Drupal 7 Released

Drupal version 7 was released on January 5th, 2011. As someone who considers Drupal to be one of the best Open Source content management systems available, this was an exciting development for me. I have already started using it when and where possible, including rebuilding this website. Here are my initial impressions.

More Intuitive Interface

Drupal has for a long time been one of the most flexible and extendible CMSs, but has suffered from an unnecessarily confusing user interface. Once you log on, Drupal 7 displays a toolbar at the top of the browser window showing the main categories for administration functions. These are grouped in a much more logical fashion than in Drupal 6 making it far more intuitive to find all the various configuration settings. The administration panels are shown in overlay and, assuming you use the default administration theme, have a consistent appearance. There is a second toolbar on which you can place direct shortcuts to the administration functions you need to access frequently. In general, there is much greater use of drag and drop, giving an interface much more attuned with people's general expectations of windowed computing environments.

Most Popular Modules Now in Core

Many of the most popular (and in my opinion, essential) modules have been integrated into the Drupal core. Examples include: CCK for creating custom content types; Poormanscron, for running regular maintenance tasks on shared hosting with no cron facility; and Imagecache, which automatically adjusts uploaded images to preset parameters such as size and orientation. There is an official list of obsoleted modules on the official Drupal website. The result of all of this is that it is now possible to build a comprehensive site with only a few add on modules.

The Views module is still an add-on (and an essential companion to CCK in my humble opinion).

Quicker Setup & Maintenance

Installing a site is much easier, without the need to create a settings.php file and get into the inevitable tangle with permission problems. The install wizard requires only one page of information and once it has finished, you actually have something you can use straight out of the proverbial box; with Drupal 6, it was necessary to do quite a bit more work before you actually had a website.

For more advanced users, install profiles now work like modules. Install profiles were always one of those great ideas that weren't particularly practical in the real world. I have yet to see if this improvement lures me.

Drupal 7 has removed a number of complications in doing routine maintenance. It has significantly better module management. It is now possible to both add and update modules via the user interface rather than by FTP (although you can still do it this way if you prefer). Once a code update has taken place, any necessary database updates are run automatically. It was always possible to do this with Drush, but adding the functionality to the user interface could place much more basic maintenance in the hands of the end user. The downside of this is it also gives the end user much more opportunity to break their site.

Teething Troubles!

I have seen Drupal 7 throw out a few obscure Ajax errors whilst using the administration interface. Apart from the slightly unprofessional look this creates, there doesn't seem to have been any real problem occurring. Hopefully, this will be fixed shortly.

The main problem with using this new version is that so many of the user-contributed modules require updating before they can be used. Whilst many contributors pledged (and managed) to update their modules in line with the Drupal 7 release date, most did not. This is not surprising; people are not paid for doing this and no doubt have day jobs! I have found in one or two cases I have resorted to making quick and dirty ported versions myself. The Open Source solution here is clearly, "stop moaning and start contributing." Those who are not capable of this may find Drupal 7 a bit limited for a while.

Since I generally do my own theming, lack of updates to themes is not a concern. However, those who cannot do this themselves may find this frustrating.

Conclusion

Drupal 7 is very new and needs a little time to settle in. However, it has been significantly overhauled and many irritations and shortcomings have been eliminated. It is now much easier to get a straight-forward site up and running.

I will have to see whether I have any reason at all to continue using Wordpress for smaller projects.