It is that time of the year again! After predictions for 2004 and 2005, we continue this tradition about what Drupal will do in 2006.

Looking back to the predictions for 2005, it seems that some predictions were far from right, if serious at all. Some posters, however, turned out to be true fortune tellers...

Review

  • Dries: "People will be surprised by the lack of progress in 2005". And right he was.
  • Dries: "People won't understand [the lack of a long-term vision] and it will trigger them to create their own Drupal distributions and forks.". Some people didn't understand this indeed, but I dont think there was a new fork in 2005, was there?
  • Silverwing: "There will be a focus/beginning development of Drupal to be used in school settings". He turned out to be right.
  • Judah: "[Users] will request easier installation for plugins and online theme editing. Drupal developers will focus on this at the end of 2005". Well, the focus on easier installations is there; however, this has not resulted yet in a working installer -- but work is underway.
  • Bèr: "Drupal.org will become a legal entity, and donations will allow core maintainers to communicate, develop and promote in a much more efficient way." As was the case in 2004, there has been lots of talk on this issue. However, with the Mambo/Joomla controversy still fresh in our memory, it is more important to set up a foundation in a right way than to set up a foundation.
  • Steven was right when he predicted “that 2005 will see the inclusion of Javascript in Drupal core." With AJAX in 4.7 core, he turned out be a true fortune teller. Though, the duvel is still in the box.

Other predictions that hit the spot:

  • "Drupal will be slashdotted at least 3 times in 2005." Well, that was easily done.
  • "Once a major flaw in the code will make all drupal sites vulnerable to a nasty "own3d" posting on all listed drupal sites. A fix has been made available within 2 hours yet doesnt make it to the frontpage and hence many blog sites will run some other than intended content”. That one didn't happen the way I described it but too many sites got hacked by the XML-RPC exploit. It also shows that no matter how fast we create a fix, it's irrelevant if our users are unwilling, or simply don't know, to install it.
  • "Someone will write a book about Drupal" Indeed, some books were published.

And no, Drupal did not become a reality TV show.

Retrospective

All our fortune tellers missed the biggest thing that happened to Drupal: the downtime of Drupal.org, the very successful fundraising and the resulting new infrastructure hosted at the Open Source Lab.

In fact, 2005 was a rather smashing year, with lots of new code, contributors and users. Quick highlights include:

And certainly Dries and Karlijn will remember 2005 as the year of their engagement.

Predictions

So, now that we've refreshed your memory, it's time for you to polish up your crystal ball and share your insights for the future! What do you think 2006 will bring us? And no, suggesting that Buytaert.net will switch to Drupal does not count.

Comments

robertDouglass’s picture

My prediction concerns two organisations that push Drupal harder than any other; Bryght and CivicSpaceLabs. Both have their own "brand" of Drupal, be it as managed hosting or as a distribution, and both contribute massive amounts of code, mindshare, leadership and attention to our project. Both are underrated.

Bryght is underrated because people underestimate how beautiful life can be when someone else takes care of servers, upgrades, security and installation. Relatively few people recognize the business opportunity that arises for anyone who signs up for a Bryght reseller account. Somebody with deep pockets (and great vision) will recognize this, however, and partner with or outright buy Bryght. This will lead to them tripling in size overnight, Adrian moving to a big house in Canada, and lots of headlines. They might have to change their name to BrY!ght.

CivicSpace is underrated because people don't always understand that it is Drupal, all put together just the way you'd like it, plus CiviCRM (which most still haven't even realized exists). CivicSpace releases new versions very frequently, meaning you have a planned upgrade path that moves quicker than the Drupal point releases. What major event will occur for CivicSpace is hard to predict. Maybe it will be a large contract (the recent Greenpeace contract would have been an example... too bad). Maybe it will be a parnership. I just have the feeling that it will make us go "wow".

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

adrian’s picture

1) More core developers employed full time on drupal. Including developers whose sole purpose it is to develop cool things for core.

2) The year of a thousand distributions. Core is moving in a direction that we will be able to easily ship different configurations of drupal
directly on drupal.org. The format for this distribution are also self documenting and can be unit tested.

3) Dump the current project module and rewrite it properly. The general relationship framework allows us to build a far more powerful and flexible project management framework than was possible before.

4) Move to subversion. The install system is going to necessitate us to re-think our code versioning system, and it is going to be far far far far simpler to build from scratch using a well documented set of hooks for subversion.

Also, there's the subversion module which will allow us to integrate repository browsing / administration directly into the new project framework (ie: be able to create new repositories for sub projects, and administrate the permissions to the repositories through the web interface).

5) Drupal becomes synonymous with the semantic web. With Tim Berners Lee using Drupal and the new relationship api, i think having RDF/OWL/FOAF etc. exports for anything and everything possible, by default, will move drupal into becoming one of the leading semantic publishing platforms on the internet. Even a simple aggregator site somewhere sits there and gives meaning to everything it aggregates.

6) Drupal themeing will become much much improved, including introducing powerful theme / layout switching into core that supercedes the frontpage and sections modules. One of
the caveats however, is that Drupal will also become far more flexible as a platform, which will probably make a 1 theme fits the entire site type setup more difficult to accomplish. Hence :

7) We will introduce a seperate admin theme / layout / section, to cut down the amount of work needed to create a new theme. Some of the older developers will be annoyed at this, but there will be great rejoicing among, you know, actual users.

8) Finally find a good use for drupal-world-domination.com. Since it will be very near to the truth.
--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.

adrian’s picture

9) People will be surprised at the amount of progress in 2006.

--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.

robertDouglass’s picture

The pump is primed, the powder is dry!

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

Robin Monks’s picture

Well, let's see....

1) Drupal will become the standard for orginizational web tools, projects and sites.
2) Site independant tools for futher aggregation and dispersial of data will develop as client programs focus more on the content than the wrapper the content is in.
3) Drupal will replace the broken Mambo community as a user friendly CMS.
4) 5 more large corporations will publicaly laud Drupal.
5) Drupal will face problems as it's maintainer decides he wants children :-)

Oh, BTW, I'm rarely wrong ;o)

Robin

I ♥ Bugz
Blog - Twitter

silverwing’s picture

(No, I'm not entering Pirate Mode ;), just Robin took mine!)

But here they are anyway!

1. at least five well-known sites (or public figures) will switch to drupal.
2. 70,000 registered users.
3. Drupal 4.8 (or whatever) will 'ship' with an installer that works not only with core, but with modules.
4. Miro realizes they're fighting a losing battle, close up shop, and tell everyone to use Drupal.
5. a codex.drupal.org site is launched which is actually useful to people who don't know how to code to help them design their site to its fullest potential.
6. themes.drupal.org stays up for most of the year!
7. Microsoft offers to buy Drupal ;0) Dries laughs at them. Hysterically.
8. Theming a site becomes ridicuously easy.

alexandreracine’s picture

1- Google will contribute to the drupal code and some modules. (ok, that's a dream for the infrastructure of drupal)

2- Drupal will have a lot of new input (code, users, ideas, forums, nodes, etc) but the infrastructure supporting it will NOT hold. It will be a total chaos.

3- The search engine in drupal will become better, (thanks to trip search) to ease the pain of point 2 on the short term.

4- 4.8 will be online just before the end of 2006 and will be the last in the 4.x series.

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

Bèr Kessels’s picture

1) 2006 will be an even more turbulent year. So predicting anything is near impossible. Too much new blood will join, too much new ideas will shake Drupal on its foundations. Drupal will be DUBAR (Developed Up Beyond Any Recognition) at the end of 06.

2) Drupal (the community) will first become highly unmanagable. Forums will flood with issues, support will go unanswered, due to the sheer volume of them. Bugs / features cannot be closed fast enough to keep up with the number of duplicates and wont-fixes. Then Drupal will either break apart into small (geographical) communities that act as filter for drupal.org. Or people will get payed for improving the code behind drupal.org (*grin*), so that we can implement newish community based workflows (think digg). Or both.

3) We will get a few moments where spammers manage to flood drupal (not just a few posts, but automated) (re: point 2)

4) We will see the evolution of a few newish distro's. They might even be successfull.

5) Commens will still not be nodes.

6) Taxonomy will be removed. No, replaced, by a system with the same abilities but aimed at relations, rather then only tree-d categories. And yes, because a taxonomy is just a view of relations, tags, or cats will be nodes.

7) We will get a nice central and modular file system. One way or another.

8) New webdevelopment concepts will trickle down into Drupal. Drupal will use some of this, to become a better development platform.

---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

Bèr Kessels’s picture

9) I will finally think Drupal is usable enough (read: I am able to hide its oddities and strangeties) for my mom.

iamjackson’s picture

My Mom uses Drupal almost every single day. From an end-user perspective, it's a cake-walk. She blogs, updates photos, adds recipes, shares music, and reads/writes book reviews.

