Jacob Redding wrote the book on Drupal. Well, a book on Drupal, anyway -- but it's a book on Drupal 7, which has only been live for a few months.

In addition to writing and maintaining several Drupal modules, he's also the Executive Director (and a Board Member) of the Drupal Association.

So, if you have questions about Drupal -- where it's heading, how far you can push it, why you should implement it -- Jacob would be a very good person to ask. We'll have him on the line for you this week at our next Ask the Expert session on Thursday, April 28.

> It's Free for NTEN Members! Register today.

NTEN: Come for the community, stay for the answers to your software questions.

Pop quiz: What do Amnesty International, Monty Python, the White House, and NTEN have in common?

Web sites powered by Drupal.

Drupal has been out of the tech hobby shed for awhile now, of course. You may already be running it, but unsure of what it can do. Or you may be looking for a CMS platform for your next web site, and giving Drupal a hard look -- and not just because it's free and open source, but that helps, right? Either way, we'll get you up to speed at our upcoming webinar series, "Cranking Your Nonprofit's Drupal Site up a Notch".

> You should register for this workshop here.

Jonathan Hedstrom, OpenSourcery

Any community, online or otherwise, is about communication between individuals. As such, when it comes time to create or grow an online community, tools that allow for and encourage communication and interaction are vital.

There are two major hurdles that must be overcome for an online community to succeed: the selection of appropriate community (or "social-networking") features that make sense for the community in question, and, secondly, actually implementing those features in your online application. The first is often overlooked in favor of the more exciting second step. When this happens, the community rarely benefits from the resulting application.

Every community has unique needs that determine how they should select features. Once a community has determined its needs, however, utilizing open source software presents a more rapid, sustainable path to implementation.

Did you miss out on getting a ticket to DrupalCon in DC later this week? Are you super bummed about it?

Well, if you're an NTEN Member, cheer up! Even though the conference has been sold out for a month, we happen to have 5 tickets available.

If you still want to purchase a ticket -- they're $250 a piece; we only get to give out purchasing rights, not the tickets themselves -- just be one of the first 5 NTEN Members to leave a comment on this post, and you'll not only be able to attend the conference, you might even get to hang out with me, too!

If you're considering Drupal as your next Content Management System, or if you've already decided to use Drupal and are starting to plan your transition, we can help you start things off right. Join us for this accessible four-part series, which will cover:

We've been big fans of the Knight Foundation for all that it's doing to not only promote but fiscally support innovators who are using media to change the world for the better - and now there's another reason to admire them:

They're supporting the Drupal Open Source Initiative with funding for projects that support communities through digital publishing. Here's more from them:

Knight Foundation is working with the Drupal community on the Knight Drupal Initiative with the following goals in mind:

• To enable more people to enter the digital conversation by lowering the technical barriers to entry.
• To provide powerful tools for digital publication, free and open to all.
• To encourage people to improve their communities by supporting the free exchange of information and ideas.

 

The grant opportunity is open to the public, proposals will be voted on by the Drupal community, and anyone is welcome to register in the Drupal Community and submit a proposal.

To find out more, visit the Knight Drupal Initiative (KDI) overview.

OK you tech-savvy and socially-conscientious NTEN community, get out there and submit your Drupal-Community proposals! 

Earth Day spurred some conversation on NTEN Discuss about how to figure out carbon emissions for every watt a computer uses per hour. Dean Matsueda wrote that he had seen and used carbon-footprint calculators online to gauge household, car, and air travel C02 emissions but would like to drill down to more specifics, like computer use.

Walt Daniels gave this response:

Carbon footprint is a simple multiply if you have the watts/hr and number of hours. watts/hr is what is hard to come by for most computer setups unless you have a meter on it because the usage depends on too many things,like duty cycle and how you have the power savings features on your computer set.

Gavin Clabaugh lets us know that to do it right, you need to meter the machine. He uses a Kill-A-Watt (a simple one costs about $20).

And Dave Shaw, H4 Consulting, added:

Seth Schneider, Communications Director, Transportation and Land Use Coalition

NTEN member Seth Schneider of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition led a session about how to find and hire a company or consultant for your website project at the recent Bay Area Drupal Camp in Berkeley, CA. The participants generated a slew of helpful tips from their collective experience as both clients and consultants. Although the tips focus on hiring someone for website projects that use the the open-source Drupal content management system, many of them pertain to hiring a consultant for any website project.

If you’re a college student or soon to be graduate with programming skills, consider putting them to use for a good cause! This summer U.S. PIRG is hosting a new program in which interns will improve CiviCRM, the contact relationship management component of CivicSpace and many Drupal websites.

Specifically participants will work on improving features like online petitions and tell-a-friend functions, making CiviCRM a standalone application that integrates with CMS like WebGUI, and getting it ready to use for PIRG’s network of advocacy organizations. And since we’re talking about open source code, all this work will go back out to the community. This is great news for other nonprofit organizations that use, or want to use, CiviCRM.

Find out more about this program and how to apply.