Drupal Support – IRC Channels

With all open source software there tends to be a community of developers whose passion is to keep the project alive. With Drupal this community can be accessed in a variety of ways. One of the best ways that I have encountered is that of the IRC support channels. The benefit of using the IRC channels is that support for issues encountered during the installation and configuration stages of the site, but it gives an opportunity to become part of the community of users who use Drupal on a daily basis.

There are many support channels that can be joined, although there are some vital ones that would be most beneficial as most of the community sit within and actively participate in these channels. These channels include:

• #drupal – General talk about the Drupal community, patches that need reviewing, themes that need altering and modules that need creating. This also serves as a good place to talk about future releases of Drupal.
• #drupal-contribute – This channel is for those wishing to get further involved into the community. Tasks discussed in this channel include documentation, module and theme development, promotion of Drupal and the overall Drupal.org infrastructure.
• #drupal-support – This channel is for support questions. If an issue arises during the configuration of a site, this is the place to ask it. You will usually get a solution to your issue as soon as someone is available.

It is incredibly easy to join one of these channels. Software such as Pidgin or Miranda have this functionality built in. Further information about the Drupal support channels and a list of channels that are currently used visit the following link – www.drupal.org/irc.

There is also a very small but dedicated Drupal community located within New Zealand. To join this channel enter #drupal-nz as the channel name, and it will automatically redirect you to the channel.  The community within New Zealand is currently very small with around 300+ developers, but will continue to grow as Drupal becomes more popular as a content management system.

Drupal – www.drupal.org

I was first introduced to Drupal when researching a platform that would allow end users to be able to log in to a site and update a content without the need for a web developer. Drupal is an open source content management system which was written in PHP with a MySQL backend. It is highly scalable and can be easily customized to fit any solution.

There are a number of websites that currently have Drupal implemented as the framework. Such sites include:

• The New Zealand Veterinary Association – http://www.vetspace.org.nz
• The Beehive – http://www.beehive.govt.nz
• The Labour Party
• The Green Party
• The Act Party – http://www.act.org.nz

Drupal is a very good solution for any type of organization whether it be a non profit, for profit, community groups and small and large businesses. Usage for Drupal is on the increase in New Zealand, with a small but dedicated group of developers but as more web developers are exposed to this technology, this community will continue to grow.