-- Jackson

http://bloomston.com

Anonymous’s picture

1: I reckon well have several new relational systems in drupal and something that replaces taxonomy
2: Drupal gets a forum system that works by default and looks something like phpBB or Invinsion Board
3: Freetagging starts off some new internet craze

silverwing’s picture

He turned out to be right.

You say that like you're suprised.

;0)
silverwing

chx’s picture

Drupal will march on, gradually becoming the Linux of the Web.
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu. | The news is Now Public

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

Zack Rosen’s picture

Agreed.

My conservative 2 cents:

1) Drupal.org community doubles in size (last year it tripled) in terms of total # of nodes posted and total # of users
2) The economy around Drupal grows another 500%. Last year I could account for about a dozen full time drupal hackers (developers, customizers, deployers, hosters) today I can account for over 70.
3) A Drupal site will crack the Alexa top 500 list
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500
4) A major and well respected university will land a grant for over $100K going towards Drupal development
5) A major public technology corporation (Yahoo, Google, Sun, IBM) will invest directly in Drupal development.

chx’s picture

See Sun-prise for more.
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu. | The news is Now Public

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

Zack Rosen’s picture

The sunprise + SoC represent major contributions by the Corp world in Drupal development.

But I am thinking something more along the lines of: XXX Corp hires two full time employees and grants $XXX,XXXX towards Drupal core development.

NITEMAN’s picture

There is one risky:
Comments will be nodes (at least i hope so!)

Wesley Tanaka’s picture

yes please

Treehouse

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

I predict that this won't happen.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

Bèr Kessels’s picture

.... for core.
there might be someone (*cough*) who makes a commentsasnodes.module. Just to make a point ;)

---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

Toe’s picture

Or at least a comments *to* nodes module, so that maybe we can finally split threads...

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Such a module is so easy to do that nobody has bothered to write it. ;)
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

NITEMAN’s picture

If it's so easy (for thoose who are php masters) would any one please add it to his TO-DO list? It would be a great first step to improve the forum module.
I wish I could learn enought php this year to code it myself, but i don't think so :(
(sorry about my english)
Happy new year drupalers!

Administering: Win 2003 SP1-IIS 6.0-PHP 5.0.3 ISAPI-MySQL 5.0-Drupal 4.6.5
Webmaster: www.pesepe.com-Beta.pesepe.com-gamers.pesepe.com

pamphile’s picture

We will see notice a larger number of Websites using Drupal as a "Forum".

At least 3 new phptemplate themes will be added.

Marcel
http://www.macminiforums.com/forums/
http://pressrelease.cc - using Drupal

sepeck’s picture

1. Support will continue to be an issue as the projects popularity continues to grow as the vast majority of users fail to contribute back in code work, forum support or documentation. This will continue to result in periodic attacks on the Drupal communities by angry neopythes and forum trolls who have failed to take the time to actually learn the product and work with the community on improving it or the documentation.

2. Documentation quality will continue to slowly improve, though still lag behind. Overwhelmed by the lack of contributors (150 people who have contributed to the handbook out of a community of 43,000 users)

3. People will still demand work on external forums integration rather then contribute to improving integrated forums (and fail to work on external forums integration themselves).

4. Despite a pesimistic #1, 2 and 3, we will continue to grow in active quality contributors as we are now but at a much slower rate in relation to our growth then we can hope to keep up.

5. The virtually invisible work that has been done underneath the hood for 4.7, will allow for an explosion of new nifty things, features and ideas.

6. The groundwork encouraging collaboration on base level api contrib modules which are then leveraged by purpose specific modules will finally start to pay off as people 'get it' and more begin to collaborate to share the workload.

7. The final system moves this year to the new infrastructure will help free up Dries and others to concentrate on more interesting things than only help Drupal as a whole.

-sp
---------
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

moggy’s picture

seamless phpbb integration that allows existing phpbb communities to easily expand into content management using drupal

Toe’s picture

Let's hope not! ;)

How about: seamless phpbb importation that allows existing phpbb communities to easilly migrate into a web app that won't go over 4 years without a significant update. :P

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Its too hard to tie *any* CMS-es together. Its been tried, and never,, ever did it succeed.

However, wrt phpbb:

* one of the (core- developers will get so pssd about this ever ongoing 'wannahavephpbb' that she or he will make a distro, recipe or howto get your phpBB site.

Yes, you can have a PHPBB site, including 90% (+ 200% more) of the features, without ever touching phpBB. Its a matter of choosing the right themes, modules and configuraitons. Really!

---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

Toe’s picture

Yes, you can have a PHPBB site, including 90% (+ 200% more) of the features, without ever touching phpBB.

Actually, phpBB itself is behind the times on forum features these days. See my above 'no significant update in 4 years' comment. Simple Machines would be a better benchmark from the open-source world.

A lot of the 'minor but would be nice to have' features on my list are features that phpBB 2.x doesn't have. That said, the stuff in the first couple sections of my thread are features of just about any forum, but missing in Drupal. I'm more worried about those than any features that phpBB doesn't have.

Bèr Kessels’s picture

if comments were nodes. But again. iPredict that will (not in core) happen in oh-six.

Some mayor drupaleers seem to be behind this idea, after the drupalcon in A'dam, I think the MetaThing will get a MetaThink going (mebby only in Druopal, but still).

---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

adrian’s picture

The idea has enough merit to write enough of the code to be able
to benchmark it.

--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.

hunmonk’s picture

  1. dries will receive an offer to host a game show involving contestants wearing bikinis. he'll turn it down in favor of a reality TV show about computer nerds.
  2. chx will end up hosting the game show.
  3. webchick will appear on the game show, and take second place for the day.
  4. killes will say something good about Windows. anything. :)
robertDouglass’s picture

1-3 had me thinking you were a sage, but this will never happen!

killes will say something good about Windows. anything. :)

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

Heine’s picture

2. chx will end up hosting the game show [with contestants wearing bikinis].

There are pictures (NSFW) to support my humble opinion that this will not happen before hell freezes over.

--
Tips for posting to the forums

robertDouglass’s picture

- Robert Douglass

-----
My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress

laura s’s picture

...will be driven by several high-profile websites. The notoriety push will come from larger, more complex sites using CivicSpace and Drupal.

At some point, some big pundits will notice and praise the software. (I recall in the /. threads, many of the regulars had never even heard of Drupal. That will change.)

People will come sniffing, and because people are people, some opinionators will say, "What's so great about that?" At which point a little tempest of a debate will go on.

A major megabucks corporation will distrubute a proprietary CMS that will get attention (of course), and comparisons will get drawn between it and Drupal.

Adopting Drupal will become more of a political move, dovetailing into a growing Open Source movement fed at least in part by a growing dissatisfaction with and resentment of the contempt for customers that major corporations demonstrate on a daily basis.

Some sort of new meme or widget for interactivity will emerge, and Drupal, with its developed API and AJAX, will be an early path for its application.

Two guys will get the idea of producing a cheesecake "Girls of Drupal" calendar. There will be controversy. One of the guys will up and quit the project, declaring that he's fallen in love and will get married on 14 January 2007. The other guy will withdraw the calendar, but then "bootleg" copies will appear on Ebay. Then one of the models will sue, and it will turn out that the guys never got signed model releases, and the calendar will become an electronic curiosity passed around via pdf, and the whole thing will be laughed at at DrupalCons to come ... until, in 2009, someone will try again, and get all the signed releases, but this time the models will be nude, tattooed ... and male. Hollywood will buy the rights to make a movie, but a video game, "Drupal Dudes," will be made first, in Hi-Def 3D and feature hyper-buff dudes with great buttocks waging sorcery battles using software code, which will become a big hit for the education market, especially for young women, and bring $37 million of royalties in, which all but $19,478 will be donated to the Drupal Foundation (the rest going to buy the calendar creator a hot new megamicrocomputer skull implant), and then, with paid development, Drupal takes over the world and becomes The Matrix.

Or maybe not.

Laura
===
pingVisionrare patternscattered sunshine

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

kbahey’s picture

Two guys will get the idea of producing a cheesecake "Girls of Drupal" calendar. There will be controversy. One of the guys will up and quit the project, declaring that he's fallen in love and will get married on 14 January 2007. The other guy will withdraw the calendar, but then "bootleg" copies will appear on Ebay. Then one of the models will sue, and it will turn out that the guys never got signed model releases, and the calendar will become an electronic curiosity passed around via pdf, and the whole thing will be laughed at at DrupalCons to come ... until, in 2009, someone will try again, and get all the signed releases, but this time the models will be nude, tattooed ... and male. Hollywood will buy the rights to make a movie, but a video game, "Drupal Dudes," will be made first, in Hi-Def 3D and feature hyper-buff dudes with great buttocks waging sorcery battles using software code, which will become a big hit for the education market, especially for young women, and bring $37 million of royalties in, which all but $19,478 will be donated to the Drupal Foundation (the rest going to buy the calendar creator a hot new megamicrocomputer skull implant), and then, with paid development, Drupal takes over the world and becomes The Matrix.

