By tsservo on

I have a client that I'll be building a relatively simple, low traffic, site for. It should essentially be an out of the box install with a new theme and a handful of modules to handle a calendar, an image gallery, and ultimately an online store. There will likely be multiple blogs and password protected content as well. Oh, eventually they would like the site in two languages - English and Japanese.

Currently I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and build on 5.5 as all the modules I need are available, or if it would be better to wait for 6.0 and hope the modules I need get updated quickly? Stalling the client by telling them there's a good reason to wait for the new version would not be too much of a problem - but I do need to tell them what I'm waiting for.

I've read through the Drupal 6 beta 1 release notes to see what's new in 6.0 but I can't really tell if there's a killer feature in there for me to wait for in my situation.

Can anyone help me out and let me know if I should wait or just go with 5.5 and ultimately upgrade? If I should wait, what is the feature that I need in my situation?

Thanks much.

Tim

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x, Drupal 6.x

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

Use D5 ...... D6 is still 11 critical issues away from being finished and there aren't many modules updated for it yet.

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keith.smith’s picture

keith.smith commented

The internationalization and localization features in Drupal 6 are "killer", especially if you intend to have a multilingual site.

That said, though, it may be some time before Drupal 6 is released (though it is getting closer every day), and all of the modules you need are successfully ported (though everyone is working hard toward that goal). This page has some information about the status of various contributed modules.

Check out the Drupal 6 criticals queue if you want to help review patches and speed up Drupal 6's release.

--keith

dinis’s picture

dinis commented

Personally, I tend to be about 12 months behind the latest version. We only updated to 5.5 a few weeks ago and I'm looking at moving to 6 in around 12 to 18 months, depending on module stability and availability etc.

That said, if 6.x offers most of what you need out-of-the-box and the extra modules are in development then it may be worth waiting a month or two for the release version; it really depends on how long you can wait and how sure you are the required mods are going to be released.

matt_harrold’s picture

matt_harrold commented

I just built a test site with D6, and I'm really looking forward to it's REAL release .. but D5.5 is installed and working on a lot of live sites, and hasn't been a problem. so I'd have to suggest jumping right in, and not waiting for D6.

It is easier to upgrade than backport, so any custom code you make for D5.5 will be easier to upgrade to D6 than the other direction if things don't work out for D6 in the short term.

Nothing to do with Drupal is wasted time, just unscheduled "R & D" when you hit a snag. I've found D6 to be quite stable, but there are few modules around to support it, and you might be waiting for months for them to appear. D5.5 however, has a wealth of modules, some of which are close to rock solid.