High and Dry with an Old Version

By Eliyahu on 9 Jun 2006 at 13:20 UTC

I am new here and I have two questions.

1. Which version of drupal should I install? Some of the modules I think I would need to use only work with 4.6. 2.How does one prevent from investing time and data in a module and then being left high and dry without an upgrade?

Comments

which module..

Dublin Drupaller commented 9 June 2006 at 13:38

Hi Eliyahu..

Which module(s) in particular are you stuck with?

to answer your question, 4.7 is looking really good. It's not a huge leap from 4.6.2..but there are a number of changes in there that makes it worthwhile.

the only sticky problem I'm running into is making the leap from flexinode.module (that is clearly flagged as being phased out) to cck.module (which isn't quite ready yet with fields).

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

I haven’t started to use

Eliyahu commented 9 June 2006 at 14:38

I haven’t started to use drupal yet but this whole idea of cutting edge progress on the one hand and being dependent on old modules, on the other, seems a little disheartening. I imagine a scenario where one creates a huge mp3 store and then the rest of their site is stuck in a version for years because the store module does not upgrade. I understand you can pay to get work done but is there a way to protect yourself? At what point does a good module become part of the core code? Is there a way to determine a “strong” module so you don’t wind up with a dead horse?

I see what you mean..

Dublin Drupaller commented 9 June 2006 at 16:00

Hi Eliyahu,

I see what you mean.

The trick is to plan as tightly around the core modules as possible and plan your project well.

For example, from a planning point of view, contributed (add-on) modules usually fall into 2 main categories

1. Functionality driven.

2. This makes things easier.

The functionality modules are necessary, if you want your site to do something. the "make things easier" modules are, generally, not necessary.

As an example, I maintain the front_page.module, which makes it very easy to setup a specific and different front page to your site for anonymous and authenticated (logged in) users. I have also explained how to do the exact same, without having to install the module.

I hope that makes sense.

I tend to create a test site and play around with modules I think I need and then work out if there is a way of achieving the same result without the modules. Hence the PHP page Snippets, which if you can get around the concept (if I can understand it anyone can), can help reduce the amount of modules you need, because a lot of modules are about pulling specific content from your database, in a specific way.

For working out which modules are better maintained than others...that's a tough one. Obviously the more popular a module is, the more likely it will be updated, but, you can check yourself to see how quickly bugs and issues are sorted or simply email the module maintainer/owner.

it requires a bit of digging....but, the alternative is to opt for a commercially driven Web 2.0. tool. i.e. you simply pay for the updates. You can pay developers on here as well if you're stuck...but it's quite rare that I have noticed anyone asking for help with an upgrade of a module being "held to ransom" and being forced to pay...

I hope that makes sense....and answers your question to some degree.... to be honest, I have looked at a lot of web 2.0 tools out there..some commercial and some open source and none come even close to the depth and strength of Drupal. For what it's worth, the spirit on the forums is very good.

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Thanks for the info. It was

Eliyahu commented 10 June 2006 at 19:22

Thanks for the info. It was very helpful

Betting on CivicSpace

Eliyahu commented 11 June 2006 at 15:17

How safe is it to take the plunge with CivicSpace http://drupal.org/node/26622 ?
Quote:

"A further advantage is that all of these modules are included in the upgrade scripts when new CivicSpace releases come out. If you were to build a similar system with Drupal core and add the list of modules above, you would have much more work to do when upgrading to new Drupal releases as each and every module would have to be upgraded individually."

Is this the right horse to bet on?

not me..

Dublin Drupaller commented 11 June 2006 at 15:37

Hi Eliyahu,

Some of the stuff the civicspace guys comes up with is great....but it's not a horse I tend to back because it's, inevitably, a few lengths behind Drupal.

Having said that I don't work in political circles that would require the civicspace distribution...if it was a music orientated release, I might look on it differently, though. In other words, I wouldn't find a lot of those extra modules and tweaks useful as they are.

From a bigger picture point of view, I'm slightly against spin-offs like that, as it confuses and dilutes the core Drupal code. i.e. civicspace tends to lag behind Drupal a bit, so modules you find on here, or on civicspace tend not to be as interchangable as they might be, so not only is there a scattering of ideas, there's also a scattering of developers.

I'd prefer to see one Drupal development site, so Drupallers can find it easy to keep in touch with what's going on and Drupal developers can see if someone has already developed something similar or are working on the same idea, for example.

There are some great ideas coming from civicspace contributions, but, because it's essentially a spin-off, there is a lag between the ideas coming across to Drupal. or vice versa...

Which is a great pity. if some of those networking/campaign tools were developed from a generic + drupal perspective, they could be used in a lot of applications outside civicspace's core area, they would be more widely used, they would add value to the over all contributions section and they would have a much larger community to rely on for updates.

That's just my opinion. I think the dangers in projects like this is that you can end up with a lot of spin offs. It's a natural progression, of course, but, if people stood back and looked at the bigger picture, there is a very compelling argument against spin-off projectsand keeping the core values intact...i.e. Drupal being the heart and soul of the project.

Another domino effect of spin offs, is that they inevitably evolve into commercial enterprises...i.e. spin-offs are niche distributions, servicing a niche market and niche community of users...and the fuzzy lines between open source and commercial tendancies start getting crossed and things go awry.

That's why I stick to Drupal.org and the Drupal distribution of Drupal.

As I say, that's just my own humble opinion...i can imagine there must be an intense urge for people to start creating music distributions, club distributions, shop distributions, school distributions...which all sounds great on paper but it's far smarter to keep it all under the one umbrella. Because a music distribution will have aspects that the civicspace distribution would find useful and the other way around, the music distributions would find some of the political orientated distributions valuable.