Hey Laura,

I see the aftershocks from a certain T-shirt picture from a forum post that briefly made it to the front page ...

:-)

Nice one though ...

--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

dikini’s picture

1) an own drupal submit(blog)api
2) drupal implant chip allowing you to have a direct connection with your Drupal sites
3) the collective is modelled after the distributed Drupal gossip management system

kbahey’s picture

  • Dries will abandon his effort to port Drupal to Java, and will do it in Ruby instead.
  • Ruby on Rails stock price take a tumble as a result.
  • Dries gets hired by Microsoft to work on Sharepoint.
  • CivicSpace does and IPO, then they get bought by AOL.
  • themes.drupal.org finally points to the proper DNS.
  • In the tech arena, Slashdot switches to Drupal, Digg quickly follows that move.
  • BBC News switches to Drupal, shortly after MSNBC does so.
  • Drupal finally gets a non-profit foundation.
  • Rumor has it that a certain development team member was seen smiling.
  • Khalid's predictions are known to never be wrong ...

And here is the smiley ... :-)
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

kbahey’s picture

No, Digg Does Not Run Drupal.
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

chx’s picture

From my Antwerp and Amsterdam experiences, we are a merry bunch and I do not remember anyone being sour all the time. Who do you think of? Maybe contact me in private...
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu. | The news is Now Public

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

sepeck’s picture

http://themes.drupal.org/

-sp
---------
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

varunvnair’s picture

My predictions:

  • Drupal.org will have a new livelier theme.
  • Drupal search will improve significantly.
  • Online theme editor becomes available.
  • Themeing system gets a revamp and becomes more flexible.
  • Drupal.org foundation will become a reality.
  • Many more blogs will be powered by Drupal.
  • drupal.css will become less bloated and more of the styling (or all) will be done by the theme and/or modules.

Those are all I can think of right now. Will add more when they occur to me. It will be interesting to reread this post same time next year.

My Drupal-powered Blog: ThoughtfulChaos

Cvbge’s picture

Number of Drupal+PostgreSQL users will double (triple? ;))

--
Polska strona o Drupalu: http://drupal.cvbge.org

aries’s picture

My whishes / predictions are the following:

  • many i18n improvement
  • good search capabilities, acting like mini-google
  • a full-featured relation module with additional plugins
  • documentation improvements, especially good tutorials in various subjects (like action module, the new forms api, etc.)

--
Fehér János aka Aries
http://aries.mindworks.hu

jozef’s picture

I am sceptic about i18n improvement:

  • i18n will not be in Drupal core
alexandreracine’s picture

joel_guesclin’s picture

Is this a prediction or just wishful thinking?

1) Anyone who suggests on a forum that most sites are mono-lingual and that there is "no interest" in multi-lingual sites will be met with waves of hysterical online laughter.

2) As a result, i18n will at last make it into core, or at least core will make it possible to install i18n module without applying patches

eveltman’s picture

If I remember correctly, 4.7 does not need core patches anymore for the i18n module. That (is|would be) a good thing. i18n usage will take off even more and the core developers will start to agree with users that good multi-lingual support belongs in the core. Finally it gets really easy to build a (partly or completely) multi-lingual site.

eaton’s picture

  • The tension between 'Drupal the end-user product' and 'Drupal the development framework' will stretch Drupal.org's manpower resources to the breaking point.
  • Drupal 4.9 will ship near year's end with a greatly reduced list of modules, but those that are there will be generic tools like CCK and Views.
  • Several VERY popular VERY high traffic sites will spring up focusing exclusively on a handful of application-specific Drupal distributions.
  • This will be a good, good thing.

--
Jeff Eaton | I heart Drupal.

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

robertDouglass’s picture

Drupal 4.7 will be the *only* major point release in 2006. Sorry Eaton, can't share your optimism on 4.9 :-)

CCK and views will emerge from the mist, however; that is certain.

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

eaton’s picture

A guy can dream, can't he? ;)

Still... whether it's 4.8, 4.9, 5.0, I do think the overall trend is going to be towards that kind of change.

--
Jeff Eaton | I heart Drupal.

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

jo1ene’s picture

Yes. I see this end-user v. developer geared focus coming to the forefront. I'm not sure what to make of it. My first impression is not good. I'd rather see increased functionality as opposed to the ability for Johnny Q Public being able to setup from a web interface and develop his theme without knowing a dang thing. I'd also like to mention that I perceive a difference where end-user usability is concerned. Usability is important. But so is quality, security and functionality, even more so.

My prediction is that we'll see more folks using Drupal for e-commerce (shopping-type, not subscription) websites, especially with the new "seamless" paypal program.

Advanced Web Design

eaton’s picture

I agree, but I think that it will ultimately be a very, very good thing. Drupal, right now, is a mediocre solution for those who want a turnkey blog/ecommerce site/forum/knowledgebase. It's JUST close enough, with core modules, that it works. But it takes hacking and tweaking and replacement of core modules in some cases to make it really shine.

Ber Kessels and a number of others have been discussing this in their blogs -- the real future of Drupal, I think, is in stripping things down even more, focusing on APIs and robust infrastructure, and putting the spotlight on application specific 'distributions' like CivicSpace. Drupal For Webcomics (Doodle?) would be a great opportunity, and has been on my to-do ist for a year.

--
Jeff Eaton | I heart Drupal.

--
Eaton — Partner at Autogram

Bèr Kessels’s picture

I agree.
I think this discussion will come a lot. But I also think it will not be resolved in oh-six.

Drupal has too many users to just trow them away. And it has too many developers (consultants building upon Drupal) to just say 'no we are going for Joe Average. Ths thing will not get a solution in 06. And I fear that may cost Drupal a lot. On all ends.

The install system might see the light of day, but i fear that small distros (using loads of php hacking and SQL scripts) will see the light of day before that profile thing gets the love it needs (and should get).

This 'fuzyyness' or 'not bein able to focus' will cause a lot of people to turn towards 'stuff' that does have taht focus. Bloggers finally find that movable type is better then Drupal for a personal blog. wikepedians finally decide that Drupal will never really be a full featured wiki engine and Ruby on Rails developers find out that Ror maight be easy, a drupal "thing" is even easier: its only a matter of Copy-Pasting those great handbook pages!

(oh, and real Drupal geeks find that all these people are wrong, because a blog/wiki/whatever is perfectly possible, even simpler, had you only spend 100+ hours reading docs/irc/ML)
---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

jakeg’s picture

1. Many core drupal developers will get paid proper wages/salaries to do work on the core part-time, perhaps by employers who have drupal sites and want a developer to work a few days a week doing custom proprietory modules, the rest of the week working on core.

2. Usability will be a major focus. Core contributors will realise just how un-userfriendly drupal currently is for site admin, how some things just don't make sense, how menus, primary/secondary links etc are a mess, and a major effort will be made to make things better, possibly even with paid usability studies

3. Core will include the ability to run across a master-slave mysql configuration, as drupal.org itself gets to the stage where this becomes useful

4. Efforts to get Drupal to work with non-MySQL databases will face serious problems as efforts are made to make Drupal better optimized for MySQL.

5. A large effort will be made to make forums more akin to phpBB and vBulletin, thus greatly increasing the the number of forum sites moving to Drupal. At least one leading phpBB/vBulletin developer will defect to Drupal, bringing their talents and experience with them.

6. Similar effort will occur in regards to wiki. A *real* wiki module will be launched with many features of mediawiki rather than just input filters

7. As a result of the above two points, people no longer have to resort to using drupal + mediawiki + phpbb etc for large sites. A massive number of users thus switch to Drupal.

8. The default template shipped with Drupal will use tableless CSS and come with fantastic documentation on how to use and modify it.

9. A WYSIWYG module - probably a basic one - will make core, although it will be a disabled module by default. It will include image uploading/browsing features.

sepeck’s picture

On making future predictions a reality in case anyone isn't clear. ;)

A core contributor is someone who contributes to Drupal core. There is no 'group' specifically defined (beyond core module maintainers). So, if anyone thinks that the usability focus of this last year has been insufficient, then anyone can become a core contributor and contribute GUI mockups and process maps showing an 'improved' method that also fails back to standards well. So 'waiting' for folks to 'realize' something perhaps should be better phrased;

People will realize that to enact 'change' they must propose solutions to the community that are practical and resolve the issue in a scalable maner that fails gracefully. As I have witnessed happening since 4.4

Maybe I should just add that to my predictions. Just curious, have you seen the menu improvements in 4.7?

6. With the new revisions table and a few comments from some folks, probably a safe bet there. At least lets hope so. Then maybe I'll finally understand the benefits of it.

