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.

Today we're releasing a new tag for the Bryght Basic profile. The new tag is 2007-12-06s. It includes a fix for a security advisory and bug fixes that came with Drupal 5.4 and the critical bug fix that comes with Drupal 5.5. As we have with previous releases on the Drupal 5 platform, we've included the Syslog/Watchdog hook patch and will update the patch shortly to the issue on Drupal.org. To update your server's installation, follow our instructions on maintaining tagged releases.

Some notes about this new tag:

• There are no database updates between 5.3 and 5.5. It's still a good idea to backup your database and run update.php in case there were updates you missed along the way.
• This is a bug fix and security patch release only. There are no new features, though we recommend users upgrade as soon as possible.
• The security release did not affect those running only Drupal core modules, but includes a fix preventing contributed modules from injecting SQL queries.
• I also snuck in a minor bug fix for the Akismet module.
• We have not yet deployed this on our hosted service. We will do that shortly.

The error message for Google Analytics noted in the release notes for our previous tag still persists.

A month or so ago, I quietly implemented Akismet checking on authenticated users because of bots creating accounts and using them to spam forum posts, but that seems to have resulted in legitimate comments not getting initially published. I've published a half dozen legitimate comments just now. This is likely related to a report we got of other legitimate comments on customers' sites getting unpublished, and I'll monitor the Akismet queue here on support.bryght.com more closely. I proposed a solution, i.e. setting the WordPress API key setting for the Akismet module, but if you notice that your comment still didn't get published right away, please don't hesitate to contact us via email.