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Drupal Podcast No. 57: Should I Start Building Drupal 6 Sites Yet?
April 23, 2008
- Artist: Lullabot
- Title: Drupal Podcast No. 57: Should I Start Building Drupal 6 Sites Yet?
- Album: Drupal Podcast
- Track: 57
- Year: 2008
- Length: 71:13 minutes (16.8 MB)
- Format: Mono 22kHz 32Kbps (VBR)
Angie Byron, Addi Berry, Jeff Eaton, Nate Haug, James Walker and Jeff Robbins catching up with Drupal news and announcements and attempt to answer the question: "Is it time to start building Drupal 6 sites?"
Comments on this post will automatically be closed three months from the original post date.
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But what's the answer?
But what's the answer? Do I have to listen to 71 minutes to find out?
No
No, just 52 mins in :)
indeed you have to listen to
indeed you have to listen to every second of all sorts of ads for their $$$ workshop and books and dvds
want follow up ? move on, this is not a place to debate nor a support forum, once the podcast is posted don't expect much discussion about its subject
i used to love lullabot.com but the more i listen to the podcast, the more i'm sad about their emptyness
jeff, are you part of those people more interested in maintaining the business revenue that Drupal provides to them, rather than producing a better CMS ?
C'mon
I've been listening to the Lullabot podcasts for a few months now and thoroughly enjoy them. I haven't dived into Drupal yet but the more I hear, the more excited I am about doing so.
If you think you can do better, then what's stopping you going ahead and starting your own podcast?
What has caused your bad mood, anonymous?
If you are interested in a better CMS, criticizing developers seems a strange move. Perhaps you are frustrated because you have posted questions on this or other websites that have never been answered? Join the club. I sympathise with your trauma, but remember, your post is causing trauma for others.
What a strange comment.
What a strange comment. Those workshops, books, and DVDs provide value to those working with Drupal who choose to pay for the value. Sure, you could spend 2.5 years reading the Drupal source code, or you could go to one of the workshops and be ready to start producing in a week. It's your choice.
No one's forcing you to listen to their podcast.
And from your last comment...you obviously haven't met Jeff!
That comment is really
That comment is really unfair. The Lullabot team is clearly working hard to provide a well-rounded set of courses and materials to help people become proficient with drupal, while being active developers at the same time. They have every right to take pride in their efforts. It's their podcast, and they're talking about their projects. Notice also that they give plenty of promotion to free/open/community projects.
taxonomy/term/14 ROCKS!!!!!!!
Thank goodness I finally found http://drupal.org/taxonomy/term/14 I've been looking for this on drupal.org for ages and presumed it didn't exist. This rocks!!!!
Real shame about Drupal 6 lacking Views it's really been holding things back, I've been waiting for it and testing the beta's for a while now. Hoping that Drupal 7 will have some views stuff in core to make it easier in the future. Guess the majority of the wait is due to the rewrite on Views.
In my cirumstances the
In my cirumstances the answer was NO. I have 3 of my personal sites running in D6 and its been a pain in the ass, the menu system is buggy and instable among other things.
Needless to say for a client I am still sticking to D5.xx
great pronunciation
Thanks for spreading the Drupalcon love :) Great pronunciation of Szeged! Love your perspective on the con. Go Addison, we will test your Hungarian here! ;)
Jumpstarting Drupal
Looks like this is a great year for the Lullabots, a DVD and a book WOW!
I think that publishing a DVD like Understanding Drupal is good for us (the community) too. The more exposure Drupal can get the better, and yes, it's for company owners, for bosses, for educators, for developers, for designers and, of course, for users.
We are visual people, I like learning by watching a video (thanks Addi), there are other frameworks/cms that became very popular by using screencasts.
So, by promoting a DVD or a book, by showing portfolios, themes and designs, we are investing in ourselves and our future.
Thanks,
Paco
speed of Drupal development
thanks for raising this issue. i know there's been plenty of community discussion about this in the past, but this podcast is a good context to raise the general issue again of the speed of core development.
when CCK and Views are not stable many months after a new major version of core, that seems seriously problematic. as mentioned in your podcast, the delay of these "pillars of Drupal" holds back many other contributed modules as well. (and as CCK and Views move into core, let's assume there will be other "crucial" contrib modules that take their place.)
i'm building a few Drupal sites currently. it's painful to be putting so much work into Drupal 5 with Drupal 6 already out of the gates, but our hands are severely tied without the support of most contributed modules.
can the greater community simply not keep up with development of Drupal core?
You shouldn't have mentioned
You shouldn't have mentioned the "Jumpstart" book. September!? *whines* I want it now!
Sure it is.
I haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast yet, but I totally think it's time to start building Drupal 6 sites. Drupal 6 is great.
Deprecated modules...
You touched on deprecated modules again (I listened with great interest to podcast 38) - I wasted over a month - let's re-phrase - I extended my introductory drupal learning experience by over a month setting up a site using Image, Event, and other "node-type" modules before finally caving in to use CCK. But I've never looked back - CCK is totally the right way to go IMHO. The problem is just as Jeff said - when you are new, and you want images on your site, you install the Image module right? You want an events calendar? Install Event.
