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And now for something completely different: Drupal - the quiet revolution

Fri, 2008-02-15 15:49 — victorkane

Like most people in the Drupal community, I have done my fair share of drooling over the Drupal 6.0 released milestone, and it is undoubtedly an awesome achievement. My impression is that it is a focused release, much better usability, from installation, to admin drag and drop, to password strength monitoring... to performance improvements. It kind of takes Drupal to the point of being more "together". Check it out (download) and see for yourself.

That said... I have a few thoughts to share, coming from one of the regular working stiffs who are actually working with Drupal in small independent shops to get sites out the door.

The best way of putting things is, like some wise man said, the new cannot arise until the old has been completely exhausted. Which is a euphemism for (and I quote myself):

Drooling aside, the "semi-core" indispensable modules won't be production ready for a few months yet. So our policy is, for the moment, build solidly with Drupal 5.x (85% of Drupal 6 stuff is available, in one form or another, in Drupal 5) and offer free upgrades to Drupal 6 (you done it in one big site, you done it in all your sites).

Another thing: the "old" Drupal has recently undergone a mind blowing jaw dropping quiet revolution, overshadowed by the Drupal 6.0 release, but of tremendous consequence to all working with this framework: many moons ago we could use, first cck + views, then i18n in Drupal 5.x; more recently, pathauto thoroughly renovated and ironed out, now we got FeedAPI + Feed Element Mapper, a now thoroughly usable Hierarchical Select for taxonomy browsing (works in exposed filters in views), Panels 2 and nodequeue (a quiet revolution in itself), and very soon Views 2, ... (and the list goes on).

This just goes to show the incredible power of the Drupal community and the product of its labor, the Drupal CMS and Web Application Framework. Panels 2 absolutely revolutionizes the way people can work with layouts in Drupal, practically overriding (but still able to utilize) the old block system, for example. Will definitely be one of my topics coming up shortly.

Actually I will be writing a series of "quiet revolution" articles on how I have used a number of really mind blowing recent developments in Drupal modules to get stuff done. I think it will stand in refreshing contrast to some of the we hope not overrated excitement concerning certain stock market speculation bubbles which are emerging here and there. We hope the cute little Drupal "drop" will not become, in some circles at any rate, a huge bloated balloon being bounced around all the speculation and venture capital venues all dressed up with nowhere to go in the context of the looming U.S. and hence world recession, and in the face of a challenging world for techies: the Yahoo layoffs, for a start... the destruction of whole companies looming under the guise of hostile takeovers (like (Microsoft || Murdoch) && Yahoo)... someone has to say it :) ... enough said for present, let's see how this pans out...

So, as I said I will be writing a series of articles, and the first one will be:

Taxonomy reconsidered (or how I overcame bloated cck nodereference abuse)

which will explain powerful 5.x mashups based on a number of modules and tools, together with a concept: RDF, XML in general, OPML in particular, FOF... working with pure hierarchies is powerful stuff! And Drupal (the "old" Drupal) has got it right under the hood (plus views :). And the tools to match:

...the quiet revolution...

 

 

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Module Compatibility

Submitted by mike (not verified) on Sat, 2008-02-16 12:44.

I started working on a Drupal 6 upgrade for one of my s sites and I ran into some major problems with module compatibility. I'm using some very common and basic contributed modules, such as User Points, Buddy List, BBCode, AdSense, and Twitter, all of which are incompatible with 6.0. My other sites use even more modules, including Views & CCK which are even more broken with 6.0.

Since Drupal 6 was in development for over a year, the module developers should have been working on compatibility at the same time. I would rather have seen the Drupal 6 release held until most contributed modules were ready.

It's not a bug, it's a feature...

Submitted by victorkane on Sat, 2008-02-16 13:34.

As a Drupal user, I understand where you are coming from, believe me. But I hope you will let me explain that it is not so much a question of module "incompatibility", as a question of progress having been made with the Drupal 6 release, and the need for modules to now take full advantage of that progress.

To get a clear picture of things, it's best to bear in mind that it is only when a release is actually made (or until a certain level of stability is reached) that module developers can really get to updating their modules. And what is at the heart of the matter is, that even though it sounds great to say "Drupal 6 released", and "a new release every year!", the truth is: it's ready when it's ready, as befits an Open Source project.

The reasons are many, but one of the most important is that the Drupal core is a very powerful platform, and Drupal 6 has added a whole lot of good stuff which module developers need to learn and take advantage of.

And it will all be ready when the most important core modules are Drupal 6 ready. They will be ready when they are ready. That's all good.

So, my advice is, do what you should do on every Open Source project: use the latest stable version, both of Drupal core and contributed modules. Including stuff recently added, they form a formidable, solid array of features.

And as I said in my article, with the exception of some admittedly very cool stuff (including the awesome Theme developer module, which I forgot to mention: http://drupal.org/node/209561 ), 85% of new stuff is backported.

Just to clarify...

Submitted by Michelle (not verified) on Sat, 2008-02-16 01:44.

Views 2 will be for 6.x, not 5.x.

Michelle

That's entirely correct, Michelle

Submitted by victorkane on Sat, 2008-02-16 06:50.

Thanks for pointing that out.

But what I am actually trying to underline, in this "Drupal, the quiet revolution" aspect of rejoicing about Drupal, is that there is a line of progress which is independent of the question of official releases.

When Views 2 comes out, assuming what is tantamount to CCK 2 is Drupal 6 ready (and Panels 2 also, since that has come to the fore), then we should all move to Drupal 6 directly. That is why I am offering a free upgrade to Drupal 6 to my clients.

But then there is a line of progress in the big "non-core" modules which is above and beyond Drupal 6 per se. CCK is evolving and will do things like separate widgets rendering from the actual content of the field. Views is evolving and will have a special interface. And Panels will also enjoy its evolution (additional documentation hopefully). This is a jump in quality which is independent of the question of the Drupal 6 or 7 thing, and which is essential for people who need a stable foundation upon which to work.

Woot, Hierarchical Select!

Submitted by Wim Leers (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-15 21:58.

My module is considered to be part of a quiet revolution? Woot! :) Looking forward to your "Taxonomy reconsidered" article! :)

Your module rocks!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 2008-02-18 08:17.

Hi Wim,
I have to salute to your module it came just in time when I needed a mechanizm to tag a real killer hierarchical taxonomy consisting of hundreds of items.
This saved custom building my own - cool stuff.

Victor, Thanks for the writeup looking forward to revolutions in any volume :)

nice post! keep up! im

Submitted by dax (not verified) on Thu, 2008-06-12 04:42.

nice post! keep up! im looking forward to read more from you!