After a longer interim than usual, we are releasing a new tag for Bryght VPS customers. The new tag is 2008-07-11s (the 's' is there since this includes a security update). This release includes the following:

• a security update for Drupal, pushing the version number up to 5.8. You can read more about at the advisory advisory. The release of Drupal also fixes numerous small bugs, which you can read about at at the Drupal.org release notes for 5.8.
• updates to several contributed modules, bringing them up to date with each of their official releases. A special note about Pathauto: you may need to enable the Token module for this release. Since Pathauto depends on Token, you may need to first disable Pathauto, then enable both Pathauto & Token at the same time.
• we're including the Mollom spam-fighting module along with the Akismet module. We plan on ending support for Akismet, which means removing it from the hosted service when the time comes. We will send a notification out to all sites that have Akismet enabled well before we do this. We like the approach Mollom takes towards protecting against spam—as well as other malicious content—and it protects more Drupal forms from spam attacks (such as the contact form) than just content or comments. The module requires signing up for keys which you can get by signing up for an account at the Mollom web service.
• we're also including the Basic theme, built by us at Raincity Studios, as an alternative to the Zen theme. This is a very lightweight theme intended for designers and developers who want something simple to work from to create their own Drupal themes. We have more contributed themes that we are planning for a later release.

Updating Your VPS

Take a look at our documentation on how to update to the latest tagged release. Since some modules (like Pathauto) includes some database changes, you will most likely need to run update.php for your site. We recommend backing up your database(s) before-hand. Now is a good time to backup your databases anyway. After running the update, this is a good time to check Administer » Logs » Status report to see what else needs updating or fixing. The error that you might see for Google Analytics in the status log still persists; the fix is still to configure the module in Administer » Settings » Google Analytics or by disabling the module

Hosted Service

We have not yet released this tag on the hosted service. We will post a new story once Drupal 5.8 is made available to those customers. This release, as always, includes the Watchdog backport patch, which we keep updated on the Drupal.org issue page.

Recently we quietly enabled newly created Bryght sites on our hosted service platform with the OpenID and FeedBurner modules, though at the time that upgrade did not apply to older sites. This was because we had to run the database updates for each site, and we wanted to make sure we got it right.

We've done that, and starting this morning, all Drupal 5 hosted service sites have been upgraded to Drupal 5.2 with the new functionality. This means that you can login using one username and password for all your sites and track the subscribers to your RSS feeds. Our Chief Screencasting Officer Roland has created two screencasts showing and explaining how to login to multiple sites with your OpenID, and later today he will post a screencast on setting up RSS feed stats and other cool services using FeedBurner to support.bryght.com.

If you notice that your site is no longer recording events to your "Watchdog", as part of the upgrade we have switched to using the "Database logging" module, so you may need to go into Administer » Site building » Modules and enable it. Also, if you notice anything a little off in your website starting this morning, please send us a note and we'll look into it.

This afternoon we are releasing new functionality, bug fixes and security patches to our release of the Bryght Basic profile for VPS customers as part of the 2007-07-31 tag. While we haven't made any configuration changes, we've added the OpenID module, for logging into multiple sites ( more information about OpenID), Drupal or otherwise; the Persistent Login module, which adds "Remember me" checkbox at the bottom of the user login box; and the FeedBurner module ( more information about FeedBurner and its services), so you can redirect your RSS feeds to FeedBurner to keep track of statistics and add other features the service provides. Documentation on setting up and using those modules is forthcoming.

We have not yet deployed these changes for Bryght Lite hosted service customers.

The tag includes the official Drupal 5.2 release, which incorporates some security patches—see below for some special instructions regarding settings.php—and various bug fixes. Also, VPS customers can send Drupal system messages to Syslog, which lets you route them to a log file or to another monitoring service. (System messages can still be logged in the database using the new "Database logging" module.).

Update: those who retrieved the tag last night will want to run svn update, as we added some very minor fixes to the .info files of some of the modules.

This morning we rolled out our completed Bryght Basic profile as well as adding a second install profile that implements wiki functionality in Drupal, all as part of the 2007-04-03 tag.

The Bryght Basic profile is now essentially locked: we will update the component modules over time (e.g. there is more functionality coming specifically in the Date and Calendar modules) but won't make any fundamental configuration changes.

We are also introducing a new install profile in "preview" mode. This is an install profile created by the community -- the Drupal Wiki. It implements Drupal so that it is set up as a wiki out of the box, along with MediaWiki syntax parsing just like Wikipedia uses, a diff module so you can see what edits have been applied to pages, and so on.

To kick the tires on the Drupal Wiki, head on over to preview.bryght.com and hit the signup button. We'll be collecting feedback and gauging interest in this profile.

Of course, VPS customers can also try the Drupal Wiki. Update to the latest tag, and then do the extra step of going to the /var/www/html/profiles directory and adding a symlink to the drupal_wiki folder. When creating new sites, you can now select from Basic, Drupal, and Wiki as install profiles available to you.

As we posted over on Bryght.com, Bryght is now offering sites powered by Drupal 5.

We know you have lots of questions, so we have started a Drupal 5 Preview Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. As always, please contact us if you have questions that aren't answered by the FAQ.

If you don't have time to read the Drupal 5 preview FAQ (highly recommended), the key points are:

• Existing Bryght Hosted Service sites starting February are $19.95/month.
• New Hosted Service sites are $19.95/month (after a 30 day free trial of course!).

We'll be updating the FAQ with Drupal 5 specific quick tips, and of course posting more documentation here. Hope you enjoy kicking the tires on this Drupal 5 preview release.

As we mentioned earlier this week, we're moving to new, faster, more stable infrastructure with Firebright. Part of that means we have disabled the creation of new websites. We will re-enable the creation of sites next week once we've moved all of the current websites, including the bryght.com and support.bryght.com sites, to the new servers. We will update with a new post when we have fully moved over, and at that time, we will re-enable new site signups.

[Cross-posted from Bryght.com]

[cross posted from Bryght.com] 

Bryght is moving to a more reliable platform to accommodate growing demand for the Bryght hosted service. Our new system can grow continuously, and will provide a better experience for our valued Bryght customers.

The Bryght team has been working hard over the past little while in preparation for this move. We have "been making a list and checking it twice", sending out emails to our Bryght hosted service customers and performing test moves with our sites in order to ensure the move is as seamless as possible.

On December 8th, Bryght will complete its move of all of its web infrastructure. We will be following up with a post giving a few more of the technical details but until then here is a general overview.

We've recently added the img_assist module to our supported modules list for sites created after September 1st, 2005. I've written some documentation on using the img_assist module to place and upload images as well as an img_assist configuration guide. If you have questions about the documentation or how to use the module, please don't hestitate to contact us.

We just installed an updated version of the image gallery module that makes uploading work seamlessly when you are writing your content in our WYSIWYG editor. See our instructions to upload a photo or an image while you're writing.

Also, we added the ability to place a random image on your sidebar that shows the thumbnail (i.e. a smaller version) of a photo or image added to your gallery. We've added instructions on how to add that block to our documentation on configuring the image galleries on your site.