Matters are worse for the newbie because CCK is very abstract, so its purpose and benefits are not apparent. I have no excuse - being a developer, I should have seen what CCK was right away - but the fact I didn't says something.
The BIG PROBLEM with using node-type modules, like Image and Event, is that you are buying in to their framework in a big way - there is no migration path out once you buy in. That said, the BIG ADVANTAGE of using node-type modules is that they are simple to install, configure, and understand - they do one thing and do it well.
The BIG ANSWER? Must be to re-develop Image, Event, and other node-type modules to actually use CCK. At least if an "Image node" was just a node with a CCK image field, then you could migrate out anytime and take your data with you.
I know this is not an original idea, and that there are some issues with this approach, but I'd be very interested in hearing about movement in this direction. I do think that the plethora of options is both a strength and weakness of Drupal - very daunting for the new comer.
One last plug - folks should write reviews for the modules they use and have evaluated at http://drupalmodules.com/ - this could be a very very valuable tool for our community and especially new users - if the community can build up a database of reviews, it will make choosing the appropriate module much easier.
Also, have you tried the Module Finder? http://drupalmodules.com/module-finder it is awesome!
thanks for another great podcast.
You're right on
I think we touched on this (did we? my memory is awful), but this is exactly the kind of plan that Nate and I have been discussing: namely repurposing the "Image" namespace for a field-level data object - and provide upgrade paths from the old way.
Jeff, don't listen to the grumblers
Just want to weigh in with my appreciation for the Drupal Podcasts. They have been a huge help to me as I climbed the Drupal learning curve. Thanks guys, keep it up!
Thanks for the mention of TNT!
I think you guys get the record for the most mentions of our name ;)
But seriously, much appreciated, and we're very excited to be filling the gap for something between a free/near free theme and something completely custom. I think the Drupal community has needed it for a long time.
~ Stephanie
Drupal themes at TopNotchThemes.com
Not Yet
I spent a few months working out whether to use Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress or CMSMS. I decided on Drupal and as D6 was going to be imminently released I waited for it to come out and then put out two client sites and two personal sites using it.
This was a mistake. The sites that I have done can 'get by' with the limited module selection that Drupal 6 has; but only just. Now development on the sites is on hold while I wait for some modules to get upgraded to 6.
I think that the D7 release should really be held back until the 'critical' list of modules is available. The obvious ones like cck, views etc. need to be ready, but also modules like google xml sitemaps and mailhandler are very important.
You could say that I didnt do my homework properly but I put a lot of time into choosing a CMS, then just went for the latest version. I am now doing sites in D5 and have wasted quite a lot of time and had quite a lot of frustration with D6.
I would not recommend D6 to anyone yet and if you are new to Drupal then taking the D6 route might just put you off
Everything can be built w/ CCK and views if you are a developer
Toward the end of the podcast there was a discussion going on about the bigger monolithic modules and replicating them with CCK and views. While I agree with this, there is something missing. CCK and Views are good news for site builders savvy in the way these different "proteins" can be assembled into a website life form. For the rest of us that don't build sites for a living, working at that level can be tiresome. There is a lot to know when considering the best way to do something using Views and CCK. The main site that I volunteer for is still based on Drupal 4.7. I love audio and the playlist modules and while this functionality can be duplicated with CCK, Views, and some cool CCK fields, there must be a better way for us part timers to leverage Drupal web developer knowledge.
There should be something like mini-templates that allows one to package up a bunch of CCK nodes, fields, and Views that can be instantiated on a site. These would be installed like modules are today. After installation, you have all the new CCK node types, views, and blocks created for you without having to be an expert in creating them all manually. That way developers can still work at the protein level and the rest of us can use the cells that they create as the building blocks for our sites.
I put this suggestion in Dries' new company suggestion box. I am putting this comment here since this audience may be in a similar position as myself in that maybe you don't build websites for a living.
Perhaps the Lullabotians can discuss this in a future podcast.
Thanks for reading.
Rich
PS: Hmm, maybe the mini-templates should be called CCK and Views DNA
You should start by looking
You should start by looking at Installation profiles:
http://drupal.org/project/Installation+profiles
Thanks Lullabot
I've been listening since podcast #1 and it is a great resource. Plus you folks always crack me up. So thanks for keeping it going. And hell yes to any advertising Lullabot does on its own podcast! Lullabot's growth has been inspirational. Plus I see you are using mollom.
invaluable
I just wanted to chime in with support for Lullabot. Not only are you guys totally inspirational, you've also been an invaluable resource to myself and my team in our own Drupal development.
What was this podcast about again
40 minutes into this podcast playing in the background I had to check if I was listening to the correct one. The first 50 minutes was unrelated to the topic. Couldn't this have been divided into more than one podcast?
But anyway, thanks for the podcast.