Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Backdrop, is it for you?
Who is this for?
(Evaluators, site visitors, content authors, site managers, (advanced) site builders, developers, core developers, site owners, other.
Result: learn about Backdrop and discuss
This will help people decide if Backdrop is for them
To each situation, their own solution
Decide for yourself if Backdrop is for you.
Backdrop is somewhat similar to Drupal 7 and has some things from Drupal 8, but it is not Drupal 8 and it is not Drupal 7.
So what is it?
I only know what it is not.
It is not a drop in replacement for Drupal 7.
It does handle translation , but not entity_translation
What does this mean?
Backdrop supports translation similar to how Drupal 6 does translation, before entity_translation was stable in Drupal 7, this was the only option. Entity translation means one single node id, many languages, however the Drupal 6/Backdrop way of translation is many node IDs, many languages, linked with a tnid value and language.
So, 23,000 installs of Entity translation means that none of these will install on backdrop even after the work that needs to be done to convert your custom modules over to backdrop.
So, why Backdrop?
Backdrop if you do not want Symfony and want something different and you are fine with the Drupal 6 approach to Translation of nodes and taxonomy terms.
All of my sites use Entity translation therefore it's off my list.
Comments
Comment #2
joseph.olstadComment #3
cilefen commentedThis issue queue is:
Comment #4
aaronmchaleEvaluating this issue simply on its own merits, and based on what's currently in the summary, it's not entirely clear what the expected outcome of this ideas issue is.
Given that is was created off of the discussion in #3408125: Proposing a Drupal 7 Security team on Gitlab, as best I can tell, the point is to decide whether to recommend Backdrop CMS as one of the alternatives options for when Drupal 7 goes end of life. If that is indeed the case, then this may belong in the Documentation queue.
In any case, this isn't really an idea for Drupal core, so it probably doesn't belong here in the ideas queue.
The issue summary also talks a lot about one specific contrib module and the way Backdrop does translations as a reason that Backdrop may not be suitable for some sites. That covers only one use case though, the issue summary probably needs to present a more balanced perspective and talk about more use cases, so the summary could use some more work.
Comment #5
joseph.olstadPlease move this issue to the appropriate issue queue and update the issue summary as you see fit. I have no further opinions to share on Backdrop other than it's not a good fit for my projects, or for anyone else also using entity_translation due to the reasons that were outlined.
Comment #6
joseph.olstadComment #7
xjmBackdrop is not a Drupal product. It's a Backdrop product and it's not Drupal core's responsibility to document anything about it. They already document their own merits: https://backdropcms.org/
Closing (won't fix) as per #3.
Comment #8
xjm