The Deutsche Aids-Hilfe (DAH) is the leading German non-governmental organization that deals with the concerns of people living with HIV/AIDS and helps raise awareness of effective HIV prevention techniques.
As the governing body for more than 120 local AIDS service organizations, it supports this work at many different levels.

The DAH website, aidshilfe.de, is one of the organization’s main communication channels. It offers information on HIV and other sexual transmitted infections and covers the field of counseling for private matters. The website also provides contact information for local self-help-centers, a broad selection of free information material, workshops, community features, etc.

Work on the aidshilfe.de project was supported by many partners. Christoph Schüßler designed the website, which was implemented in Drupal by Berlin-based Werk21. The new aidshilfe.de is a step forward toward a future-proof system that features an attractive new design, interactive features, user-friendly community functionality and great usability.

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The Mozilla community is proud to announce that Firefox 4 Beta 2 is now available for download on Mac, Windows or Linux.

Firefox 4 Beta 2 includes several major features and improvements – by testing them early we’ll be able to respond to your feedback for future versions of Firefox. The included Feedback Add-On that helps you let us know what you think about the new features and technologies in the beta. You can read more about this release on the Mozilla Blog, or at any of the following links:

• Read more about some of the major features in this beta
• Take a look at our big chart o’ technology that’s included in this beta
• Read the release notes for Firefox 4 Beta 1

We want to thank the Mozilla community of nightly testers for the amazing feedback that helped shaped Firefox 4 Beta 2. We appreciate your assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox!

TicketCake.com is an event ticketing and promotion start-up that recently launched using Drupal as its framework. The website features an innovative design by White Label Graphics which balances functionality and simplicity.

Because Drupal has many ways to display dynamic content, finding the right way to implement a design can be a problem in itself. To overcome this obstacle, the Ticket Cake team focused a significant amount of time creating wireframes for the project.

Drupal’s unique ability to display content in various ways made the process of developing wireframes a constant back and forth. With each iteration, the team updated price quotes, layouts, and site flow.

“Throughout the construction of the wireframes, we always looked to a keep it simple philosophy that ended up being vital,” said Joe Henriod, head of the Ticket Cake business development team. “Measure twice, cut once.”

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Firefox 3.6.8 is now available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux from www.firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

This release fixes a stability problem that affected some pages with embedded plugins. For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 3.6.8 release notes.

Note: All Firefox 3 and 3.5 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 by downloading it from www.firefox.com or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu and clicking on “Get the New Version”, then checking for updates again once Firefox 3.6 is installed.

Grandiflora is a boutique florist based in Sydney, Australia. Although you might not have heard of them before, you've probably seen their work in the pages of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and many other fashion magazines. They've also created the floral design for many celebrity weddings and events in the Australia's premier harbour city.

Recently Grandiflora were interested in updating their identity and marketing (including their website), so they tasked the team at House of Laudanum to create a custom online shopping experience to sell their products online. The previous website was a custom CMS written in Perl and while it did have some e-commerce facilities, it required updating to be a more integrated shopping solution.

Why was Drupal chosen for the project?

Although WordPress was considered early on in the decision making process, the team chose Drupal mainly because of the Ubercart module and some other contributed modules which laid the foundation for the integrated payment solution required for the project.

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After reviewing 240 sessions submitted for the conference, the track chairs, the Copenhagen team and the Drupal Association are proud to present the DrupalCon Copenhagen program.

The total of 94 sessions is made up of 83 regular sessions, 6 platinum sponsor sessions, 3 keynotes and 2 rounds of lightning talks.

The session selection accounts for many factors including attendee votes, addressing the breadth of interests of DrupalCon attendees, and providing a balanced and compelling program. For example, some sessions were picked because they were essential for introducing new developers to Drupal, other sessions were selected because they present important local Drupal business cases, etc.

If you proposed a session that didn't make it into the program, please consider presenting it at the Unconference on August 23rd or run it as a Birds of a Feather session. We will be adding more information about these options to the website in the coming weeks.

You can either see the sessions selected for each track below, or take a look at the program overview. Please bear in mind that this is not the final program and that sessions are likely to be moved around as we refine it.