-sp
---------
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

jakeg’s picture

good points. I do know how contributions are made... I'm still waiting for my CVS login though several weeks after I was apparently approved.

sepeck’s picture

Well, then send an email to the infrastructure list or try and catch someone on #drupal. Most of the time, it's in the spam filters somewhere.

Also I would like to point out for others, that GUI mockups and proposals don't require CVS access. The jump from 4.4 to 4.5 was a fasinating learning time for me on how a group can collaborate with mockups and discussions on usability. Building the target before the serious code work was done. Discussions are in the forums for those interested.

-sp
---------
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

Bèr Kessels’s picture

As posted else in this topic: Drupal (any CMs) is hart to integrate.

So this will, predict, not be shipped as one large phpbb.module or wiki.module. But finally people understand The Drupal Way. And revert to recipes, and howtos to collect the correct modules, themes and configurations to make drupal A wiki/phpBB/Gallery2 clone. Really, its all already possible. In 4.6 even.

Bèr
---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

Robert Castelo’s picture

As it'll be the year of the ferret next year, and Venus will be in alignment with Druplicon (and wearing a t-shirt to prove it!), this is what the horoscope predicts for 2006...

1. A large 'bricks & mortar' company will use Drupal to power their website and intranet, and this will open the enterprise floodgates for Drupal.

2. We are going to go from a theme famine to a theme feast, with more themes being released per week than were released all of last year.

3. Several web applications built with Drupal will hit the ground running, becoming immediately profitable by providing services that people actually need, and surviving the Web 2.0 bubble bursting when VC money burns out in 2008.

------------------------------------------
Drupal Specialists: Consulting, Development & Training

Robert Castelo, CTO
Code Positive
London, United Kingdom
----

psicomante’s picture

Drupal will become an indipendent OS, DrupalOS! :D

To be serious, it will be implemented the best search engine (Drupal 4.7 perhaps)

Katapekkia inFo_360°

robertDouglass’s picture

The Drupal community will cheer and cry as a core Drupal developer gets hired by Google.

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

richardb’s picture

...and cry when Google releases GoogleCMS... a fully-featured CMS that puts all others to shame, hosted for free with unlimited diskspace/bandwidth as long as you display some google text adds, that you would probably have had anyway...
They'll probably throw in a powerfull API too, allowing you to update things like stock-levels seamlessly from your office software...

bertboerland’s picture

Yahoo and WP?

--
groets
bertb

--
groets
bert boerland

Bèr Kessels’s picture

GoogleCMS (beta) :) google never releases anything untill after the hype :)

---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

bertboerland’s picture

beta is the new black

--
groets
bertb

--
groets
bert boerland

Brian@brianpuccio.net’s picture

brian@alpha:~$ nslookup drupalcms.google.com
Server: 192.168.1.1
Address: 192.168.1.1#53

** server can't find drupalcms.google.com: NXDOMAIN

brian@alpha:~$ dig drupalcms.google.com

alexandreracine’s picture

Just to be clear, this was a joke. The website does not work. And beside, this is a 2006 prediction, we are not there yet ;)

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

flufftronix’s picture

-The voting API and google maps module's API will be totally prolific. Geocontent and various incarnations user moderation will become pretty important in Drupal.
-A separate admin interface as (á la the Civicspace theme) will become more prominent, and possibly the norm by 2007.
-CCK will be huuuuge news.
-Someone will releas a fairly obnoxious theme which allows users to move every single block of content via AJAX.
-Drupal will become more widely-known than phpnuke was during its heyday.

flufftronix’s picture

-Building social networking sites with Drupal will become very easy and very common.

grajko’s picture

Drupal will have import/export OpenDocuments text (odt - OASIS standard) ability into nodes.

Actually only ezPublish has this option.

robertDouglass’s picture

Do some research; what would this functionality entail? What are the challenges? What are the benefits? If you can't answer technical questions, find people here who can, and get the information from them. This is a great goal, and it will become much more likely if there is someone playing the role of advocate, motivating people, solving the problems.

2006 Prediction: Grieco steps up and takes a lead role in getting a major Drupal feature developed!

- Robert Douglass

-----
My sites: HornRoller.com, RobsHouse.net

grajko’s picture

"2006 Prediction: Grieco steps up and takes a lead role in getting a major Drupal feature developed!"

That would be great! ;)))

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

We'd be happy even if it were a minor feature. It is already good to see that you realize that it takes people to make the things happen that have been "predicted" here. It looks more like a wishlist too me.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

alexandreracine’s picture

grieco
Member for:
2 days 53 min

Well, welcome in the drupal community, when do you start? ;)

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

adrian’s picture

it's not going to be a feature of the next release (4.8), but it will DEFINITELY be part of 4.9.

--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.

Bèr Kessels’s picture

we have heard just too much of this silly webtwodotoh stuff (no that is not a tag, nor can you flock it). the web (3.0) wil be about I/o indeed.

input output, that is. abstraction layers. (KIO slaves) save stuff online. do stuff anywhere. etc.

ticketyticketytick, in open office "save >> Adrians website >> new entity [enter]" next: the world can enjoi Adrians latest work on 'IO layers'

So, 2oooooo6?

no. Adrians visionary thoughts (and code!) might just be too much for that drupal userbase (who just wants pictures with her blog). But Adrian will, really, set the route for web 3.0. isnt it cool to say that The web3.0 was born in South%20Africa (yes, web 3.0 features tags with spaces!), huh?
---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

Dries’s picture

My personal highlights for 2005 include the Drupal 4.6 release, the three Drupal conferences I helped organize, the Drupal books that are being written, the fund raise, the new infrastructure (including the support from Sun Microsystems and the OSL), and the unexpected exponential growth of the community. 2005 was a blast. Not only for Drupal, but for many Free and Open Source content management systems.

What is in it for 2006?

In terms of code we'll see forum improvements, image and/or document improvements, some basic install profiles, more AJAX, incremental theme system improvements, significant node system changes, and various improvements to the administration pages.

The exciting trend in 2006 will be the many new media services on the web; people want to publish more content. Most of this will be social media published by individuals or online communities. Not just more content and pictures, but also a lot more video. Information overload, a direct result of this, will drive the adoption of RSS, Atom, aggregators and news readers. Lots of people will figure out that, to stay productive and up-to-date, content aggregation and content filtering is a must. By the end of 2006, people will not only want to aggregate all interesting or relevant content, they'll also want to consolidate the functionality of the various web services. In short: more content, the need for aggregation and filtering, and ultimately, consolidation of functionality. Clearly, Drupal is in a proper spot to benefit from these trends.

The less exciting trend of 2006, but probably the more important one in terms of growth and revenue, is the increased adoption of content management systems for small, basic websites. Millions of small websites will start using content management systems. The biggest mistake we'll make in 2006 is that many of us will be neglecting small website owners. This is where more traditional systems like Mambo, Joomla! and even Wordpress will shine, and because of that, they'll grow faster than Drupal. Fortunately, Drupal 4.7.0 will be a great release for many of the small website owners. Much of the work we did in 2005, will have its impact in 2006. We'll continue to grow, but the growth will be linear rather than exponential.

Furthermore, by the end of 2006, most other systems will provide role based access control, localization, clean URLs, some sort of node system, etc. Functionality-wise there will be less differentiation amongst the available content management systems, and as a result, more emphasis is put on ease of use, out of the box experience, the (support) community and performance. Some of the more obscure functionality like the aggregator, the taxonomy system, and the throttle system will be subtle but important differentatiors. It's been a long, well-run race so far, but unless we manage to make Drupal more accessible to new users and to get back to the basics, we'll find the ground shifting beneath our feet.

Even with many good or exciting things happening in 2006 (make no mistake, they will happen), we'll find ourselves at the base of a new mountain. Just like in 2005, there will be growing pains, yet they'll be bigger. A community with 40.000 members has many voices, and each such voice demands slightly different things. Some people will be unhappy, disorientated and impatient for things to improve. At times, they'll be highly articulate about this. It is going to be a long and complicated climb. Growing is learning to climb bigger mountains, learning to deal with bigger growing pains. Fortunately, you've been the best community I know, and the best I have ever had the privilege of working with. You have the enthusiasm, the passion and the determination of the world to climb that mountain.

Despite the slightly worrisome tone of this message, 2006 promises to be an exciting year. Drupal will make more inroads on companies, governments, public institutions like school and universities, open source projects, and -- most of all -- non-professionals. Just like in 2005, we'll make substantial progress. 2006 will be one hell of a ride ... Make sure to hang on tight.

(I'm going to extend/refine my predictions in the next few days. Too busy right now, but I just wanted to post my initial thoughts.)

robertDouglass’s picture

Such an inspirational leader we have. Turn up the patriotic music!

"Oh Drupalicon, Thine glowing eyes, forever grace my page..."

- Robert Douglass

-----
My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress

kbahey’s picture

I still have those nightmares about Druplicon's eyes ...

Reminds me of Tux's eyes in Mandriva 2005 Limited Edition.

