories, their versions and dependencies on other modules are shown (required or optional)
More reports: Drupal now gives detailed reports on search words, hits on the “404 page not found” and “access denied” pages to help you improve your site.
CSS preprocessor: All (cached) style files are now compiled into one compressed file, which makes your site faster, especially for new visitors.
High-speed performance: such key parts as the session mechanism and access rights separation were further optimized to speed up the site operation

For developers:

• JavaScript library: jQuery JavaScript library is included in Drupal 5. All JavaScript code existing in Drupal is rewritten using it.
• The directory structure has been reorganized: all modules now have their own directory and their resources, for example, CSS styles are divided into modules. Also appeared directory sites / all , in which you can place your modules and themes.
• Uninstalling modules: when uninstalling a module, it can clear the database of its tables and / or records.
• Plug-in backends for cache: in Drupal 5, you can connect alternative page caching systems. For example, these can be file caching systems, in-memory caching (memcached), or other caching strategies in a database other than the basic one.
• Connected session mechanisms: in Drupal 5, you can connect other session handlers. For example, storing sessions in memory (memcached), in contrast to the base session, is in the database.
• Improvements in the template engine PHPTemplate: expanded the possibility of temizirovat various pages and their types. PHPTemplate is now browsing additional file names for templates.
• Arbitrator of access to pages: support was provided for the joint operation of several modules that control access to pages on the site.
• Formation of pages: changed the way of forming pages using structured arrays.
• Form API: added the ability to programmatically send (zababmitit) form, and expanded the API for multi-page forms.

In general, the improvements are aimed at greater friendliness to inexperienced users (for which Drupal, powerful but difficult, had previously been scolded), optimization in the code and the UI, movement towards even greater modularity continues.

Also :
The development team from Lullabot.com made a series of videocast's about the new version, for those who want to see live new Drupal - I recommend.

Download Drupal 5 here.