This is pretty exciting news especially since I use Drupal for my classroom website! (I flushed out last year’s content and have been updating slowly this month. Been playing around with design and CCK features; awaiting the big move to an updated install). It could mean improvements in the future such as a one click update module (I have hoped for this for a LONG TIME) just like the WordPress InstantUpgrade plugin that I love. I looked around a little to find some business information on Acquia and it was nice to find out who is running the show over there.

Acquia Readies Commercial Drupal CMS

“Acquia is headed up by Dries Buytaert, the founder and still a lead developer of Drupal.”

(Via GigaOM.)

This is a good thing, in my opinion, because it hopefully means that there will be significant initiative to push out updates/improvements to the community instead of keeping them proprietary and closed source.

At least this is what I hope!

I just installed Acquia’s flavor of Drupal on my hosted server (the same that hosts this blog) and already I really like the administration panel across the top of the page.

Later on I will have to copy over some of the modules I use over at my classroom website to see how well they function.

Still looking forward to the DrupalEd update that should be coming soon. I will wait until then to make my decision on which version to start pulling my content over to.

Acquia Debuts Drupal for Free

“Acquia has announced the availability of Acquia Drupal, a free and commercially supported distribution of the popular Drupal open source social publishing system. They also unveiled the Acquia Network, which offers subscription-based access to technical support and remote network services that simplify the development and operation of Drupal Web sites. Entry level subscriptions to the Acquia Network will be free of charge through the end of the year.

For those that aren’t overly familiar with Drupal, it’s an open source web development and content management platform that publishes, manages and organizes a wide variety of content on websites. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal.

With the release of Acquia Drupal with its streamlined packaging of Drupal and a support system via the Acquia Network, there will definitely be a tremendous increase in Drupal developers and websites powered by this Drupal.

All subscribers to the Acquia Network will gain access to the Acquia Network’s subscriber forums, remote network services such as software update notifications, uptime monitoring, Mollom spam blocking, and Acquia Drupal documentation.

What all this means is that many more companies, especially enterprise class entities, will be much more willing to dip their toes in the Drupal pool now that there’s a commercial grade package available that includes tech support. If all this sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking about Linux and how similar its path has been to the corporate world. At one point, only extreme geeks used Linux, until some big names like IBM and Novell started proving technical support plans with their Linux offerings. That allowed larger companies to try Linux much the same way they will try Drupal thanks to the Acquia partnership and support offering.

It seems like the natural evolutionary progression for all open source projects to go from a handful of geek’s using it in their basement to the corporate enterprise once a commercial package with tech support is distributed. It will be interesting to see what kind of websites and social networks are born from this marriage between Acquia and Drupal.”

(Via Mashable!.)