Chris Brookins's blog

Submitted by Chris Brookins on August 21, 2010 - 11:45pm

In the last Drupal Gardens survey of site builders, the #1 requested item was image galleries.  We wanted Drupal Gardens' galleries to be built on Drupal 7's new files and fields architecture, and developed using the powerful media and styles modules.  After working on these modules to support galleries, we turned our efforts to finishing an easy to use Drupal 7 lightbox and media-based gallery module leveraging the fantastic

Submitted by Chris Brookins on July 7, 2010 - 7:42am

In addition to the rush the Drupal Gardens team gets when adding cool new features, we like to get things right, striking a good balance between power and simplicity.  In the last sprint, we spent a bunch of time polishing the powerful XML Sitemap and Media modules with a focus on simplifying the UX and providing smart defaults so they work immediately after site creation.  Out of the box, these modules are highly customizable with many configuration settings.  Our goal was to red

Submitted by Chris Brookins on July 6, 2010 - 8:43pm

Want to win an iPad like our last winners did?   To qualify for the contest:

Submitted by Chris Brookins on June 14, 2010 - 8:28am

When we started planning Drupal Gardens 18 months ago one of our goals was to help break down the barriers to creating stunning Drupal web sites. To that end we developed the Drupal Gardens' ThemeBuilder -- to allow people to point and click to create uniquely designed web sites, even if they don't know what CSS is or don't have the time to learn Drupal 7's powerful theme system.

Submitted by Chris Brookins on May 24, 2010 - 11:49pm

Last week the Acquia engineering team finished its first post-DrupalCon sprint and upgraded nearly 9,500 Drupal Gardens sites to a new release. For an invitation-only beta, that is a lot of sites. Considering that this effort is combined with running on recent daily builds of the Drupal 7 alpha, the team has no shortage of challenges.

Submitted by Chris Brookins on April 17, 2010 - 11:06pm

Yesterday we completed our pre-DrupalCon sprint and are excited to introduce several great new features, with a special focus on designers and site creators who need an awesome looking site. Specifically in this release we have added great support for professional fonts. As designers know, font selection is one key area where average web sites are separated from remarkable sites. In the past, font options for web sites were limited or complex to implement: you could create your own images with embedded expensive licensed fonts, or you could purchase, install and embed fonts yourself.

Submitted by Chris Brookins on March 31, 2010 - 11:28pm

Yesterday we completed our 3rd sprint since Drupal Gardens went into private beta at the end of January. Following our Scrum development process, the Acquia engineering teams commit to delivering new features and bug fixes in every 3 week sprint. Before each sprint the designers craft rough visuals or mock-ups of every major feature to be developed. Within each sprint new features are planned, developed, tested and documented and pushed live. It makes for an intense and fun three weeks!

Submitted by Chris Brookins on March 16, 2010 - 1:15pm

In these early days of the Drupal Gardens beta, we are adding new features, beta testers, and cloud servers around the clock. Since our last update 3 weeks ago, thousands more beta testers have been added, and they have clicked to create thousands of new Drupal Gardens web sites. And of course, being a social platform, those sites in turn are attracting their own communities. It's a lot of fun watching the garden grow.

Submitted by Chris Brookins on February 22, 2010 - 10:51am

It's been 3 weeks since we launched the Drupal Gardens private beta and the response has been incredible. Hundreds of Drupal 7 sites have been created and we are getting lots of great feedback on both Drupal 7 and new features testers would like to see in Gardens. A huge thank you to those of you who have provided feedback, keep up the great work!