Freaky ...
--
Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

--
Drupal performance tuning and optimization, hosting, development, and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc. and Twitter at: @2bits
Personal blog: Ba

zirafa’s picture

1) Social networking and content distribution becomes the "a-ha!" factor for Drupal. Many Drupal clones of popular social networking sites (i.e., myspace.com) will appear, as well as many creative new sites that make use of sharing and networking.

2) Whether it be video, audio, images or a mix, media will become a key point of development. We'll need ways to sort and order media and generate all sorts of XML and RSS, too. We already began doing this with the video.module, audio.module, playlist.module but there is MUCH more discussion, debate, and work to be done.

3) More servers will have Drupal Fantastico scripts, and/or more vendors will offer "Drupal packages" which will include in the cost configuration and customization.

4) Smaller website owners will adopt Drupal after hearing about it's many benefits but still become too frustrated after the installation process, and will eventually dump it and choose blogger because they can't figure out how to "theme" their site.

5) In 2007 those same small website owners will return because Drupal 4.9 will theme itself based on artifical intelligence input parameters. ;)

zirafa

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Diries,
one day , I heard you 'thing' about communities. About how they 'will' organise themselves.

I beleive you are one of the greatest visionares of the web-2005-stuff -happening. I mean: you seemed (i have reread your posts of Drupal in 2004/5) to have stuff Just Right.
Nothing Great. Nothing Overexcited. Just points that make sense.

I hope (again) you are right about all your points but one. You say that "Millions of small websites will start using content management systems. The biggest mistake we'll make in 2006 is that many of us will be neglecting small website owners."

I truly hope (and beleive and so on) that Bryght/alikes (we will have a great providers base in 06, they need somthing to compete, huh) will make that untrue. I truly hope that (and beleive) that the market will take over and become the Drupal Sales Point: userfriendlyness or ease of deployment?

---
Bèr Kessels
Professional www.webschuur.com
Personal bler.webschuur.com

Dries’s picture

Thanks. I just re-read my 2005 predictions and from the looks, I was 100% correct. When things come true, it is easy to say 'nothing great, nothing excited', but surely, they were predictions at that time. At the time I wrote these we had 14k posts and 15k users; right now we have 42k forum topics and 44k users. A lot has changed, huh. Either way, in the next few days I'll try to add some more 'exciting elements' to my 2006 predictions. :)

You say that a provision system would help us focus on small website owners. I don't think that is true. Drupal is already available through Fantastico and cPanel. Thousands of Drupal users have installed Drupal using either Fantastico or cPanel. Why is your or Bryght's provisioning system going to make a significant difference? What do you mean with the market will take over and become the Drupal Sales Point? Drupal 4.7.0 will be the "2006 release"; it is what you and your customers will be using most of the year. If you roll out a provisioning system in Q2 or Q3 of 2006, how is the larger community going to benefit from that?

One of the worst things that could happen, is being kicked out of the Fantastico and/or the cPanel distributions. Being kicked out would be worse than not having an installation script, or not having install profiles. It would be troublesome if hosting companies stopped supporting Drupal because of its resource requirements. I don't think it will happen, but certainly, it is something to keep in mind.

For what it is worth, performance and usability improvements are still being accepted for inclusion in the final Drupal 4.7.0 release. If I'd run a business that depends on Drupal, I'd put some last minute effort in both performance and usability. Small improvements can have tremendous impact on thousands of users, can help Drupal grow, and can generate you more customers. As I said, Drupal 4.7.0 will be the "2006 release", and frankly, your revenue is going to depend on it.

Repeat after me: the sooner we can get Drupal 4.7.0 out, and the better it is, the more successfull 2006 will be ... (with our without a provisioning system).

pbowyer’s picture

[echoing jakeg]:
Far more effort will be put into improving the user interface. Drupal will be made far more intuitive for 'casual' content contributors.

A new events system will be produced. A system that allows recurring events with different descriptions for each, *and* missing repeating events are allowed (plus any repeated instance can be deleted without deleting all of them).

Drupal will have search engine friendly URLs by default. So instead of http://drupal.org/node/41966 this item would be http://drupal.org/forum/gen/predictions-for-2006
Not only will Google like it, but it's a lot easier to identify what's on the page. And of course, the editor can override it :-)

Again, linking to items such as other pages will become easy enough for 'casual' users. If your father can do it, the system's easy enough. If your mother can do it, you've succeeded better than anyone could expect ;-)

A proper gallery system (n:m category relationships etc) that allows easy (as above) insertion of images into other pages of the site will be created, without the need to wrap gallery2 (uugh) into the system.

adrian’s picture

I have moved this comment to a node of it's own, as it was incredibly long and not really in the right place.

It is in relation to some of the comments on this thread regarding open documents etc.

gtoddv’s picture

My predictions, for what they're worth:

1. The number of posts asking 'how to change the size of a font' will surpass the number of posts asking 'Is Drupal right for me?'.

2. I will lose my job because my Microsoft-centric consulting company will get tired of me proposing and actually using Drupal for every solution in 2006. The only reason this didn't happen in 2005 is because I am the only one that can support the previous installations. This of course will spell the real beginning of Drupal's world domination.

3. Someone will actually create a weblinks module that has usable functions that people want. Drupal will finally cease to be the only CMS/Publishing system without a categorized url/site database with a presentation feature.

4. Users will finally understand taxonomies. This will create a worldwide effort to change the taxonomy module's menu entry back to taxonomy.

5. The politically conservative in the world will catch on to Drupal and become the number one users of the product. This of course will spell the worldwide demise of all poor people and socialists. Not to worry, the loss of all those users will be replaced by government users and grants as well as corporate sponsorships and most importantly, it will be the only software sanctioned by the US Republican Party.

This change in user base will mean the need for usable modules like:

a. Asset Tracking
b. Tax Sheltering
c. Global Warming Creation Module - this module will actually exist to accelerate global warming!

That is all for now.

gtoddv

alexandreracine’s picture

3. Someone will actually create a weblinks module that has usable functions that people want. Drupal will finally cease to be the only CMS/Publishing system without a categorized url/site database with a presentation feature.

I totally agree on this one!

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

bonobo’s picture

RE:

c. Global Warming Creation Module - this module will actually exist to accelerate global warming!

The Global Warming Creation module will get rolled out with the "New Driving Techniques for SUV's" web site.

Cheers,

Bill

-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers

ica’s picture

I predict Flickr will ditch its code and start to use Drupal image.module code

gtoddv’s picture

I have heard the same about gallery2, shutterfly, and ofoto (kodak). Also heard rumors that adobe is playing with the module....

Adrian Freed’s picture

Will make drupal the hippist CMS for media publishing and syndication.

gtoddv’s picture

On a serious note, this is the only predicition that MUST reach fruition before the end of 2006....

Automated installation frontend (wizard, setup program, whatever). And the end of the upgrade dropdown with 100 choices on where to upgrade from.

This is a must for this year. All the fancy and beautifully executed code don't mean sh*t if the average user can't get it installed.

Nostradrupalus has spoken.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

If you need it, start coding and sending patches.
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gtoddv’s picture

Someone needs it. The core needs it. Users need it. You guys need it.

And for the ####th time...

NOT EVERYONE CODES! I know you ubergeeks find that hard to comprehend. Its sort of like gay mean think that all men are gay. We all have our talents, and (very)fortunately they aren't all shared, or this would be a pretty pathetic boring place to live.

How about you core guys stop evangelizing about everyone coding and start exploiting your users for what they do best. Sort of like Firefox has been doing. It is very unlikely I will ever submit anything but a snippet of code to this project (and have). So does that mean I have nothing else to offer?

Some of you seem to want to stay stuck between a little clubhouse project that nobody understands but you, and this global community code machine that gains international notoriety. Which is it? Stop tossing of the 'then you do it' crap and get to business. This particular prediction/wish item is probably the most foundationally sound in the bunch. Unless of course you don't really want anyone but the geeks to have control (which is a valid business requirement, no argument).

And while you are ruminating over some typical immature college-type response to this post, or a way to drive folks like me away from the project, you might consider that some of your user base may not posses the skills to assist due to mental or physical disabilities (or?). Or that the very least, their ability to assist is severely limited. Heck we don't even have to go that far, some of us aren't in our 20's and 30's like most of you. We have established lives that preclude us from spending much time, other than at work, to provide any kind of input or assistance to this project.

There is absolutely no chance that I will take time from my chemotherapy or playtime from my six year-old to code an install wizard. Does that mean I have to shut up around here? Does that mean there isn't anything I can do to help. What if you were blind and I told you we needed another set of eyes around here?

Grow up.

(I realize I might have gone over the edge, but I am getting tired of some of the pomposity that pervades the forums, lately especially)

chx’s picture

you are free to review other people's code :) we *are* short on reviewers.
--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu. | The news is Now Public

--
Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile.

alexandreracine’s picture

Actually killes, gtoddv, and chx, I don't think that "start coding" is the first thing that a new module or new feature should begin.

