By wibe on

I am new to the community and have spent the last few weeks exploring Drupal and have decided to build my site on top of it. I am considering using D6, but will need several contrib modules, the usual suspects like Views, CCK, Panels, Meta Tags, ... and also Zen as the starter theme.

For most of these modules dev/alpha/beta/rc versions are available. Would you recommend for someone completely new to Drupal to start a site based on D6 yet? I realize the importance of contributing to the community by working with dev/alpha/beta/rc versions, reporting bugs etc. but this may not be appropriate for newcomers still struggling to understand the Drupal approach. I would rather not use 5.x, only to have to upgrade in a year or so.

My gut feeling tells me to avoid dev/alpha/beta versions, but go ahead with rc-versions. Also, it seems Drupal 6.3 will have some fixes that Views needs. Does anyone have good "guesstimates" as to when these might come out?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

mrbert’s picture

mrbert commented

if you're good in PHP , then you can port/help with those modules while are not yet full implemented in v6. If you're not then v5 would be your best bet, cos it's also stable and regularly updated.

Ghana Real Estate | Voacanga Africana Seeds | http://www.voacanga-africana.com.gh/sheabutter/">Shea Butter

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

If your site needs to be live within the next month then it's a safer bet to go with Drupal 5. If you have more time then I think you could start developing with Drupal 6 and the module development will catch up to you. I can tell you that the update notifications in Drupal 6 are a godsend for site administrators. So if you start off with a dev version of a module you should be notified in your admin panel as soon as a new version is uploaded to Drupal.org.

Rob Safuto
Learn By The Drop is a place to learn Drupal. If you're new to Drupal I recommend having a look at my Beginner's Guide To Drupal.

-Anti-’s picture

-Anti- commented

I'd echo awakenedvoice's advice. I'm building a site for September using D6, gambling that the
main modules will be stable by then. I've not had any issues with beta versions yet, although
I've only just started developing the site so there's still time for things to go horribly wrong.

If using D6 I'd just try to:
- have a flexible, open ended 'going live' date, preferably not for a paying client.
- avoid alpha versions where possible (you probably can't avoid using betas).
- try to use only the popular 'standard' modules, and not make them do anything too unusual.
- use only modules which have had recent commits and replies to the support requests.

I can't comment on the module upgrade path from D5 to D6 from personal experience, but there
are quite a few posts in the forums suggesting that it may not be easy to replicate a D5 set-up
using D6 modules. So bear that in mind - if you start with D5, the option to upgrade might be
more painful than you'd expect.

wibe’s picture

wibe commented

Thanks all, that's great advice. I have some flexibility, so I really would like to avoid Drupal 5 and, as suggested, have the D6 modules catch up as I build the site. However, I need Views, CCK, and, to a lesser degree, Panels, to start. I've been following the issue queues for these and have a vague idea what to expect. Is there a place one could check to find out what the state of Drupal 6.3 development is? Thanks!