Newbie question: How serious are the differences between 4.7.6 and 5.1?
Hi all,
I have solid experience with Joomla, but there has been this nagging feeling of "Shouldn't I have taken Drupal as the basis of my site instead?". So, here I am, looking at Drupal. Help me :-) ...
The first thing which I notice, is that there are two lines of development: there's 4.7.6, and there's 5.1.
1) How "serious" are the differences? What does 5.1 have more to offer than 4.7.6?
2) I read that modules for 4.7.6 don't work with 5.1. Does this mean that the amount of extra modules for 5.1 is substantially smaller than for 4.7.6? Or can I safely assume that only some esoteric modules might not yet be there for 5.1, but that the bulk of mainstream extra modules is there for both?
3) Most fundamentally: if I am setting up a Drupal site Now, should I go for 4.7.6 or for 5.1??
I know these are extremely general questions, but all I'm looking for is actually a "gut feeling", not a technical essay.
And now let's see if it's true that the Drupal community is so much alive as it is said to be !!
Ludo
I am relatively new to
I am relatively new to Drupal ... I started with 4.7.3, upgraded to 4.7.4, shortly before 5.0 came out.
I decided move to 5.0 before all the modules I needed where upgraded. A few weeks down the road most are now there. I am dealing with several dozen modules, some just playing around with to find out what they can do or that I may need in future.
I think u need to take a look at the modules under 5.0 to see if all you need are there, which is very much likely.
Drupal 5.x is much better & easier to use in many ways, so I'd personally suggest it is the much better option...
But, ... some real experts on this may see things differently ...
the drop never stops
Go for 5. The changes in structure make it more modular, more customizable, and more hackable than previous versions. This may not concern you if you don't hack PHP, but another good reason for using 5.X is that the admin interface has changed a lot and in 5.X it is MUCH more user friendly. Coming from Joomla, you should appreciate that. Regarding modules, yes, currently there are more modules for 4.7 than 5.X, but that is changing almost every day and the newer modules are better because they use the infrastructure of the new core code.
But the biggest reason to step up --> The Drop Never Stops!
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Interactive Worlds and Immersive Obsessions
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Drupal 5.1 is vastly superior to Drupal 4.7.x
There is no question; go for Drupal 5. At this point, virtually none of the useful modules haven't been ported to Drupal 5, and Drupal 5 has modules that Drupal 4 never will have. While you're evaluating, here is a medium list of "must have" and "nice to have" modules for you to try:
- Robert Douglass
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Lullabot | My Drupal book | My Digg RSS feed
Zen theme
A good theme to start with is the zen theme: http://drupal.org/project/zen
There is a lot of documentation on theming in its template.php file that you should read if you want to be a theming master.
- Robert Douglass
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Lullabot | My Drupal book | My Digg RSS feed
I would go for 5.1
I would go for 5.1
When I started to look at CMS systems I also went for Joomla over Drupal mainly as I found the Admin section to be better layed out in Joomla. However as soon as I saw 5.1 I decided to change to Drupal, partly down to the admin side but largely due to the module system. The Drupal community seem to build on each others modules, the 'lego' approach where as Joomla has the feeling of everyone doing their own thing, at least that was my perception.