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Dries Buytaert Betrays Secrets of Drupal 6.0

Drupal founder Dries Buytaert recently gave an interview with PC World, in which he let slip some of the delights in store in the next installment of Drupal — as well as some interesting information on where the software came from, and where it is heading.

New additions to Drupal 6, currently in Beta, will include:

• an improved installer
• more AJAX and AHAH on admin pages
• OpenID Client support, eliminating the need for multiple usernames across different websites
• architecture which will make it easier for developers to create Drupal themes
• 30 percent speed increase from Drupal 5
• module update notifications, and auto-updating
• various localization and internationalization improvements, focusing on the needs of non-English speaking users

Buytaert, a PhD student at the University of Ghent, claims Drupal — despite its successes on the field — remains a ‘hobby’ of his, which he works on after long days spent in the university library.

Written in PHP, the Drupal project started life as a notice board on a small news site where Buytaert and his friends would leave notes to each other.

From these humble beginnings Drupal has grown into an open-source content management behemoth, powering an estimated 200,000 websites and innumerable intranets around the world. The software was downloaded around 600,000 times last year alone.

Paying homage to the Drupal community, Buytaert says, “Every day I get to work with really smart and passionate people, and the quality of that community directly impacts the quality of the software that we produce. Not only do we do a lot of work, we actually do a lot of great work. It goes without saying that without the Drupal community, Drupal would not be where it is today. It would simply cease to exist.”

All together now: “Awwwwwww!!!”

Buytaert started programming in Basic on his Commodore 64 at around age eight. Not content with being a figurehead for the cultural revolution which is open source programming, the amiable Dutchman claims to have taken a Troll Mage to level 54 on World of Warcraft. This despite ‘not really liking’ computer games.

Ok now I’m jealous.

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