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I have noticed that you have removed Drupal 5.7 from the frontpage of drupal.org, understandable, but are you really sure that Drupal 6 is mature as a platform to push Drupal 5.7 into the darkness ?
For example, there are a VERY weak non-core module support for Drupal 6 right now, there are no Views, CCK (both of them are including a lot of submodules too) and no Singlesignon and Servicelinks, I can make a long list but Views and CCK is the most problematic thing. Without them there are no good solid platform right now for Drupal 6, too many websites and too many solutions demands them and to not make people code "alternative" ways they should get encourage to use Drupal 5.7 until Drupal 6 is fully grown up with Views and CCK.
That is my personal reflections only, hopefully someone else can agree with that too.
Sincerely
Roberth Andersson
Comments
It's true that views & cck
It's true that views & cck are very important modules which should be released at the same time. The other modules don't seem to me very important. ;)
no WYSIWYG module support (yet)
Drupal 6 looks great, but there are still a few key contrib modules that are not ready yet. I guess it depends on what you want to do, and which extra modules you want to use.
I always use the TinyMCE module (and a few others), so until they are ready I'll keep using 5.7
If you are in a rush to use Drupal 6 and want to use contrib modules that aren't ready, the best thing to do is help with upgrading the modules.
--
Ross Kendall
UK based Web and IT consultant specialising in Free and Open Source Software technologies.
http://rosskendall.com
WYSIWYG
There is a pretty good WYSIWYG editor for Drupal 6 and that is FCKEditor, works fine so far for me with some minor tweaking.
Not always so easy to aid in module development, many projects seems to be almost dead and many have a one-person control and this person is slow, but of course I understand that many do this on their spare time and I appreciate anyone that is developing for free, great people.
Sincerely
Roberth
Administrator/Developer @ Jump-Gate and Webworqs, Inc
Personal page: http://www.roberth.se and Jump-Gate Projects site: http://www.jump-gate.com
I second that opinion
I second that opinion. Drupal 5 should remain on the top of the heap until such time as Drupal 6 is really ready to fill 5.7's shoes.
I've tried 6 and though it has a great many core features that are significant upgrades over 5.7, the lack of contributed modules and themes currently makes it a poor substitute for 5.7.
By promoting 6 over 5 too soon, many people may see lack of features as a good reason not to use Drupal at all. Of course, I may be wrong about that...
Derek
Re: I second that opinion
You aren't. Just this morning, I had to point this out to someone who was trying out Drupal, Joomla and some other CMSs...
Lets hope that the site
Lets hope that the site admins and Drupal big whigs see the potential hazard of moving too fast!
For instance, if Drupal developers are forced, as a result of over promotion of 6, to crank out their contrib modules and themes ASAP, then it is reasonable to assume that a greater degree of bugs will crop up. This puts developers and consumers into a bad situation where neither group is content with the situation. For developers it means that they may stop supporting so many modules or themes and for consumers it means that Joomla looks pretty sweet.
This in turn makes Drupal developers even more angry since there are less people to do contract work for.
In the end, developers (myself included) rely on the Drupal admins to go at a reasonable pace. This ensures high quality code and customer satisfaction.
As a thought experiment: What would happen if the Drupal admins came out with a new Drupal every 2 months and dropped support for the one before it after 2 weeks?
Seems to me that pretty soon most Drupal versions would have few (if any) contrib modules and themes and as a result of the breakneck speed of development, the core code itself would be buggy and fairly useless...
If you go too fast, accidents are more likely. This applies to driving as well as coding...
ALMOST.
I agree... Views and CCK especially, make it impossible for me to upgrade to drupal 6.0 at this stage and I feel like Im missing out.
The setup looks awesome, but without those key modules, Im left behind...
Where do we check the process on these modules for 6.0?