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The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.3.3. This release focuses on improving the stability and security of the PHP 5.3.x branch with over 100 bug fixes, some of which are security related. All users are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Backwards incompatible change: Methods with the same name as the last element of a namespaced class name will no longer be treated as constructor. This change doesn't affect non-namespaced classes. <?php namespace Foo; class Bar {     public function Bar() {         // treated as constructor in PHP 5.3.0-5.3.2         // treated as regular method in PHP 5.3.3     } } ?> There is no impact on migration from 5.2.x because namespaces were only introduced in PHP 5.3. Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.3.3: Rewrote var_export() to use smart_str rather than output buffering, prevents data disclosure if a fatal error occurs (CVE-2010-2531). Fixed a possible resource destruction issues in shm_put_var(). Fixed a possible information leak because of interruption of XOR operator. Fixed a possible memory corruption because of unexpected call-time pass by refernce and following memory clobbering through callbacks. Fixed a possible memory corruption in ArrayObject::uasort(). Fixed a possible memory corruption in parse_str(). Fixed a possible memory corruption in pack(). Fixed a possible memory corruption in substr_replace(). Fixed a possible memory corruption in addcslashes(). Fixed a possible stack exhaustion inside fnmatch(). Fixed a possible dechunking filter buffer overflow. Fixed a possible arbitrary memory access inside sqlite extension. Fixed string format validation inside phar extension. Fixed handling of session variable serialization on certain prefix characters. Fixed a NULL pointer dereference when processing invalid XML-RPC requests (Fixes CVE-2010-0397, bug #51288). Fixed SplObjectStorage unserialization problems (CVE-2010-2225). Fixed possible buffer overflows in mysqlnd_list_fields, mysqlnd_change_user. Fixed possible buffer overflows when handling error packets in mysqlnd. Key enhancements in PHP 5.3.3 include: Upgraded bundled sqlite to version 3.6.23.1. Upgraded bundled PCRE to version 8.02. Added FastCGI Process Manager (FPM) SAPI. Added stream filter support to mcrypt extension. Added full_special_chars filter to ext/filter. Fixed a possible crash because of recursive GC invocation. Fixed bug #52238 (Crash when an Exception occured in iterator_to_array). Fixed bug #52041 (Memory leak when writing on uninitialized variable returned from function). Fixed bug #52060 (Memory leak when passing a closure to method_exists()). Fixed bug #52001 (Memory allocation problems after using variable variables). Fixed bug #51723 (Content-length header is limited to 32bit integer with Apache2 on Windows). Fixed bug #48930 (__COMPILER_HALT_OFFSET__ incorrect in PHP >= 5.3). For users upgrading from PHP 5.2 there is a migration guide available on http://php.net/migration53, detailing the changes between those releases and PHP 5.3. For a full list of changes in PHP 5.3.3, see the ChangeLog.

The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.14. This release focuses on improving the stability of the PHP 5.2.x branch with over 60 bug fixes, some of which are security related. This release marks the end of the active support for PHP 5.2. Following this release the PHP 5.2 series will receive no further active bug maintenance. Security fixes for PHP 5.2 might be published on a case by cases basis. All users of PHP 5.2 are encouraged to upgrade to PHP 5.3. Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.2.14: Rewrote var_export() to use smart_str rather than output buffering, prevents data disclosure if a fatal error occurs. Fixed a possible interruption array leak in strrchr().(CVE-2010-2484) Fixed a possible interruption array leak in strchr(), strstr(), substr(), chunk_split(), strtok(), addcslashes(), str_repeat(), trim(). Fixed a possible memory corruption in substr_replace(). Fixed SplObjectStorage unserialization problems (CVE-2010-2225). Fixed a possible stack exaustion inside fnmatch(). Fixed a NULL pointer dereference when processing invalid XML-RPC requests (Fixes CVE-2010-0397, bug #51288). Fixed handling of session variable serialization on certain prefix characters. Fixed a possible arbitrary memory access inside sqlite extension. Reported by Mateusz Kocielski. Key enhancements in PHP 5.2.14 include: Upgraded bundled PCRE to version 8.02. Updated timezone database to version 2010.5. Fixed bug #52238 (Crash when an Exception occured in iterator_to_array). Fixed bug #52237 (Crash when passing the reference of the property of a non-object). Fixed bug #52041 (Memory leak when writing on uninitialized variable returned from function). Fixed bug #51822 (Segfault with strange __destruct() for static class variables). Fixed bug #51552 (debug_backtrace() causes segmentation fault and/or memory issues). Fixed bug #49267 (Linking fails for iconv on MacOS: "Undefined symbols: _libiconv"). To prepare for upgrading to PHP 5.3, now that PHP 5.2's support ended, a migration guide available on http://php.net/migration53, details the changes between PHP 5.2 and PHP 5.3. For a full list of changes in PHP 5.2.14 see the ChangeLog at http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.2.14.

At the Drupal Association retreat in San Francisco, the general assembly set the completion of the drupal.org redesign as its number one priority for 2010. The assembly agreed to fund five contracts to help eliminate obstacles that had prevented the community from completing the redesign.

Five key roles were identified: Architect, Solr developer, Project module developer, and an infrastructure developer. The association also elected to upgrade Drupal.org code repository from CVS to Git to help maintain Drupal.org as the hub of Drupal development.

