Drupal 7

The Drupal Features module is a way of packaging site components with the ultimate aim of easing migration. For example, an events section in Drupal doesn't just contain a node type called events, it also contains all of the configuration settings around comments, fields added to the node type, permissions available to users, menu items created and any views used to aggregate or search the events. Features can integrate module dependencies so that all functionality that has been packaged along with the feature is available on the other system.

The main thing to realize about Features is that they are not meant to transport content, just blocks of functionality. The idea is that if you create a "blog" feature then you can package that and deploy it to multiple sites.

A couple of weeks ago saw the release of Drupal 7 so I thought I would run through a few new features that might be of interest. This certainly isn't a comprehensive list of new things as there is a lot of changes in this new version.

1 - Admin Interface
Drupal 7 comes with a nice new admin interface that has gone through lots of usability testing and redesign which has resulted in two new themes being bundled with the system. The admin interface is powered by a brand new bundled theme called Seven, the new front end theme is called Bartik. The old Garland theme is still there, but isn't enabled, so you can still use if you feel the need. Some of the older table based themes have now gone in favour of these new themes. The new Overlay module makes it easier to administer Drupal by displaying the admin pages as a layer over the current page, rather than moving the user around the site.