Drupal 8

We provide Drupal updates for our clients. Every month we apply the most recent updates to Drupal core and contributed modules. Currently there is no set schedule as to when a minor release of Drupal will be released. For example, a minor release is when Drupal is updated from 7.23 to 7.24. So in November 2013, Drupal 7.24 was released. It contained security fixes. It was recommended to upgrade immediately after reading the security announcement.
 
On January 3, 2014, Drupal 7.25 was released. This is a maintenance release including bug fixes and small feature improvements only. Drupal 8 is under development and significant new features are only being added to the new Drupal 8 release.
 
This release was followed quickly by Drupal 7.26 on January 15, 2014. This release fixes security vulnerabilities. Website owners are urged to upgrade immediately. However, some Drupal sites reported a major site slowdown after upgrading to Drupal 7.26 so we have postponed this upgrade.

On January, 25, 2014, three members of the Surrey Drupal meetup participated in the Global Sprint Days here in Vancouver, BC Canada. All over the world, Drupal enthusiasts volunteered their time and expertise to contribute to the Drupal project. The newest version, Drupal 8, is a work in progress being built by volunteers all over the globe. Drupal is an open source CMS - Content Management System. It's freely available for download at Drupal.org.

Drupal 8 is looking good! The installation screens have improved in appearance.

and the Views module is now included in core. Views provides lists of your content to the user. For example, this blog page is a View.

Other new items in Drupal 8 are a built-in WYSIWYG editor. You can also edit in place without being sent to the Edit form.

Volunteers all over the world are contributing their time to fix bugs and test patches to build a better Drupal 8. For more info see: http://www.seascapewebdesign.com/blog/drupal-8-sprint-weekend-jan-24-25-2014

I’m excited about participating in the Global Drupal Sprint Day tomorrow, Jan. 25, 2014 in Vancouver, Canada. I’ll be blogging about my experience here. In preparation for tomorrow's sprint, I’m following Sprint leader, Joel Pittet’s instructions found here: http://pittet.ca/drupal/sprint/2014-01-24

For Drupal developers and Drupal users:
RSVP for Drupal 8 Sprint Weekend here: https://groups.drupal.org/node/394518

Friday evening, January 24th and all day Saturday Jan 25th is the Drupal Sprint Weekend, with local sprints being held around the world! Vancouver is no exception. The Jibe will be holding an all-day sprint at their offices on Friday Jan 24th @ 5pm and Saturday Jan 25th @9am-5pmish. The address is:

The Jibe
#202 - 311 Water St. Vancouver, BC (Canada)
http://goo.gl/maps/xWphZ

Contribute
This sprint will not have any specific focus, other than people should come to make public contributions to Drupal. Some examples of this could be

Our speaker tonight is not able to make it due to illness. We will be watching a video presentation on "What's New in Drupal 8" by Chris Weber of  TheNerdery.com. He gave this presentation to his Drupal User group. http://vimeo.com/40266383

While I was searching the Internet for a good video to show tonight, I did some research on the new features in Drupal 8. The following article outlines what I found. Credits: http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/whats-new-drupal-8

Drupal 8 has been in development since March 2011 and is now in Feature Freeze. This means that no new features will be added to Drupal 8. Drupal 8 is planned to be released in Sept. 2013. Here is a brief description of the new changes in Drupal 8:

Theming Changes
-    Drupal 7 uses PHPTemplate to produce themes
-    Drupal 8 will be using the Twig framework theming engine
-    Twig will simplify theming by using better code. See Jen Lampton’s talk at DrupalCon Sydney –
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIqu_Te0PA&feature=youtu.be)
-    Twig allows templates to be compiled down to PHP code which is stored in RAM for superior performance as it reduces disk access