I've been promising benchmarks for the Display Suite module after every presentation I gave so far. It took me a while to get a good setup but now it's here. I've used the demo site as a start, so there are a lot of modules enabled for this test. Views, panels, fivestar, heartbeat, comment, taxonomy, location, gmap, imagecache are the most important ones since they all integrate with the ecosphere of Display Suite modules.

I added a new content type called 'benchmark' and added 14 CCK fields to it: 4 textfields, 4 textareas, 2 images, 2 filefields, 1 node reference and 1 user reference. It also has a title, body, 2 taxonomy fields, a fivestar widget and a couple of comments.

Depending on the test, the complete set of modules integrating with Display suite are enabled or disabled. These include ds, ds_ui, cd, hds, nd, nd_cck, nd_search, nd_fivestar, nd_location, nd_switch_bm, ucd, ud and vd. You gotta love small project names right ?

Due to Volcano activity on Iceland, I wasn't able to get to San Francisco for the biannual DrupalCon fest. But the Drupal community is that enthousiastic that we are setting up our own DrupalVolCon parties in Europe, already going on in London, Paris and in Antwerp. I'm supposed to give a session about Display Suite on wednesday, and that still might happen: we're busy testing and setting up streaming servers so we are able to stream our presentation on the internet at the time our sessions should take place in SF. All looks fine for now, so take that Eyjafjallajökull!

If you want to attend the session in Belgium, more info is available on http://belgium.drupalvolcon.com/

Update: we recorded the session and it's now available also on vimeo. Slides are at the bottom.

Display Suite profile

Related to our presentation, we just created a Display Suite profile containing all modules which are supported by Display Suite. We don't enable all modules by default in the installation profile, we just wanted to package them all, so you know what's possible.

We also packaged the Nodeform Columns module which enables you to organise your node forms in an easy way. If you don't really care about fieldgroups on the node form page, but need them on the front-end, you don't need to enable fieldgroups from CCK. The same applies to the tabs and cck fieldgroup tabs module, which are also included in the profile. Display Suite has this functionality by default.

You can see the full list of modules at http://drupal.org/node/775524, together with downloads of the profile and the packaged version of all modules with or without Drupal core included.

Important: some modules (like gmap and location) require the dev version to work properly, but for obvious reasons, the packed profile only contains official releases.

Anyway, sad I'm not there, but we're having fun here also!

After 2 months of hard work, we're proud to present you a new stable release of Display Suite and two new modules implementing the API, User displays and Views displays. A list of new features and bugfixes is available on the release notes of DS 6.x-1.1, make sure to read them as we had to introduce 2 small API changes. If you choose to upgrade, make sure you upgrade all other implementations too. A summary of cool new features:

• Support for fieldgroups: the number one feature request by many users. You don't necessarily have to enable the fieldgroups module which comes with CCK, you can create as many as you like with the DS API via the interface. As a bonus, when the tabs module is enabled, you can change the output of your fieldgroups to tabs.
• User Displays: first release which has support for the core profile module. Theming of the user profile finally got nice, especially in combination with fieldgroups support.
• Views Displays: drag and drop your views, also with support for the Views attach module.
• Region to block plugin: exposes regions per content type and build mode to a block.
• Various other small new features like adding styles, simple panels support, location/gmap and syncing and copying display settings from one build mode to another.

New screencasts are available showing the new features and our demo site is also still available.

• Release 1.1, preview: http://www.vimeo.com/10533721
• User displays, developer preview http://www.vimeo.com/10565821
• Views displays and ND location: http://www.vimeo.com/10309385

The roadmap has been updated, next focus is creating a full working version for Drupal 7. In the meantime, enjoy and see you hopefully at Drupalcon for our session about Display Suite!

We've been quite busy with Display Suite since the first release. A lot of issues have been fixed and fieldgroups integration, the number one feature request by anyone out there, is almost done. We also created two new, rather small - but cool - modules which integrate perfectly with DS.

• ND location: integrates with the location and Gmap modules. All location properties will be exposed as separate fields and you get an extra field which opens the marker info window on google maps, ideal for an overview page. We'll add a few other cool goodies to make this module rock even harder than it already does.
• Views displays: all variables in the views.tpl.php are now 'fields' which you can put in the default set of regions. Extra fields/data are now very ease to add to your views displays.

You can see the power when combining these 2 modules in this short screencast. You can also click around on our demo site, still on the same URL, at http://demo.customsource.be/location.

I am so proud to announce the first release of the Display suite module. It took us a bit longer than expected, a few API changes still got in the last month, even days - despite my promise, mea culpa - but finally it's there: Display Suite, Node displays, Node displays contributions (including cck, fivestar, search and ubercart support) and Comment displays are tagged as DRUPAL-6--1-0. We polished the build modes, added basic features support, made a few changes so we can basically add more field types and made it possible to export, import or revert (default) settings and fields.

To celebrate all this exciting news, we've created a new screencast and setup a demonstration site on which you can login to play around with the settings. We've added tons of documentation on d.o where you can find the API, snippets, info about all modules and last but not least, our roadmap, which you can consult to see where we're at and what the next steps will be.

Important to know is:

• we are dropping support on the 6--1 branches of ND and ND contrib which are outdated and simply lack the power which DS has now. I guess we're in a bit of luck here since we didn't release an official package of that branch in the first place.
• User displays is not finished and has no official 1.0 release yet. Take a look at the roadmap or the issue queue to see what's left todo for this to get out. Of course, helping along with other issues is also good.

Thanks to a lot of people, but most notably Zuuperman and Stalski, my fellow Drupal code monkeys at work, Jyve, Mzenner and Wimmmmm for their ideas, feedback, testing and bug reports and last, but not least, Deciphered, maintainer of the custom formatters module which integrates perfectly with DS now.

And now off for some well deserved rest - the next time I'll look at DS code again will be at the #D7CX sprint in two weeks at the Krimson offices to start porting all this fine stuff to D7. Till then, ditch your templates, simply CSS and drag 'n drop away!

First day of DrupalCamp Gent is over and it was really nice to see many new people attending this time, the Belgium community is really growing baby! And the regular bunch was present too, always nice to see old faces back for a nice chat. I also gave a presentation about the Display suite module and the first reactions were positive, got some good feedback and a few interesting feature requests, so I think we're on a good track here. If anyone's interested in my slides, they are attached at the end of this post.

A few people also asked me if it was safe to start using the module(s) in production. The simple answer is yes, the API is frozen and stable. Node displays and contributions are also stable to use on your website and we're busy working to finish the user and comments part. Our goal is to roll out a first official release on new years eve, a nice present to start a new decennium.

For a few months now, every project at work is handled in an agile way with the SCRUM principle and our development team gets a free day every two weeks to work on their own projects using the same technique. This gives us a good overview where we are and what we want to do in the future. Most projects during our free time is done on modules we're using in projects which we're contributing back to the Drupal community. Most of my time went into Node displays and Display suite and after a few iterations we're pleased to announce some good news!

The original version of ND and ND contrib is now available in the 6--1 branch and will be maintained only for bug fixes. We've not yet released an official version, but the API is finally frozen, so you can start testing without fearing to upgrade in the future. New features will go in the 6--2 branch which is dependant on DS. There is no real upgrade path between both branches, so make sure you make the right decision before starting on a project.

DS, short for Display suite, is an API which makes it possible to control the display of any data object (nodes, comments, users ..) in every context (full node, full user view, teaser, ...). The project page lists modules which are already available, some of which are pretty stable (nd) while others still need some love (ud and cd).

As you can see in the picture, we still have a lot of tasks we want to implement, but it's really keeping us focused and motivated :)