General discussion

There's a host of small little things in 4.7 that I'd like to start using (password reset email, search, random other bug fixes that I've seen committed to HEAD). I get the feeling that upgrades aren't particularly automated anyway, Also, I've seen 2 references today to sites running HEAD. Is there a list of critical bugs left in 4.7 that need to be fixed before a release candidate is out? Has the database schema settled down? Are more features going in still? Can anyone provide any other advice or opinions on whether upgrading to current CVS is a good idea?

Has anyone used drupal when the {node} table has millions of nodes in it? I'm interested in using drupal for content which doesn't really fit the {node} schema very well (most of the data for these custom nodes would be in separate tables that I'd need to join to the node table when doing things). However, the application that I'm considering will eventually create hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of nodes. I'm wondering if this is possible/practical or if anyone's tried it before. Should I just keep my tables separate (and individually smaller?)

Following Dries' suggestion to run some benchmarks comparing Drupal's performance after an upgrade to 4.7 (CVS HEAD), I've gone ahead and collected some results.

I used general purpose testing machine with Apache 2.0.53, PHP 5.0.5, MySQL 5.0.15, and Zend Optimizer 2.5.7. The installation has 50 nodes, and 500 comments generated by devel.module.

The following values are in milliseconds.

Path: / (-9.4%)

            min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
4.6:        200 1142 518.2    981    4176
4.7:        380 1034 208.4   1021    1802

Path: /node/1 (-8.4%)

            min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
4.6:        210 1155 530.5    991    3755
4.7:        220 1058 313.4   1051    2473

Path: /tracker (-3.9%)

            min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
4.6:        200 1084 337.6   1011    2313
4.7:        230 1042 275.8   1031    1922

Path: /admin (+7.7%)

            min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
4.6:        220 1306 638.6   1071    4566
4.7:        210 1419 602.8   1261    4035

Path: /admin/modules (+16.4%)

            min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
4.6:        190  968 244.8    951    1932
4.7:        250 1158 379.0   1071    2493

[edit. I attached the raw logs. sorry, their order is not the best, despite I uploaded them in order. Also, they are from a previous run, smaller amount of content.

It's a beta, very beta, and is based on the movie review module which, in turn, is based on the book review module.

The front-end styles need a little cleaning up, but it's otherwise functional.

Don't ask me for support, because I will not be able to help- I just modified it from existing code... the 'easy bit' if you will. Suggestions, however, are welcome.

http://xbox360.gadgetoid.com/gamereview-4.6.0.tar.gz

Hi. I have usedDrupal to set up http://www.musikkmsjon.no/home/, but I can't get the mail-funtions to work. Any hints about where I o the setup ?

Post inspired by the interesting thread My honest impression about drupal.

I was already convinced that Drupal was the CMS I liked because I had been admin of drupal websites (installed by others) for a year. Then I decided to drupalise my own website. I have no clue about MySQL, and even ssh and the command line are not easy to me (cp, mkdir... such very basic things you don't need to know even if you are an advanced linux desktop user). My first Drupal installation took me like 4 hours, most of them spent in drupal.org and just googling in order to solve MySQL, PHP and Apache related problems I was causing with my ignorance. At the end of the day I couldn't believe I had the blue drop smiling at me in my new homepage.

This happened in the latest version of 1.4.*. The 1.5.0 arrived, my new site was still a dump and I decided to start from scratch instead of upgrading. My second Drupal installation took me 20 minutes. The difference in time was the *very* basic MySQL I had learnt, more fluency with the command line and the workarounds for the small voids in the documentation, unavoidable for newbies.

But... then comes time for upgrading. The difference between installing and upgrading is clear for a non-technical user: you need to install in order to have your site (this is a very good incentive) and you can't break anything because there is still nothing to break, but when you need to upgrade... well, you have your site (still) running and you can damage all your data if you don't do this properly. This is a very good incentive to leave the upgrade for tomorrow, and tomorrow.