JD
5.7 all the way for now,, no
5.7 all the way for now,, no way I'm giving up some of the modules to upgrade now, I figure D6 is still just for people wanting to develop and contribute to the drupal project which is great, but for a functional site I don't see the point in switching and losing some important mods.
i'm sure we've all realized
i'm sure we've all realized by now that 5.7 is back on the front page.
i have noticed that views and cck are both moving on to new version models instead of just porting the code to 6.0 like most modules that are up right now have done. so i think the theory that they're rushing and releasing half broken modules can be snuffed. if theres anything i've noticed about drupal its that people really care about releasing a great product.
Yeah Drupal is by far the
Yeah Drupal is by far the best open source CMS, and for all I know the best CMS overall as I've never used a CMS that costs money. I think we all greatly appreciate the Drupal 6 release even if we aren't using it and appreciate everyone's efforts as we all will be using 6 at some point in time.
Best?
Drupal is good, but have a lot of big weaknesses also, I has been developing CMS systems for many governments and companies so I have my experience of my own work in commercial perspective and open-source, though I am not expert in open-source but more in commercial development.
I think what makes Drupal most weak is that they do not develop some core modules enough much, and that still when a lot of users demands/wishes that. Examples are forum, blog, blog api, ping and more, those should get released already in a Drupal 6.1 from the core into own projects to get their own life cycles and therefor help the progress, I bet groups like DrupBB would be very happy for example.
Sincerely
Roberth
Administrator/Developer @ Jump-Gate and Webworqs, Inc
Personal page: http://www.roberth.se and Jump-Gate Projects site: http://www.jump-gate.com
...
You may want to spend a little more time getting familiar with various ongoing development efforts for Drupal 7 regarding much of core and the develoment cycle in general.
Drupal 6.x is API frozen. No changes to the 6.x versions that will effect the feature set or api will happen. Any feature set changes will be happening in Drupal 7. Drupal 6 had several hundred contributors. Core modules do not need to be removed from core to receive peoples attention, people merely have to actually contribute code per the coding standards in the handbooks.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
D7
Thats true, I could do that, but to what point ? I develop and use Drupal now and can't plan ahead 1-2 years in time, add also 6 month on that time for the 3rd party modules to upgrade to D7 after the final release.
To make some things to develop more rapidly it would be easier to free them from the core like ping, forum, blog, blog api which never has got much of progress in the development, just small enhancements, but the years is passing and people needs the features. So if they are getting their own lifecycles it will make it also more easy to develop the core of Drupal in the future.
Right now people are often frustrated that they are forced to not use forum module as example and instead have to use bridge modules for smf and phpbb. It that is not good, double user databases, double layout theme management and less interactions while a good forum module as example could make people more satisfied from start with Drupal. And because the core developers doesn't wanna put much of efforts into the forum module development it would be better to give the community a bigger chance to develop it.
But that is only my own personal opinions.
Administrator/Developer @ Jump-Gate and Webworqs, Inc
Personal page: http://www.roberth.se and Jump-Gate Projects site: http://www.jump-gate.com
...
Perhaps I wasn't clear. There is no such thing as a core developer. Several hundred people supplied patches and improvements to Drupal core this last release cycle. Anyone can submit a patch against core modules. You say you can't plan that far in advanced yet you seem to have a wish list that you want other people to solve for you.
That said, Drupal core is designed to be extensible.
As to forums, no one is forced to use bridge modules and frankly if they want to complain that something free is not 'good enough' yet do nothing to help improve it, then they are perfectly free to use or invest their time in bridge modules. Already there are a number of modules that people can add to core forums. It can be themed. It can be extended. This is by design. There is someone working on an advanced forum module. It extends the core forums. It is a contributed modules. Features that work well and things that prove to be difficult will be able to be modified and added to future versions of Drupal. This is a normal thing. This is scratching your own itch in Open Source terms and also something to be encouraged.
There have been several such contributed modules that have been experimented with over time and then had the main elements moved into core with the next release. CCK is one obvious recent example. You do not have to remove things from core to have people work on them. In fact, past experience has shown that once something is removed from core, very little if any work is actually done with them.