Hiring process:

Job descriptions were developed in conjunction with both the redesign volunteers and the Drupal.org project managers, Kieran Lal, Chris Strahl, and Lisa Rex. The job descriptions were then posted to groups.drupal.org for 3 weeks. Approximately 35 applications were received and a dozen interviews were conducted by the project management team. The contracts were negotiated with Drupal Association Interim General Manager Jacob Redding, to whom the project team reports directly. Contractors work day-to-day with the project management team. The association will pay for the contract work using the funds raised through memberships, advertising, partnerships, affiliates, and DrupalCon sponsorships.

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Firefox 3.6.7 and Firefox 3.5.11 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://firefox.com. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Firefox, and encourage all our users to upgrade to the very latest version, Firefox 3.6.7.

Firefox 3.6.7: http://firefox.com
Firefox 3.5.11: http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Firefox, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This updates can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox release notes:

• Firefox 3.6.7 release notes
• Firefox 3.5.11 release notes

Note: All Firefox 3 and 3.5 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 by downloading it from http://firefox.com or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu and clicking on “Get the New Version”, then checking for updates again once Firefox 3.6 is installed.

As part of Mozilla’s ongoing security and stability update process, Thunderbird 3.1.1 and Thunderbird 3.0.6 are now available as free downloads for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://getthunderbird.com/. As always, we recommend that users keep up to date with the latest stability and support versions of Thunderbird.

• Thunderbird 3.1.1: http://getthunderbird.com/
• Thunderbird 3.0.6: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/all-older.html

We strongly recommend that all Thunderbird users upgrade to these latest releases. If you already have Thunderbird, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. You can also manually fetch this update by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Thunderbird release notes:

• Thunderbird 3.1.1 release notes
• Thunderbird 3.0.6 release notes

Drupal.org will have some scheduled downtime, Wednesday 21st of July, 22:00 UTC (3PM PDT, 6PM EDT). We will be enhancing the usability of the drupal.org issue queues. Since the drupal.org database is quite large, this can take a while. We hope to be back in one hour.

The Drupal Association has been working to figure out the most effective ways it can help local user groups organize Drupal camps. We quickly realized that there was a lack of data about how past and present Drupal camps were currently being organized. With that in mind, we created an online survey for DrupalCamp organizers that would help everyone understand how Drupal camps currently worked.

Over the course of about 7 weeks, we collected a total of 51 responses, with 6 duplicates and unusable, making our sample size 45 Drupal camps. In a previous article posted on the Drupal Event Organization Drupal group, I posted the results from the first 31 responses. Since that article was published (and because of it), we had an additional 14 responses, making the data that much more valuable.

Overall, the 45 camps that completed the survey had over 6,200 participants, a combined budget of almost $250,000, and were organized by over 400 volunteers.

The resulting data is extremely valuable to both the Drupal Association and Drupal user groups around the world. The Drupal Association now has an idea of how camps are currently being organized and can make informed decisions about how to help future organizers. Local user groups can use this data to help plan future events. In particular, the average cost-per-particpant and participants-per-volunteers data (highlighted below) should be considered when planning future camps.

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Our fifth Drupal 7 alpha version was released a little over a month ago. Today, we're proud to announce the release of the sixth (and hopefully final) alpha version of Drupal 7.x for your further testing and feedback. The first alpha announcement provided a comprehensive list of improvements made since Drupal 6.x, so in this announcement we'll concentrate on how you can help ensure that Drupal 7 is released as soon as possible and is as rock solid as the previous Drupal releases that you've grown to love!

This release includes many critical bug fixes, a nearly working upgrade path, and a new default core theme: Bartik!

Please see the release notes for more details.

When will alpha become beta?

We have identified several "beta blocking" issues, and itemized these at the Drupal core community initiatives page. On or about August 1, 2010 (or when the upgrade path is working, whichever comes first) we will create a new official Drupal 7 release. If this list is fixed, it will be a beta release. Otherwise, it will be another alpha release. It's expected we will have a few beta versions and at least one release candidate before Drupal 7.0 is finalized. We can potentially reach beta within the next month by focusing on this short-list of issues! Please help!

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We are proud to announce the keynote speakers at DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010: Rasmus Lerdorf (topic to be crowdsourced), Jeremy Keith (Design of HTML5) and Dries Buytaert (State of Drupal).

The State of Drupal

Dries Buytaert, Drupal Project Lead
Tuesday, August 24th

Dries Buytaert will discuss where Drupal is and where it is going. In particular, he’ll discuss the final preparations for the release of Drupal 7, the Drupal.org redesign, and the plans for Drupal 8.

Dries Buytaert is passionate about the web, open source, and photography. He is the original creator and project lead of Drupal, an open source social publishing system. He is co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. Dries is also working on Mollom, a service that helps you identify content quality and that stops website spam.

