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Should We Wait for Drupal 7?

Wed, 02/12/2009 - 14:53 — derrynairn

I work for a small, independent publishing company. We have a cranky old .NET site which we want to switch to shining, valiant, generally lovely Drupal. I had planned a medium-sized build and migration project to kick-off in January, with completion in the spring.

My question is this: should we hang around for Drupal 7.x to come out? Is there any way of predicting when this will be? If we do go with 6.x, and given the changes to core, will it be complex to upgrade in the future?

Also, why oh why is there not yet a simple preview of 7.x written, something that explains the key differences in layman's terms?

Any advice much appreciated. Thanks

 

 

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Fri, 04/12/2009 - 17:34 — websesame
websesame's picture

Why wait ? When  D7 is

Why wait ? When  D7 is released early next year , it may take as long as another year to have a good set of modules to use with it, depending on the complexity of your application - unless you are able to pay for the modules you want to be developed. Lots of people are still satisfied with their D5 sites anyway .

Fri, 04/12/2009 - 22:59 — johnw
johnw's picture

Jumping in your time machine

Jumping in your time machine and asking that question back when D6 was imminent, then rolling forward and watching the months of waiting before key modules became available, you might be rather wary.  Seems like it was so bad that there's been an effort to swing the pendulum the other way, getting module authors to commit to releasing D7-ready modules at the same time as core.

And getting the really key modules, like CCK and Views, into core is another positive step.  Still, unless you have a fall-back strategy, I'd be inclined to develop for D7 but not decide about going live until a month or two after release.

Sun, 06/12/2009 - 22:40 — gpk

>hang around for Drupal 7.x

>hang around for Drupal 7.x to come out? Is there any way of predicting when this will be?
I'd say there will probably be the first alpha release before Xmas. But then expect a few more alphas, and also betas ... I'd guess Feb - Mar for 7.0 release. But unless you are talking about a small site with few contrib modules I'd then not want to use it on a live site for another few months to be sure of stability etc.

Bear in mind that these days a large proportion of building a Drupal site is choosing, installing and configuring contributed modules. As mentioned, although many have pledged to release a 7.x version on the same day as 7.0 core, there may be some you need that will take some months more for someone to get round to doing the update. (You can help by using projects like Coder/Code Upgrade.)

If you will be doing a lot of custom module development then that might push you towards D7. The DB API is all new, but actually many areas are completely unchanged.

>If we do go with 6.x, and given the changes to core, will it be complex to upgrade in the future?
Core usually upgrades pretty smoothly, again the problems tend to arise with flaky contrib modules. Obviously it also depends a bit how many contrib modules you are using. D7 also has built-in updating/upgrading functionality you might want to look at. http://3281d.com/2009/11/03/d7-update-manager. Whether it helps with D6 -> D7 updates tho' I don't know.

I'd suggest leaving the final decision as late as possible. There's plenty you can do now - sorting out what contrib modules you will need, understanding what you will need to code yourself, prototyping some stuff in D6 etc.

>Also, why oh why is there not yet a simple preview of 7.x written, something that explains the key differences in layman's terms?
Good point. Fancy doing some research and writing one? Or opening an issue for such a page to be created? http://drupal.org/node/add/project-issue/documentation

Off the top of my head the main changes in D7 are the new DB layer (but bear in mind that you might not notice this even if you are doing your own module development since unless you are adding your own tables to the database you will use higher-level API functions), built-in test system, revamped UI, "fields in core" (i.e. most of CCK), various improvements to benefit large, enterprise-type sites, built-in image handling (at last), better support for WYSIWYG ... see http://www.archive.org/details/TheStateofDrupal for more. But if there's nothing you absolutely need then go with D6. It's a fine system.