By revtim on

I am looking to upgrade my sites from Wordpress to Drupal. I am a journalist who builds his own sites and not a professional web developer so there is a bit of a learning curve.

I have installed Drupal 7 on my site but just found out about Fusion and Skinr theme platforms and the amazing things it can do with configuring how blocks and nodes appear on the site and would like to take advantage of it. The problem is, skinr is not stable for Drupal 7 yet so it's recommended not to use it for an active site. This brings me to my dilemma. Do I install Drupal 6 and go with the Fusion/skinr based theme now and deal with the upgrade to version 7 when the project has a stable version or should I install a different theme now in Drupal 7, avoid the challenge of upgrading the site to version 7 shortly, then switch over to the Fusion based theme when the project is ready to use? It looks to me like the upgrade from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 is not a walk in the park like wordpress upgrades are but I have no way of knowing how much trouble a version upgrade is. Any input you could provide would be helpful.

Thank

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

lofulk’s picture

lofulk commented

My professor taught us Drupal 6 this semester because drupal 7 is a recent release there are not as many modules out and de-bugged. I have only used drupal 6. I do know that the senior class presented their "innovative" projects for a company that wanted to use drupal 7, and there was a lot of limitations on the modules they were able to use. So in the end they switched back to 6. I would say maybe use 6, and by the time you feel comfortable with the use 7 will be ready and raring for you to create!

zazinteractive’s picture

zazinteractive commented

What kind of class is this?

lofulk’s picture

lofulk commented

Technology in business class.

whitefluffy’s picture

whitefluffy commented

There are several other themes avalible for Drupal 7 who are just as flexible as Fusion and Skinr. One example is NineSixty, with which I'm currently working with. If Drupal 7 is right for you or not really depends on what kind of site you are building. Sure, there are a lot of stuff that is not stable for Drupal 7 yet, but a wide range of sites would benefit from what Drupal 7 offers. Especially if you are not too familiar with Drupal at all, Drupal 7 is very flexible and user friendly right out of the box. The most important modules (e.g views) are avalible and stable for Drupal 7 (even if Views is still in beta, it works fine).

May I ask what kind of site you are building?

jscoble’s picture

jscoble commented

While Drupal 7 is nice, it is a new release and there may be modules you need for certain functionalities that either haven't been ported to D7 or is not stable yet. In addition, there are bugs within D7.

I'd make a list of needed functionality and then check to see if if that can be accomplished in D7. If everything you need is available in D7, then it may be appropriate for you. Over time, there will be more modules ported to D7 and greater stability within already ported modules.

juan_g’s picture

juan_g commented

Currently, there are 5624 D6 and 1558 D7 modules, and increasing. So, if 1558 modules with a D7 version are enough for you...

Also, the functionality of many useful D6 modules have been incorporated into D7 core, so that's available immediately, out of the box.

And about themes, they can be easily enabled/disabled. So, a possibility is to use a theme provisionally, and change to another one when available.

eileen’s picture

eileen commented

I started in the middle of April with a fresh install. My site is no where near live.

It's been extremely frustrating to work with Drupal 7, much to my dismay. I've hit wall after wall trying to debug, add modules and/or functionality beyond the core, and customize a theme. D7 is running painfully slow, and I spent four whole days trying to figure out why, but never could. My average page load is about 40 seconds!

I really want to use Drupal 7 because I don't want to upgrade in a few years when D6 becomes unstable, but if I can't build the website I need with D7, I have to regress. I feel like I've wasted six weeks of my life trying to bang the proverbial square peg into a round hole. As much as I love open source, there is something to be said for paid support. If you need help (and everybody does) there just aren't enough people prepared and/or willing to answer questions about D7. If you search the forums, you'll see thread after thread with unanswered questions to critical problems. It's a bummer, especially if you've got a client waiting.

Sadly, I'd say install D6 now to avoid what I've been going through. Good luck.

Heine’s picture

Heine commented

You can still get paid support for Drupal via several avenues. http://drupal.org/paid-services is one of them.

eileen’s picture

eileen commented

That's good to know. With all the searching and Googling I've done, I never stumbled on that page.

I still think there's a real value in having actual employed support techs to monitor the forums and ensure all questions at least get acknowledged. It seems to me this service alone; one or two Drupal employees, supported by the association, would be really great for Drupal and the community.