If you do not like the core ping module, then write a different one or write one that extends that core featureset for contrib. If that works better, then features that prove worthy and desirable could be moved into core. That is the development cycle I am encouraging you to get involved with.
If someone doesn't step up to do the work then nothing will happen. There is no tiered team of identified people actually tasked with dedicated work on a given feature. There are merely people working on solving things they want to. If a modules lack of functionality or feature set doesn't suit you, then please do step up and get involved in making change happen. All that happens when people complain and say they can't contribute is long threads where people try and explain how open source works.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Well, I can't upgrade my 5.X either..
I have a long list of modules that are not supported to Drupal's 6 version.
i am guessing
drupal 6 is still something to play with, although it makes you feel like you are missing out.
As much as I enjoyed using
As much as I enjoyed using Drupal 6 and it has a lot of things I want for my sites it's CCK and Views that holds me back from using it in a production site. I'm sure I'm not one of the only ones who is in this boat. I also agree with the above poster about maturing core modules especially the forum module. I do think in 6 the ability to select the threading type per node type is a step in the right direction.
drooooooolpal. ggghhhherg
drupal rocks. :) sorry. bit in love at the moment.
Drupal rocks but v6(.1)
Drupal rocks but v6(.1) doesn't. Yet. Lack of modules forced me to go back to 5.7
Took me a full day of messing around but everything is working again.
Question now is when will all major add-on's be converted?
In the mean time, keep up the good work!
hehehe
When people make and test patches! (You're question was probably rhetorical!)
~silverwing - drupal 5 for me!
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MisguidedThoughts | showcaseCMS
don't you think that by the
don't you think that by the time all the modules people want are converted to 6, then 7 will be stable & this whole thing will start again ?
I like 5.7 for certain modules needed on a site that has a few users, but prefer 6 on my own site that doesn't have any users.
You're right
The circle is round and we will be there again ;)
For example, they just released Views 2 alpha 4 to Drupal 6, they expect one more alpha (which never works good) and then release a beta (those usually works pretty ok but can contain some nasty bugs too), when Views 2 which shall be considered the most important module today (CCK can't get released for D6 before Views 2 is released, a dependency) is released as stable release I suspect we are in atleast June or July. And I bet the new Drupal 7 gets released only a half year after that.
So what is the point to release anything for Drupal 6 at this short release cycle with slow module developmet ? Better to go for Drupal 7 and accept it that Drupal 6 was a middle version.
/Roberth
Administrator/Developer @ Jump-Gate and Webworqs, Inc
Personal page: http://www.roberth.se and Jump-Gate Projects site: http://www.jump-gate.com
To some extent
There is always a bit of a catch up with contrib when a new Drupal version is released but it's not normally this bad. You have to remember that both views and CCK took this opportunity to undergo complete rewrites. Since so many contribs depend on them, the whole thing was thrown a bit off kilter. Since this won't be happening with Drupal 7, the lag time won't be as bad.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
As a newbie here in this
As a newbie here in this community, I've experienced downloading 6 (as the latest release) and then finding very little support for the modules/themes that I want to try out. I understand this is all open-source, so I'm not really upset. It's not like your paying for this and paying for certain features. You are getting features at the goodwill of the community. Everyone should think twice before feeling betrayed, slighted, or demanding complete satisfaction.
Besides, if you want a module/theme for 6 that is not available, why not volunteer to help out the developer? I'm sure there are some simple tasks that they could hand out to even the least technical persons in the community.
Having said all this, I don't it is a good idea to *highlight the latest release version* until there is at least 80% of module/theme support for it. I'm really into the 80/20 thing. Seems like a good rule of thumb and for those new to Drupal they would have the option of upgrading instead of downgrading.
If you understand, things are just as they are. If you do not understand, things are just as they are. ~ Zen Proverb