How about, start PLANNING? Lay down a plan, a structure for the new feature, steps, documentation, etc. This does not require coding and people that does not code and would like to contribute would love that (I think, let's make a pool! :)

Am I aiming too high here or does this make some sence?

Alexandre Racine

www.gardienvirtuel.com Sécurité informatique, conformité, consultation, etc

www.salsamontreal.com La référence salsa à Montréal

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Well, you are welcome to draw up a great design document, but unless you already have secured somebody who is willing to do the work, I wouldn't bother.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services

sepeck’s picture

People code for FREE things they WANT to. People get paid to code things that someone else wants to. Someone who cannot code relies on others to do for them. Continuing to 'tell' people to 'do' things is not an effective solution. It is obvious that once again efforts go unappreciated and the motives of unpaid people are again misunderstood. Amatuer phycho-analysis is again brought to the forefront of Internet discussion.

Your pre-emptive attempt to dismiss any reply is appreciated as it sets the tone and makes obvious your attitude towards any reply as dismissable.

There are a number of ways you as a non-coder can contribute to the project. Patch review (I don't code, yet try to test the occassional patch), effective bug reports, writing how to's for people for the handbook (evidently we have great difficulty in even begging for people to contribute, perhaps you could start a new trend).

(I realize I might have gone over the edge, but I am getting tired of some of the pomposity that pervades the forums, lately especially)

'nuff said. We will treasure your evaluation of the countless hours many of us have spent helping people.

-sp
---------
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

laura s’s picture

NOT EVERYONE CODES! I know you ubergeeks find that hard to comprehend. Its sort of like gay mean think that all men are gay. We all have our talents, and (very)fortunately they aren't all shared, or this would be a pretty pathetic boring place to live.

I don't really get where you're going with your (anti-)gay comment. But you seem to fail to realize that there are only so many developers working on Drupal. Not very many at all. It's not like there are people sitting around with nothing better to do. Just look at how long it's taking to debug 4.7b2. There's a lot of work involved.

How about you core guys stop evangelizing about everyone coding and start exploiting your users for what they do best. Sort of like Firefox has been doing. It is very unlikely I will ever submit anything but a snippet of code to this project (and have). So does that mean I have nothing else to offer?

You can test. You can file bug reports. You can test patches. You can offer help to others. You can file feature suggestions or sound off on others. You can design UI screenshots. You can lay out improved workflows.

And you can let go of the "your users" concept. This is a peer-built CMS. A collaborative effort that happened because people stepped up and said, "Oh I can do that!" We are not anybody's users, because Drupal is not an entity that owns anything. It exists only because of the collaboration.

Some of you seem to want to stay stuck between a little clubhouse project that nobody understands but you, and this global community code machine that gains international notoriety. Which is it? Stop tossing of the 'then you do it' crap and get to business. This particular prediction/wish item is probably the most foundationally sound in the bunch. Unless of course you don't really want anyone but the geeks to have control (which is a valid business requirement, no argument).

What "business" do you want people to "get to"? There is no business. People are doing this on their own time, with some rare funded exceptions now and then. Standing around crying about why something you want done isn't getting done isn't going to get it done. You didn't pay anything. There is no customer service department. That's because there is no business. Again, this is a collaborative effort. If you actually stop and think about it, this is really a beautiful thing.

Consider "you do it" to be an invitation. And if you can't do it, then maybe you should consider why nobody else is jumping on your priorities before browbeating them.

And while you are ruminating over some typical immature college-type response to this post, or a way to drive folks like me away from the project, you might consider that some of your user base may not posses the skills to assist due to mental or physical disabilities (or?). Or that the very least, their ability to assist is severely limited. Heck we don't even have to go that far, some of us aren't in our 20's and 30's like most of you. We have established lives that preclude us from spending much time, other than at work, to provide any kind of input or assistance to this project.

Ad hominem attacks don't generate much collaboration either. You might also consider that you're not the only one with "established lives that preclude us from spending much time, other than at work," to work on the Drupal project.

There is absolutely no chance that I will take time from my chemotherapy or playtime from my six year-old to code an install wizard. Does that mean I have to shut up around here? Does that mean there isn't anything I can do to help. What if you were blind and I told you we needed another set of eyes around here?

I'm sorry you're having health issues. I hope you're doing well. As for shutting up, maybe it would be better to recall that a little tact goes a long way. Consider if you were a developer, with all your same circumstances, and someone you don't know kept bitching at you to do something for him for free. How do you think you would respond?

This is not a monolithic organization, but rather a community. There is no singular "you" to be nailed down and tagged "Drupal." A community needs collaborators, not scolds.

Laura
===
pingVisionrare patternscattered sunshine

_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
Laura Scott :: design » blog » tweet

gtoddv’s picture

The time I have spent being patient with mis-informed or under-informed silly hearts like you is incredibile. Just because this particular post seems to be a bit rough around the edges doesn't mean I haven't tried other ways to make my point.

HOW is the FACT that all gay men think those that aren't, deep down really are, ANTI gay? Are you kidding? Do you know of what you speak? It sounds like that just rubbed you the wrong way, and without knowing anything about the gay community, you made an assanine statement about what I said being Anti-gay. Phooey on you. I spent 20 years of my life in the performing arts. Mostly ballet and musical productions. I have lost more friends than I can count to HIV/AIDs. I don't need some little undereducated drupalite accussing me of something she doent understand. (By the way, I am caucasion and LOVE mayonaisse, does that make me anti-white?)

I'm sorry you're having health issues. I hope you're doing well. As for shutting up, maybe it would be better to recall that a little tact goes a long way. Consider if you were a developer, with all your same circumstances, and someone you don't know kept bitching at you to do something for him for free. How do you think you would respond?

You can either be an adult and ignore the post, or point the person to a page that provides information on ALL the possible assistance types that are available. Rudely tossing off the comment ' code it for yourself' is not progressive or helpful. Besudes, nobody was bitching, just making a prediction/observation.

If a module doesn't work, take it out of the database. It's not like we don't have image.module discussion on a daily basis. Maybe that should tell us somethiing. Then, nobody has an undo burden, it just goes away until someone has the time. I know that is not practical, but it was essentially done with the weblinks module. Someone decided for the rest of us that we didn't need to be able to display our links. Now we have a bunch of installs using the wrong module or hacks to get the functionality back. Does that really sound like the best way to go about furthering this great software?

Collaborators not scolds. I like that. Sounds a little whimpy, but I like it. Unfortunately collaboration means structure. And sturcture is very hard to implement and maintain. That is why you see so many modules that are a one person show.

Consider "you do it" to be an invitation. And if you can't do it, then maybe you should consider why nobody else is jumping on your priorities before browbeating them.

We are hardly browbeating. Turn down the sensitivity notch a bit.

It was mentioned earlier that perhaps the use of requirements gatherers/business analysts might not be a bad idea. Allow them to pair up with developers to provide the high-level functinality. This will allow the developers to do what they like best, solve problems and create innovations.

If we didn't love, we wouldn't care, if we didn't care we wouldn't say anything.

Steve Dondley’s picture

It's real simple yet you seem to want to complicate things. It all boils down that if you really, truly want to move things along, you'd quit starting needless flamewars and start doing something more productive to make your suggestions a reality. It's time to stop yelling at your television, leave your house, and do something concrete about the problems you see in the world.

I can make suggestions and recommendations until I'm blue in the face. But guess what? Nothing gets done until I either a) code it myself or b) raise the money to pay someone to code it.

You've already stated that you don't know how to code. No problem. So why not reach out to other Drupal users and start collecting money for projects you're interested in? That's as good as coding it yourself.

If you don't like the curtness of the developers, well, learn to handle it a little better. You claim to be a wise old man so you should know that starting flame wars is about the most counterproductive thing you can do. If someone tells you to go code say, "I'm sorry, I don't know how to code. Is there some other way I can assist the project?" The best way to get people to be more diplomatic is to be diplomatic yourself. And it's the best way to show you really do care.

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gtoddv’s picture

Didn't start a flame war, that was brought upon me. I dont care about the curtness of the responses from the developers, its just getting old. Core functionality is all we are talking about here, nothing new. And I was sticking up for those that might find the standard development repsonse 'do it yourself' so off-putting that they might go somewhere else. I have run a number of other CMS' and never have I heard such things. Many other systems recognize their strengths and weaknesses and address them without shooting the messenger. Here it is always the messenger that gets it between the eyes. That is why I don't get into this very often herre. I have yet to see one of the Drupals leads take a comment such as the ones made here and say, you know what, your're right. I am going to swallow my pride for a second, step back and try to look at this objectively. Instead you get attacked from the get go.

It's not the end of the world. I bring these up to see if anyone will come around at all. The nice fact is that people contact me privately to congratulate me for have the balls to say this in the forums. I love drupal and I have deep respect for everyone that has taken the time to contribute.