If somebody gets a "fatal error" after creating a view or some other persistent error message, should they really need to hire somebody to answer the question "why?" or "can anybody help?" or "did I do something wrong?". As the forums are now, questions can get answered in ten minutes, two days, or....never.

Has Drupal ever explored a business model where the code is still open and free, but users can buy a basic support service? Say, $50 or $100 a year? That could provide salaries for support techs and frankly, I think it would improve Drupal's usability if core developers spent more time working with end-users.

juan_g’s picture

juan_g commented

eileen wrote:

D7 is running painfully slow, and I spent four whole days trying to figure out why, but never could. My average page load is about 40 seconds!

Solutions: Drupal caching, speed and performance

add modules and/or functionality beyond the core

Using custom fields (most of the old D6 CCK module is in D7 core now), and Views (the most popular module, for a reason), you don't need so many modules to add functionality.

and customize a theme

Possibilities for theme/design: Theming options: beginner, intermediate, advanced

eileen’s picture

eileen commented

I've read nearly all those threads, some of them repeatedly, about performance and tried all the solutions. Nothing has helped. It's a deal breaker.

Heine’s picture

Heine commented

Solutions are the last step when encountering performance issues. Analysis and measuring have to be done first.

At first impression sounds like you are hit by #1082892: Drupal 7 speed issue: file_scan_directory called > 1000 times per page load.

You can also hop on #drupal or #drupal-support on irc.freenode.net to try a little Q&A .

eileen’s picture

eileen commented

None of the multiple fixes I've tried (nearly all are linked in the thread you mentioned) have made even a millisecond of a difference. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I appreciate it.

juan_g’s picture

juan_g commented

The most simple, maybe provisional solution, would be to install the Boost module (D7 dev version now, but working) for a fast cache, and to get a VPS or server with more RAM. D7 needs more RAM than D6.

For more advanced solutions, query debugging, etc., you can ask at the High performance group.

eileen’s picture

eileen commented

However, my site hasn't ever been live (yet) so, heavy traffic from anonymous visitors isn't my problem.

eileen’s picture

eileen commented

I started this Drupal 7 project in the middle of March. March 17, to be exact, the day I bought hosting.

zazinteractive’s picture

zazinteractive commented

I would stick with D6 for now

sparkweb’s picture

sparkweb commented

I came to this thread looking to answer the same question. after much review of this thread and other information, we've decided not to upgrade to d& just yet, but I'm running an existing site with a lot of modules that aren't yet ported to D7.

If you have an existing site and you're asking this question, you need to figure out how much of your existing configuration can be moved to d7. That can be a lot of work to figure out, but this module can help:

http://drupal.org/project/upgrade_status

If you're just starting out, it might be advantageous to start with D7 if your site doesn't need a lot of functionality that requires modules that aren't ported to D7 just. That means you need to have a pretty clear outline and site plan so you know what modules to search for and decide whether or not D7 will work.

However, if you don't know much about Drupal yet and the gazillions of modules or even how Drupal provides certain functionality, then it's a major learning curve only experience with the system will provide, and or LOTS of research hours!

ALL that said, I was wondering: why is there work on a D8 when D7 doesn't even seem to be out of the hangar yet, and d^ is the most actively developed among independent developers making modules etc??

:-)

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Core and contrib are completely different animals-- d7 core is done and in maintenance mode. That's when the next dev branch, d8 in this case, of core opens up. Core developers are not simply going to start randomly working on various contribs-- so there's no reason to hold up the next core dev branch waiting for contrib to catch up.

Dementor’s picture

Dementor commented

I run a phpbb3 forum based site for our gaming clan and really liked the looks of the Drupal when reading features etc. Sadly as you can see I found this post as I was wondering if I was the only one that has been trying to solve these constant nagging issues as well. I know I am a rookie when it comes to site building but this is making phpbb3 look like gravy.
I am going to give D6 a try and see if things go better with a version that has had time for everything to mature. D7 gave me the impression it was almost an adult but still acted like a typical 16 or 17 yr old. :)

DaveSmall’s picture

DaveSmall commented

If you just start learning Drupal, then Drupal 7 is really recommended, especially right now, most of the effort of this community are put on this version.

ryo231’s picture

ryo231 commented

it's true ....

Drupal 7 provides a simple browser only method for installing and updating modules and themes. While this might seem like a no-brainer improvement, there were some significant technical hurdles the team had to overcome to make this happen in a secure way.