So Drupal 5 has been out for a couple of months now but is it time to start your migration process?
Its ironic but in the last couple of months I have worked far more with Drupal 4.7 then 5, up until the launch of Drupal 5 I spent hours working with beta and RC builds checking compatibility and working on migration schemes to get our current sites, and our client sites over to the new Drupal as soon as possible, however as of today only venture-skills.co.uk and my own blog timnash.me.uk have been converted to the new version. Why you may ask well here are a couple of reasons.
- Module compatibility – This is still the biggest issue, but is on the whole being slowly sorted all the main modules are now ported including CCK, Views, E-commerce (now been released as an RC but has issues), pathauto
However many modules are sites rely on have yet to be ported, some will never be in these cases we have started work on porting the modules over ourselves. - Theme compatibility – Its amazing how time consuming the required theme changes are particularly on sites with custom nodes using CCK which are themed via template files. I’m pleased to report that their is rarely any problems but it does take time, also we try to maintain a MVC style approach to development so we have far more custom code in our template.php then most sites.
So will we be converting sites to Drupal 5?
Eventually but only as part of a natural update process most client sites will have been upgraded in the next 6/7 months and as of March the 5th we will stop developing Drupal 4.7 sites, the code library will be locked and no more modules will be added. As for Venture Skills main site it is being redeveloped with a new theme and features all using Drupal 5. New clients and sites will also all be using the new Drupal 5 code.
So If your converting what’s the benefits?
Its a little faster and makes less database calls which is a nice start, and has some fantastic new modules custom breadcrumb being a simple but brilliant example. It also has far better integration for CCK and custom nodes.Jquery support and Jscript tools expanded mean shiny AJAX out of the box. CSS caching and other performance based bits provide a much needed speed boost (but have caused some issues with design changes not being shown).
The future for Drupal
A couple of major things coming up for Drupal include a new update system for real time updates on your site for the core and modules and a new ecommerce system Ubercart to replace the ailing and often frustrating E-Commerce module a alpha release of which is now available thanks Ryan for the heads up. If your interested in Drupal we have a series of tutorials on using Drupal here at the venture skills blog, and also offer Drupal based site development at very reasonable cost 
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March 7, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Thanks for the nod here! Exciting happenings in the Ubercart camp… I was testing out fresh installs of our initial release before leaving work last night. Woohoo!
Anyways, for all its shine, it’s still an initial release with expected bugs and design changes, but I’m going to spend today working out the kinks and getting a store site for one of our companies setup using Drupal + Ubercart. I’ll be posting it in the news at our site as soon as it’s ready. (May be a few days while they fill it with their products.)
March 7, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Its good to here progress is being made, the current choices for Drupal are really to go down the e-commerce module, which for many people selling small products is fine, or looking to software like OS-Commerce which is a pig to set up and run and has very large overheads.
Good to see you Ryan keep up the great work.
March 20, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Hey, just wanted to post a quick comment to let you know we’ve got the initial release (dubbed alpha 1) out right now and are already using it for a live site. I’ve seen a couple other developers’ works in progress, and frankly… they’re much better than we are at theming. : P
March 20, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Thanks for the heads up Ryan I can’t wait to try it out, in fact I will test it this evening!
August 26, 2007 at 10:39 pm
The ammount of compatability breaks even on tiny numerical changes has long ago put me off ever installing Drupal. One day I looked at the code and found I was sitting there muttering “Oh. My. God.” and when I finally saw hard coding in core for a specific plugin and said out loud “what are they playing at?” (my wife wanted to know what I was talking about) I knew that Drupal and I were not even going to be on talking terms anymore. It had a lot of potential but…
August 27, 2007 at 5:48 pm
You would appear to be talking about a different product
Drupal 4.7 is the end of the 4 branch Drupal 5 is a huge step forward. Neither require hard coding for modules 
unlike WordPress for example. So either you came across a very badly coded module, or you misunderstood what you were meant to do.