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.