Topic to be decided by you

Rasmus Lerdorf, PHP Project Founder
Wednesday, August 25th

Tell Rasmus which topic you would like him to focus on by leaving a comment on the DrupalCon Copenhagen site.

Rasmus Lerdorf is known for creating the PHP project in 1995 and he has contributed to a number of other open source projects over the years. Rasmus was most recently an infrastructure architect at Yahoo! for over 7 years before joining WePay in 2010. He was born in Greenland, grew up in Denmark and Canada and has a Systems Design engineering degree from the University of Waterloo. You can follow @rasmus on Twitter.

The Design of HTML5

Jeremy Keith, Author of HTML5 For Web Designers
Thursday, August 26th

Everyone's talking about the benefits of HTML5 for Web applications but the specification also introduces an extra layer of semantic richness to our Web documents. These additions aren't wishful thinking for some far-flung future: you can start using them today. That's because the design principles driving HTML5 are steeped in pragmatism. Find out how important good design principles are to any project, whether it's a website, a content management system, or the very language that underpins the World Wide Web.

Jeremy Keith is an Irish web developer living in Brighton, England where he works with the Web consultancy firm Clearleft. He wrote the books DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, and most recently, HTML5 For Web Designers. His latest project is Huffduffer, a service for creating podcasts of found sounds. When he’s not making websites, Jeremy plays bouzouki in the band Salter Cane.

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The Mozilla community is proud to announce that Firefox 4 Beta 1 is now available for download on Mac, Windows or Linux.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 includes dozens of major features and improvements – by testing them early we’ll be able to respond to your feedback for future versions of Firefox. Once you download Firefox 4 Beta 1, you’re part of our beta program and will receive regular updates as more features launch. We’ve included a Feedback Add-On that helps you let us know what you think about the new features and technologies in the beta. You can read more about this release on the Mozilla Blog, or at any of the following links:

• Read more about some of the major features in this beta
• Take a look at our big chart o’ technology that’s included in this beta
• Read the release notes for Firefox 4 Beta 1

We want to thank the Mozilla community of nightly testers for the amazing feedback that helped shaped Firefox 4 Beta 1. We appreciate your assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox!

Join us for MySQL Sunday, a half-day technical conference packed with the latest on MySQL, on September 19, 2010. You’ll also hear what's new and what's next directly from Edward Screven, Oracle Chief Corporate Architect, and other visionary technologists at the "MySQL Fireside Chat" general session.

On August 23rd, the day before the main conference kicks off, you'll be able to attend training sessions facilitated by leading Drupal experts. These sessions will take place at the main conference venue.

The training sessions will cover:

• Performance and Scalability
• Drupal Powered E-Commerce
• Module development
• Security: process, code and hands-on training

It is possible to attend the training sessions even if you're not going to the main conference. If that's the case, simply buy a ticket for the training session you'd like to attend.

If you buy a ticket for a training session together with a ticket for the conference, we will subtract €30 from the price of your conference ticket (making it €249 + VAT). The discount will be applied automatically during checkout.

Check out the training page for more information on the training sessions.

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ThinkDrop Consulting and the non-profit organization MACILE are collaborating on a pilot program to introduce open-source technology and Drupal to children living in less-advantaged communities, helping them overcome the hurdles that prevent them from openly accessing and sharing information.  In July, we will travel to Itabo, Dominican Republic to teach a two-week class to 6th-12th graders and educators on Internet Technology, Open Source, and Drupal.

In addition to educating both students and teachers on Internet technology and Drupal, we will be documenting the process using OpenAtrium and releasing our curriculum under Creative Commons licensing. Our goal is to create a consistent curriculum to teach kids around the world who may have not ever even used a computer.

Donate Today!

We are seeking $8,000 in funding through Kickstarter, an innovative website that allows users to fund creative endeavors. The funds we are seeking will pay for full-time coding and project development, travel and housing expenses in the Dominican Republic, and additional computers for educators and students. As we will be working in less advantaged communities, maintaining access to consistent electricity and the internet will be a challenge, so a portion of our time will be spent developing a model approach to this problem.

Although we have set our funding goal at $8,000, we hope to exceed it. Any additional funds we receive will be used to continue expanding the Internet Technology programs of COSOLA and MACILE. 

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As part of Mozilla’s ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.6.6 is now available as a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux from http://www.firefox.com. This release makes a small change to the crash protection feature introduced in Firefox 3.6.4, increasing the amount of time that Firefox will allow a plugin to remain frozen before terminating it. For more information, see the Mozilla Blog announcement about the release.

We recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.6 you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu.

For a list of changes and more information, please review the Firefox 3.6.6 Release Notes.

All Firefox 3 and 3.5 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 by downloading it from http://firefox.com/ or by selecting “Check for Updates…” from the Help menu and clicking on “Get the New Version”, then checking for updates again once Firefox 3.6 is installed.