So instead of having 12 modules that do more or less the same thing...you end up with all those developers working on creating 1 superb module..that can be used for all applications.

hope that makes sense..

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Thanks

Eliyahu commented 11 June 2006 at 20:41

Thank you for your input. Up until now my forums were using a hosted solution and they have kidnapped me with six months of promises about a super product that no man has ever seen and most likely never will. If it ever gets released there is no backwards compatibility and no API which I have already built on so I am quite frustrated and weary about using software that is leads to noware (I just thought of that one). So I have decided that I want to stay as close to the core as possible yet I need some of the 3rd party modules. Do you have any extra suggestions on how to stay safe?

Two sites with Two Versions

Eliyahu commented 11 June 2006 at 20:57

What about the idea of creating one site with only core moudules and making a seperate site for the functions of the 3rd party modules and some how linking them together. This way the "main" site wouldn't get stuck in an older version. Is such a thing possible? Could the logins and the membership be the same?

Wait, what?

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 11 June 2006 at 21:11

From a bigger picture point of view, I'm slightly against spin-offs like that, as it confuses and dilutes the core Drupal code. i.e. civicspace tends to lag behind Drupal a bit, so modules you find on here, or on civicspace tend not to be as interchangable as they might be, so not only is there a scattering of ideas, there's also a scattering of developers.

Sorry, but this struck me as odd?

CivicSpace is just Drupal 4.6 + about 30 contrib modules + a graphical installer. It's not a "spin-off" of Drupal: it's 100% Drupal core code and contrib modules that you or I could download from CVS, just packaged up nice to make it easier for new users. 4.6 contrib modules from Drupal.org work with it just fine.

And in no way does CivicSpace contribute to some kind of "diluting" of either developers or Drupal; quite the opposite. CivicSpace uses the Drupal.org infrastructure for doing everything from writing module documentation to submitting updates and fixes for modules used in the distribution, etc. When I go in and fix or update a module for the CivicSpace distribution, that patch goes into the Drupal.org issue tracker for that module (or is committed directly to CVS if the module is one we happen to maintain). Similarly, with each new release, we get to benefit from fixes and updates that other people have committed.

The only reason CivicSpace "lags" behind Drupal a bit is because there is not (yet) a 4.7-based CivicSpace version, though it's in the works and should be released soon (again, see the fact that there are 30 contrib modules that have to be upgraded ;)).

Just wanted to clear up any potential misunderstanding on this point. There may well be other "spin-off" projects that are somehow leeching off Drupal, but CivicSpace is definitely not one of them.

there's no misunderstanding..

Dublin Drupaller commented 15 June 2006 at 16:16

Hiya Webchick,

There's no misunderstanding. I'm merely pointing out that I don't think spin offs are a good idea.

That's just my humble opinion, I'm sorta against any scattering of development, ideas and contributions in general and prefer to see attempts to harness sub-community development in a specific niche, rather than scatter it.

The reason is because functionality that will work for music sites, might work very well with political sites and vise versa. The natural progression, when development and the community becomes scattered like that, is to develop music modules for a music distribution...political modules for political related distributions, educational modules for educational distributions etcetera.....not generic functionality modules that may apply to all distributions. i.e. a community member of a spin-off distribution would tend to develop a module for that community. For that application.

Confusion reigns because civicspace is marketted and branded as if it's a CMS tool on it's own..for example on http://opensourcecms.com/ Drupal gets listed alongside Civicspace. It wasn't until I pointed out to the site editor that it's actually the same thing, that he inserted a note on the Civicspace page profile to indicate that it's actually a custom distribution of Drupal.

Another domino effect of spin-off or break away communities is the demise of Drupal.org and the Drupal.org documentation is a great example. Drupallers are more prone to update their own blog/site/tips and tricks site rather than contribute to Drupal.org. That's a very slippery slope, because as soon as people realise that they don't get any visible credit on a Drupal handbook page..but they do if the tips and tricks, or sexy module is on their own site, a patterm evolves into a trend and we end up with weak documentation/tips n tricks etc. because the spin off mini-communities are drawing others away from the core community.

I'm not disputing that great stuff comes from spin-off projects like civicspace. But when you step back and look at the bigger picture, it's smarter to harness the community, rather than allow it to scatter and there's no reason why we can't add a distribution folder to the Contributions respository..e.g.

/core Drupal distribution/
../music dist/,
../civic dist/,
../educational dist/

Connecting that to groups.drupal.org makes much more logical sense, to me, than allowing the community to scatter to the four corners of the web.

Having said that, I've raised this before and was shouted down..so I'll leave it at that, Webchick. Just wanted to point out that there was no misunderstanding. I just have a different view of the bigger picture.

Cheers

Dub

Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate

Yeah, I gave up on Drupal...

macgirvin commented 15 June 2006 at 15:43

One of the biggest issues with Drupal is the synch (or lack thereof) between module development and the main releases. The bugs which you think are critical often end up being assigned to the newest person to take over an orphaned module - and they are doing the module work based on their own agenda; not yours.

I started last November to put together a Drupal site which met my personal requirements. After three months, I realized that I could write my own community cms quicker than I could get all of the important Drupal issues resolved. This path isn't for everybody, but it brought my project to completion while many of those Drupal issues are still being discussed and debated. This highlights some of the problems associated with trying to use a suite of inter-related modules which all have their own bugs and development timelines.

Drupal is a wonderful solution for a turn-key site, when you are able to use existing modules off the shelf. I would use it for that in a heartbeat. But if you need some very specific features, it might pay to explore all the available options - and that might lead you down a different path.

You can find me at Nerdcom.com - which is one particular face of a community network of about a dozen websites and is no longer Drupal based.