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This isn't the usual 'should I use D5 or D6 for xxxxx kind of website' question. What I'm really interested in is how D6 is doing seven months into its release compared with where D5 was at this point:
- Is there more or less uptake of 'D5 -> D6' than 'D4 -> D5'?
- Drupal absolutely *depends*, more than any other cms, on its modules - have thousands of people who contributed D5 modules thought 'ok, been there, done that, good experience, but now time to move onto something else', or are they generally still with Drupal? In short, is there relatively more or less effort in producing D6 modules at this point in time?
- Most people upgraded from win98 to Win2000. The few who landed themselves, through no fault of their own, with Win ME, were shafted by MS. Could the same be said for noobs whose initiation is D6? Are the majority of seasoned drupal users going to go from D5 -> D7? In short - is D6 a stop-gap, like Win ME was?
The reason for these three questions is because I've seen a change in drupal.org in the last three months. Instead of new forum posts asking how to use something, 90% of the posts are now module issues, yet many or most module maintainers seem to be involved with other projects or real-life™. Basically I'm very worried about the site I'm building for a school using D6 - nothing really works on it 100% and if it doesn't upgrade to D7 (like many D5 sites don't upgrade to D6), I don't want to be stuck with an 'Win ME' website. At the moment I feel like I wrongly gambled on D6.
Thanks for all opinions.
Comments
I am a learner. I started
I am a learner. I started out a new website using D6.4 (just to see the new version) but I found most of the modules I needed were still in D5 mode. As a noob, thats tough. I abandoned or cleared out the D6.4 and recreated everything in D5.8. I can say I found D5 easier since I was already used to it and cut my teeth in that.
I started building my site
I started building my site when D6 was released and just recently launched it totally, I never had an issue where there was a module I really wanted but it wasn't available in D6. I can understand your concern though, but there is nothing inherently bad about sticking with D5 unless Drupal stops supporting it and security issues are left unsolved.
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5.x to 6.x has been a lot rougher than 4.7 to 5.x was for a couple reasons.
1) There are heck of a lot more modules now. There's something like 4K modules for 5.x. I believe there was less than a thousand for 4.7. So the sheer number of modules needing to be updated is a lot higher.
2) Views and to some extent CCK have become dependencies for a lot of modules. Both of these modules underwent rewrites this cycle and are still, all these months later, shy of a real release. This caused a huge domino effect. Modules that depend on them needed to wait until there was a stable release to work with. Maintainers who's sites use CCK & views, which is most of them, didn't have a need to upgrade their modules because they weren't updating their sites while waiting on CCK & views. This is why Drupal 6 is struggling and this is an unusual situation. People new to Drupal don't realize that this isn't the norm.
Drupal 7 is a long way off. We're not even in code freeze, don't even have a code freeze date. Meanwhile the modules for 6.x are coming fast. CCK & views are usable and people are using them. Sites are being built on 6.x. People are submitting patches to get modules upgraded. Things are moving along. Slower than before, sure, but moving all the same.
6.x is a great core release and the contrib modules are catching up. It is not Win ME.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Thanks for the first few
Thanks for the first few enlightening answers.
All info and opinion is helpful.
> This is why Drupal 6 is struggling and this is an unusual situation.
> People new to Drupal don't realize that this isn't the norm
But would it also be fair to say, for noobs whose first experience of Drupal is D6,
that this *is* the normal experience for them? From my perspective it appears
Drupal surfed a big wave during D5, but has now somewhat 'wiped out'?
Isn't it the case that the sheer number of D5 modules which made Drupal famous
during that period has become unsustainable in the long term, because they are all
broken every one or two years by new core?
Look at the 'recent post' page - bug after bug, many of which go unanswered...
Three months ago the forum was full of 'how do I...', now it is full of 'X doesn't work'.
And especially worrying - 'X doesn't work with Y' or 'X has mysteriously stopped working'.
Cheers.