Love and peace to all.

PS. Should we be paying for core functinoality? Really. That is ok, but it seems odd. If I wanted a carbon monoxide generation module, then yes, lets pay for it.

sepeck’s picture

Actually you sort of did. Understand that other cms's are not Drupal. Their idea of what should be in 'core' may be vastly different then Drupal's. Are folks aware of area's Drupal needs improvement in? Yes. Are there usability discussions and more by the active devs? Yes. Have you followed any of the methods that have been suggested in this and other threads on how to effectively particpate? Hmmm?

There is one 'lead'. That is Dries. There are active developers and active contributors. There are a few additional core module maintainers. Then there is work that doesn't get done because there are not enough people contributing actual work. Anyone can contribute code, it's the lowest barrier to entry of any Open Source project that I am aware of.

This has been mentioned in several threads. Several people do what you have done. Post this same rant in multiple threads. Using the same type of assertive, demanding language that 'talks down' to the active code contributors and sounds like an outsider lecturing people who are doing things for their own reasons to achieve their own goals. Like they somehow 'owe' you something and had better produce 'or else'...

Open Source software is all about 'scratching your own itch'. That is it's strength and it's weakness. The plain, unadorned truth is, stuff won't necessarily get done unless someone does it. If it is on someone's list, then great! The problem is that it may not be as high on someone's else's list as it is on yours.

-sp
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-Steven Peck
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Steve Dondley’s picture

I'll ignore all you said in the first part of your response. It's more of the same yelling at your television kind of thing.

Your postscript is far more telling. You state you don't think you should have to pay to help develop Drupal. This demonstrates to me, contrary to your claims, you do not care.

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gtoddv’s picture

My questions was, should we be paying for core functionality. I said that is fine, but odd. Now if I wanted a strange module, then yes certainly I should pay for it. I am not sure how you got, I don't want to pay or contribute out of that, but I am willing to take the blame for not being obvious. Here is some plain talk so you don't get confused (might be part of the problem folks have when some of you guys inaccurately respond to posts)

I have NO problem paying for functionality.
I have assisted in providing testing and code snippets in the past. I help in the forums when I have the expertise. I have offered to test anything. And if I could get the patch system to work, I would be doing a LOT more of that.

But most importantly, we need to be more inclusive of those that don't understand. Stop scaring folks away. Be kinder to those that want to jump on but can't quite make heads or tails of what is going on.

I have a number of installs that function. Would I like some functionality/modules to work better?, sure. Do I spend anytime forcing the issue, no. I think we are extremely lucky that the vast majority of modules manage to make the transition for release to release.

I use trip-search to make up for the inadequacies of the core search in Drupal. Now it turns out that something similar will be included in the 4.7 core. I could have paid, or otherwise contributed, to the development of trip_search. But where would that leave me now? Using core functionality is preferable for someone who installs this for commercial (read corporate) as it eases the upgrade path.

If I were yelling at the television, you wouldn't hear me. I am not even yelling. And nothing I have said should really upset anyone, they are just opinions.

And it isn't all about money, if I tallied all the time I spent on opensource projects in the past 10 years, the number would blow even me away. It isn't the point, it's not why we do it. And it shouldn't impress anyone.

Perhaps I have gone too far with all this, but I do think most of you have missed the point entirely. Perhaps I have too.

I do apologize to those who's feellings i may have bent. I do not apologize for having an opinion that is shared by many. I will continue to use this great software and evangalize its use wherever I go. To sum up what all this was about:

1. an automated installation script
2. a foolproof and user-friendly way to manage and use images
3. A robust search feature

If they happen, great, if they don't, oh well.

As I have said before, I love you all.

laura s’s picture

...to things like your remarks about the links module (whose developer I've found to be quite accessible and open to ideas) or the image module (which I use for a photoblog, so is hardly so dysfunctional it should be removed from Drupal.org), but it seems you're taking everything personally and making ad hominem attacks rather than engaging in any discussion, so I won't waste my time.

Never mind. Pretend I never said anything. Best wishes to you.

Laura
===
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_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
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gtoddv’s picture

I don't think you could respond in substance. Nobody has attacked a developer or asked for something to be removed from Drupal (at least nothing I have been speaking of). No single person has been attacked. I can't waste your time as I have not in anyway forced, coerced, or otherwise made you a part of this discussion. This is why you can't respond in substance, you don't have the ability to separate reality from the imaginary goings on in your brain. It is a piece of software, I can't take it personally.

ad hom·i·nem Pronunciation (hm-nm, -nm)
adj.
Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason: Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents' motives.

OK, so maybe you have something there, but then this would be no fun. And of course it would also leave much of the discussion on the table. I got attacked for making a suggestion, I should be able to respond to the person and their motive.

bonobo’s picture

RE:

This is why you can't respond in substance, you don't have the ability to separate reality from the imaginary goings on in your brain.

Comments like this contribute nothing to the Drupal community. This thread started out about predictions for 2006. You have a right to voice your frustrations, but you have voiced them in such a way as to virtually guarantee that no one will take them (and, by association, you) seriously. Unfortunately, you have obscured your ideas (some of which, IMO, have substantive merit) behind ad hominem attacks.

Cheers,

Bill.

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Steve Dondley’s picture

Killes, reconginizing not everyone can code, you should also encourage people to pony up cash for features. If they don't have it, they can help fundraise and organize. If Drupal is valuable to them, they'd gladly pay $50 or $100. A pittance compared to the tens of thousands of dollars contributed by some of Drupal's developers.

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Steve Dondley’s picture

One good line to folks like goddtv might be: "I estimate I've given the equivalent of $20,000 to Drupal in the form of my labor. How much cash have you given?"

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killes@www.drop.org’s picture

I hope I will never be able to sum up the hours I spent doing Drupal stuff. The number of hours might depress me. :p

Just an example: According to my account page, I am a member at this site for close to five years. I don't recall if I already did coding when Drupal.org started, so let us assume I started four years ago. If each year has 52 weeks, this is a total of 208 weeks. Assuming only two hours per week spent on doing Drupal stuff this would be 416 hours. I don't keep stats about my (non-paid) Drupal activities but I think that five hours /week is a more realistic figure. Now you can multiply 1040 hours by what you think I should be billing...

I also have a problem with asking people for cash to fund features they want. I would probably spend more time doing the fundraising than the actual coding.
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clo75’s picture

1/ A good image module
Perhaps in the upcoming version 4.7, who knows...

2/ An easy way to manage several view of an article :
wich part go to the teaser, witch part go the node article, thumbnail/preview/_origional image management, etc... In other words an easy way to manage the presentation of the information created from a node without complicated phptemplates.

3/ A better documentation about phpTemplates
This area is still lacking good exemples. But also there a missing "Drupal for Newbies" book.There are so many nodes to read in the forum before undestanding just a little the philosophy of Drupal.

4/ A good template library more Drupal oriented
Many good themes are coming from WorldPress, but the CSS code aren't very clean. An many are using too narrowed colums, causing overlaping effects.

5/ A good sIFR module
As in wordpress it would be great to have a module to manage simply flash sIFR fonts inside Drupal.

6/A module for visual Ajax effect"
There is some nice Ajax effects with librairies like Open Rico... Why not having a module for easely add nice effects or manage http-request features...

That all folks, but I wait definitively a good image.module in 2006 for the 4.7 version.

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

I predict that the "wannahavs" won't die out in 2006 and will still annoy developers...
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clo75’s picture

If it was the case we would have a useful image module since several years in Drupal...

I aware that none of my request will see the light of the day in 2006...

So developers live in their own world, they are not annoyed at all

Heine’s picture

Clo75,

Just because image module doesn't seem to work for you doesn't mean image module isn't useful (admitted +img assist is much better). Note that this thread is titled prediction not wishlist.

So, do you want to focus on your problem?

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When your problem is solved, please post a follow-up to the thread you started or consider submitting it to the Troubleshooting FAQ.

clo75’s picture

Sorry if this post doesn't conform with the title of the trhread. I like very much Drupal, and this it my favorite CMS.

But my own prediction is, if nothing was done in terme of more powerful image management, the upcoming ModX (Tatoo) and others CMS will be the stars of 2006, I'm afraid.

Heine’s picture

I think part of Clo75's frustration largly stems from an unanwered support request, but this is pure conjecture.

Allow me to rehash what I've written in another thread (post):

When I attended the DrupalCon in Amsterdam last year it quickly became clear to me that a lot of work is going into an installer and package manager, handling of media files, including images, and improving the user experience.

