Civilities.net has been upgraded to the latest version of Drupal, 4.6.3. It’s been three long months since I connected with the Drupal and Bryght communities at the Open Source Convention in Portland, and I feel like I’d let the group down. Part of the recent motivation was an exchange with Lisa Williams on UniversalHub about the current state of "community journalism," following my Still Too Static article. Lisa runs a "hyperlocal" community site H2Otown for Watertown, Mass. and felt that the site would greatly benefit from the webzine module.

The upgrade is not fully complete, as I need to finish testing the viewpoints/comments facility. So for the next few days, comments will not be available (users post comments once every few months or so). Certainly it’s absolutely crucial for most community to have comments with their content. My new correspondent Tish Grier in Chicopee, Mass., has started looking into the setup of the Springfield Republican newspaper’s website, particularly why as an Advance.Net site it’s own blogs do not have comments. I’m very interested to learn what she’ll find, which will be useful for some big pieces I’m working on.