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I don't think so. Newcomers to Drupal that are using Drupal 6.x aren't comparing it to Drupal 5.x.
I don't think this is correct either. Contributed modules add to Drupals fame but IMO, aren't the "sole" contributor to that fame.
I disagree with both assertions here. The recent post page at any given time can show different percentages of issues/forum topics. Keep in mind as well that issues that have been marked as fixed and are closed by the drupalbot (lack of a better term) put them up the list of the recent posts page as well.
When major modules undergo complete rewrites it takes longer. If maintainers aren't interested in porting to the next verision of drupal because they are content running the previous version than you still have options which have been discussed in many many threads on the forum.
As Michelle has stated 5 - 6 was a unique experience and major module developers took the oppotunity to write more power into their modules. Views for example does so much more than it used to that it alone literally renders a few modules useless and there is no need to port those modules to Drupal 6.x. CCK can have the same type of impact with regards to modules that create their own content type.
Core breaks modules when API's change. The drupal philosophy is that it doesn't carry code baggage just to protect modules. Drupal core protects data which is the single most important asset to your site.
Image CCK field is still the main reason not to
We are still using D5, solely by the lack of a stable D6 version of a CCK image type. Views and CCK are fairly stable in D6, and most other requirements are meet by one module or another.
Without the image requirement, it is the better to choose D6 IMHO.
Upgrades for D5 to D7 directly will not be supported. You will have to upgrade to D6 first, then D7 anyway.
The biggest issue with D6 is the caching. Make sure that you have Devel installed to flush regularly while developing.
Alan Davison
www.caignwebs.com.au
Alan Davison
Thanks for all the answers
Thanks for all the answers so far.
It's nice to hear some confidence that D6 will become as major a version as D5 is!
> The biggest issue with D6 is the caching.
> Make sure that you have Devel installed to flush regularly while developing.
Could you elaborate on what the problems/symptoms are? I've got caching switched off - is that enough to avoid the issue you're referring to? I installed the devel module six months ago and it completely hosed my test site's DB within 15 minutes, so I don't particularly want to use it if I can avoid it.
It is more of a developing tool
Even with caching disabled, you still get some caching of variables and content. But if your not creating new themes, hooks, menu items via code, etc, you probably don't need it.
There are flush options in performance section of D6.
Alan Davison
www.caignwebs.com.au
Alan Davison
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imagefield module (image CCK field) works perfectly well in Drupal 6.x , it's even included in the acquia drupal release.
So 6.3 alpha 2 is stable! I
So 6.3 alpha 2 is stable! I will have to give it another try. I had tried 1.x, file image field and alpha 1 and had problems with them all. For the only D6 project that required this functionality, I ended up writing my own FAPI based upload field and completely removed CCK. The performance increase was nice, but it did require a significant amount of work doing everything via the FAPI, (about 110 fields and counting...)
I still would not recommend an alpha or even a beta version of any module to a non-programmer. Wikipedia sums it up nicely:
Alan Davison
www.caignwebs.com.au
Alan Davison
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The alpha 1 release stated on it's release page that it would break a site.
Typically I don't use alpha code for the reasons outlined in docs like wikipedia but in a few cases after extensive testing and study I will. Especially if the maintainer is active which dopry is.
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It really depends on the module. Alpha can also just mean it's not finished, yet, but each milestone is usable. That may not be the "official" definition, but it's used that way.
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
Imagefield upgrade path
Imagefield is ready if you create a D6 site from scratch. Unfortunately, there is no upgrade path for Imagefield from D5. This issue is holding me back from considering an upgrade. As for most other key modules I need, they are D6 ready.
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http://www.westki.info
http://www.vilniusblogs.com
I started with 6 and have
I started with 6 and have found it amazing. No issues yet. The enhancements in regard to theming and views are incredible from what I hear.
Also notable is the fact that I haven't had any modules that were 5.x only that I couldn't use. I use all kinds of modules, and everything I need is 6.x ready.