Durpal 5 or Drupal 6 for a new site?
greenbeans - April 26, 2008 - 23:11
I'm planning on setting up a new site for a client, and I'm unsure what version of Drupal to use. What I've seen from browsing here a bit is that the module ecosystem may not yet be mature enough for 6 to be viable, and that 7 is expected soon; on the other hand, I hate using an older version of software when there's something "new and improved" available. WOuld you recommend installing 6 and trying to make it do what I need, or installing 5 now and planning on upgrading directly to 7 when it's mature?
Thanks for the help!
(no title)
Drupal 7 is not around the corner. It will take 1.5 - 2 years until it is out and has all the important modules available.
Drupal 6 at this point lacks several important modules, so it may (or may not) fall short when there are many custom demands. Adding missing features by yourself may (or may not) restrict your upgrade path seriously. My guess is that Drupal 6 will be the first choice 2 months from now.
Drupal 5 is very mature and has a clear and easy upgrade path as long as you stick to modules which are active towards a 6 version or are so important that they will certainly have a 6 version soon. This would be my choice for a site with many custom demands, expecting to upgrade it in 15 minutes after 3 months (give or take one day for the theme...)
Thanks -- the approximate
Thanks -- the approximate timeframes are very useful to know. Is the upgrade really that smooth, including data migration and dealing with module upgrades and their data as well?
(I use Wordpress a lot (it's not appropriate for this project, though), and one of the things I like about it is that both the core and the plugins provide scripts that inform you when data migration or schema updates are necessary and then perform that migration automatically at the click of a button. I'm hoping Drupal will be able to fill a similar niche for me as a more capable but equally straightforward-to-maintain CMS.)
Not exactly at a click of a button
Not exactly at a click of a button.
In a major Drupal upgrade (such as 5->6) all the code (core, modules, themes, everything) is completely incompatible and must be replaced with a new installation of everything's version-6 counterpart. However, data migration of everything is guaranteed by running update.php.
On backwards compatibility: the drop is always moving
Converting 5.x modules to 6.x
Converting 5.x themes to 6.x
Sometimes an add-on module may be not so well tested and throw errors during the upgrade, so a test upgrade on a copy of the database is a good practice, so that a problem can be identified and solved.
Well, as long as installing
Well, as long as installing modules / themes doesn't involve editing the core source, replacing all the files is really not a big deal. In fact, I'd ideally prefer to be able to run updates straight from the repository with Subversion. Data migration definitely worries me, though.
Thanks for the links -- I'll check them out.
+1 for these comments I just
+1 for these comments
I just built a site on D6, core modules only, but for almost everything else I'm using D5 still, some pretty crucial modules still needed, and Views is beta, with CCK in alpha...
This is exactly the type of
This is exactly the type of topic I was looking for.
I have just spend 4 days customizing a site using drupal 6 only to find out I have to start again from scratch using drupal 5 because 2 essential modules havn't got any releases for v6 yet. Namely imagecache and imagefield. I desperately need these and now I just have to bin 4 days of work because of it.
I wish drupal would make things clearer on the download page. It is only logical that new users will use the newest release (ie v6) - it's a bit annoying that v7 is already advertised when it's still years away and v6 was only just released.
Lets confuse people even more. yay!
=(
So far I would say 90%+ of
So far I would say 90%+ of my users are still starting with or staying with 5.7 over 6.2
Steve
I am going with Drupal 6
I am going with Drupal 6 myself. Drupal 5 was a pain to configure without drag and drop and I didn't like the theming requirements. Drupal 6 was much easier to learn and understand. Granted it doesn't have all the modules yet but the key ones that I want to use are in a development state and I haven't had too many problems with them. This site is live during development but not heavily trafficked and not promoted yet. Having some people visit it gives me a change to get user feedback to help develop it better.
The only two modules that I want that aren't available for 6.2 yet are Panels and Organic Groups. And its going to be at least 4 months before I need the functionality.
If that works for you then
If that works for you then great, the only thing to watch out for is cutting yourself off from a upgrade path, if you use alpha or beta modules you may be left without any ability to actually upgrade them to release versions later on.
I prefer 5.7
I think Drupal 6 still needs many modules. Many of them are not even for 6 and some of them are not ready exactly for 6.2. If you can find the modules for 6 which you need for your site, you may prefer 6 immediately but I am regretful sometimes because I installed 6 so quick. Now I can't find some necessary modules for 6 and it makes me a bit suffer.
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