By TWD on

I have a fairly big project coming up soon.

I also have a bit of experience with Drupal now, but only the Drupal 6 version.

Now that Drupal 7 has been out for a while, do you think
the time is right to choose D7 ahead of D6 from the get go?

Cons are that all the contrib modules that I know and love may not
have been ported completely bug free to D7 yet.

Pros are that sooner or later an upgrade is going to be inevitable
given the Drupal Powers That Be policy of only supporting the current + one previous
version. And according to this post by Dries Buytaert, D8 may not be that far
off on the horizon.
http://buytaert.net/8-steps-for-drupal-8

So any thoughts?

Comments

mradcliffe’s picture

mradcliffe
he/him
Primary language English
commented

It depends on the project. Early adopters are usually those who can code or deal with issues that crop up with beta or release candidate versions.

TWD’s picture

TWD commented

Sounds like even some Drupal Pros are pulling
their hair out at D6 to D7 migration.
e.g.
http://tinyurl.com/3dy9sbw
Which makes me think starting off in D7 might
be wiser.

ryivhnn’s picture

ryivhnn commented

Work out as much as you can on what your big project needs and then see what modules you would and could use to make it work. The people I'm working with at the moment on a decent sized project, we thought we were going to go with D6 because it was old and stable and had fifty bazillion modules to do whatever, but after a while decided that the improved admin interface, theme layer, database thingies (I don't know a lot about the database side :)) and the fact that we're doing a fair whack of custom coding which could make upgrading an extremely painful prospect (least of which because we'd have to re-code a lot of it to work with D7 as a lot of the theming stuff has changed between 6 and 7, I'm guessing it may be similar case with modules) made D7 the better option.

works at bekandloz | plays at technonaturalist

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

The upgrade process is definitely problematic. See http://www.lullabot.com/articles/tales-d7-front for some good info.

juan_g’s picture

juan_g commented

A lot of functionality (most of CCK, etc.) has been added to D7 core, therefore being available out of the box, and many important modules (such as Views) are already usable. Also, configuring our own content types, etc., we don't need so many modules.

So, in most cases, it seems now is a good time to start a new D7 site, maybe gradually adding less used functionality when available, unless we need a very complex site immediately.

On the other hand, for most existing D6 sites, it seems better to wait until next year or so for the upgrade to D7, unless it's not a complex site and all our essential modules are ready for D7.