Most of this is hidden or unknown to the rest of the Drupal community. In case of image support, allow me to quote the Benevolent Dictator For Live, Dries Buytaert [8 Dec 2005] on the dev mailinglist:

I just wanted to add that better image handling (and inline support) is high on my list for inclusion in Drupal 4.8. In a couple weeks, we might be "shopping" for an image handling module for core. If you or someone else would like to see his or her image/document/inline/ upload module included in core, make sure it conforms Drupal's coding standards, that it is light-weight and cruft-free. I favor small modules with few settings and clean code. If someone wants to take a lead in this, and see his or her module in Drupal 4.8, let me know.

So there is a mailinglist for developers and one doesn't need to be subscribed to get an idea of what's going on, because there are archives.

Heine

To all you Guys & Girls for 2006: Let's make for a great community in 2006! Don't get caught by support-burnout!

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gtoddv’s picture

And many of the developers here must not have any professional experience. The folks behind ALL truely successful software are:

Business Analysts
Sales Force
Users
AND
Developers

In the real world (god forbid) the developer is on the bottom of the requirements team. (ego check, that is in process terms guys)

Developers just put it together, brilliantly most times, on the users behalf. If you don't care what the user wants, then why are you wasting your time? Unless of course, as I mentioned in a previous post, this software is always to remain a sort of geek-centric product.

The internet, heck the history of computing is strewn with technical coding achievements that never got anywhere, mostly because the developer was pleasing him/herself or there was no real need. Linux is a perfect example. Who cares how stable it can be if average joe can't use it? Still no wide-scale acceptance on the desktop. Gee, I wonder why? Pehaps because very few developers are trying to figure out how to make it so the public will accept and use it? (I know it's coming)

Everyone, we evidently need to stop concerning ourselves with core functionality for this CMS. The developers aren't interested. They are too busy going on trips so they can sit around patting each other on the back. God forbid the image module works. A modern CMS doesn't really need the ability to manage media effeciently. Foolproof installation, HA! who needs it.

Yes, this is some of the most brilliant software to arise from the opensource movement, that will go someday without even having to say (we aint there yet kids).

I am done with this type of topic for a while. While you are more than welcome to repond to me, I will not be commenting back. If you are a developer that can't stand the heat, take some time to re-evaluate your life. We have seen way to many thinner skinned users abandon this project due to the way they were treated by project members that either were never taught social skills or have forgotten them. If you don't have a public facing personality, do us all a favor and limit your direct communication with the users. We call it how we see it, and nothing anyone can say will change that.

And BTW, I love all of you! Peace.

Steven’s picture

You're missing the point. This thread is about predictions for 2006 and many people are treating it as a feature wishlist.

If you want to report bugs, request features or make other suggestions, there are much more appropriate places to do so than in an off-topic thread. Some people seem to see every Drupal.org post as an opportunity to nag about their favorite features. This is what annoys developers.

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gtoddv’s picture

entirely with you. I also don't think I am missing the point. If users actually felt that they're concerns were addressed using a particular method or forum, you wouldn't be getting the cross talk/posting. Predictions for a coming year are reasonably akin to a desire to see something occur, it is just a matter of vocabulary.

Forums are notoriaously bad for many types of communication. That is why there is room for so many other forms (email, issues tracking, etc). From a knowledge management standpoint they are a nightmare unless you have an extremely disciplined user base and a very well defined and understood taxonomy. And to that point, if I, or someone else didn't understand intent of a message, perhaps it is the type of communication used that is obfuscating the message.

I am not sure I made a point here. I predict that I will.

gtoddv’s picture

If you are annoyed by users, you are in the wrong business.

Brian@brianpuccio.net’s picture

That's your problem, Drupal isn't in business to create a CMS for you. Assuming that Drupal and its developers are in business to make you happy is a pretty crazy assumption.

gtoddv’s picture

All this work is just some dead end proof of concept? You are missing the point entirely. Folks don't spend all this time with a piece of software just for the crap of it. Of course Drupal is 'business-like', how do you think they have gotten where they are so far? The controls they use, processes, etc, these aren't academic, they come from the business world. If you were really just goofing around (as you might have us assume) then CVS and patches would be the first or second things to go. The common library of modules would be on the chopping block too.

And certainly Drupal would be stiffling all the commercial success it is achieving, (given your comment of course). They would be doing their best to make sure that nobody could possibily profit from the work.

And I never once mentioned that they were making it for ME. That would be awfully kind of them, but not nececassary.

A small group of us actaully use Drupal in robost, mission-critical environments. And we have never been discouraged to do otherwise, in fact we have been encouraged. We AREN'T just putting up our little college blog or gaming portal. We do real business, social, and knowledge management applications of Drupal. This isn't a game. I don't know what parts of the forums you provide assistance, but you need to read around a bit more and see what's really going on.

eaton’s picture

To summarize: I have a to-do list of things that are critical to me, and I'm working on them. You have a to-do-list of things that are critical to you, and you are asking me to work on them. Naturally, my list is a higher priority to me.

--
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--
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killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Thanks for your concern, but I am doing quite ok in my business. Maybe that is because I don't have to deal with end users a lot. Or maybe it is because the people making requests also pay invoices. I don't know.
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eaton’s picture

...How much the paid invoices make lots of feature requests a lot less frustrating. :)

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nathandigriz’s picture

I predict that drupal.org will grow but use of drupal.org will suddenly flatten:

1]when users grow more frustrated with the threaded forum, lack of paging and the 200 post bug.

2]users will grow tired of the irrelevant hits in the site search and become more dependant on Google and MSN.

3] Google and MSN use will make users see that drupal.org is not the only source of information. They will migrate out and start forming smaller organic groups surrounding the use of individual module sets like CivicCRM and Ecommerce.

4] Drupal core developers will start being more talkative as the number support convos flatten and the number of returning users just talking about drupal increases.

5] the drupal developer mailing list will double suddenly for no apparent reason.

6] Ruby 2.0 will release and a ruby on rails clone of Drupal will appear as a result of the Google Summer of Code 2.

7]Druplicon will appear on a tee shirt of a hot babe in a unsucessful compu/sci-fi series.

8] In an attempt to revitalize the Firefox movement Mozilla will sponser a contest for a new Drupal theme. This will draw the attention of other open source CMs and lines will be drawn. A new contest will come about. The winning cms will get spreadfirefox.com for a year. Drupal will come close but will loose out to Civicspace which will have perfect PostGreSQL functionality. Typo3 4.0 will come in second and all will boo when PHPnuke comes in 5 place.

gtoddv’s picture

I think I love you.

dado’s picture

(1) people will really begin to make money on Drupal
(2) More than linear growth in posts and membership
(3) Google will drop, MSN will rise
(4) an HTML scraper module will be contributed [almost done]
(5) the Drupal community will organize better, with more team contributions & fewer individual contributions
(6) several commercial theme-producing outfits will spring up
(7) people will begin to get medical information from drupal sites

dado
http://schtickdisc.org

ahashim’s picture

1-Drupal will have a good support and if any body post a forum topic he/she will find a reply.

2-If anyone can't get help from drupal.org and go to the IRC he/she can find a kind people who help.

3-Drupal support still free.

4-Drupal using AJAX

5-Drupal.org offer a drupal hosting Free or Not Free.

6-Drupal.org try to gather the big numbers of modules into the core.

7-Drupal.org make a conference in Egypt.

8-Drupal.org hire a big team to add all expected features in drupal, donations will pay for the developers.

9-New features in Drupal:-
(Spell Checker,Powerful Chat,Complete Notification module)

--
Ahmed Hashim
Egypt

nathandigriz’s picture

civicspace will development suddenly seperate and out pace Drupal development in 2006. they will contribute but not all contributions will be compatible and will require more work from Drupal developers.

civicspacelabs will start using vBulletin or Simple Machines Forum

civicspace will try and merge Drupal into its organization and be rejected. Drupal will opt to start its own Association but lacking the backing of a large company or Civicspace this will not happen in 2006.

civicspace will suddenly start growing as a result of donations and contributions that would have gone to the Drupal Association.

2006-2007 prediction - civicspace and Drupal will have seperate codebases as the result of a major core change in Civicspace to use PostGreSQL rather than MySQL as the first choice of database. This is the result of MySQL being bought by Oracle in late 2006.

civicspace will get a major template engine change and go with all CSS themeing. (More form my wish list than anything else)

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Interesting thought but I think ths really won't happen. It is more likely I code an installer. :-D
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gtoddv’s picture

Teasing isn't fair ;)

gtoddv
*member of drupalites for a wizard based installer.

kohlerj’s picture

1) Drupal will "get" internationalisation in a big way
2) Forums will become more forum-like
3) Wikifying Drupal will be real easy - A wiki module with features such as:
- any node type can be flagged/tagged as "wiki"
- duplicate title checking (a.k.a. disambiguation) during form validation stage

killes@www.drop.org’s picture

Don't you think that we had asked for a wishlist if we wanted one?
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eaton’s picture

...That in 2006 many many people will post many many feature requests. ;)

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killes@www.drop.org’s picture

That's ok with me, some of them are really nice ideas. But we have a feature tracker for them.
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