Before you start

I notice that RC1 is out. Any idea when that implies the general release will be coming?

Also, do you predict many 5x modules to break in 6x?

Drupal noob warning, but I'm a BI programmer in my day job and have a decent amount of programming experience. I have done searches.

At some point this year I'll be buying a Mac Pro and going over to the Mac camp as much as possible - please no flame wars, it's my personal, informed, rational, and experienced decision. I had installed WAMP5 (now it's WampServer 2.0). I also work for a company that's more of a Windows shop so I may need to know both platforms for a company Dog and Pony show.

We want to move some Drupal sites to a new ISP.
The only limitation seems to be that FollowSymlinks is not allowed.
What does that mean?
We could live with loosing the possibility to preview images.
Is ClearUrls still working?
Is it still possible to install a MultiSite or do we have to install Drupal for every site?
Are there other things I should know?

Any help very much appreciated!
ueli

I've successfully built a business, creating sites developed on Joomla. Joomla doesn't really change very much, so it's fairly simple to keep the sites "updated" with security fixes and whatnot. But because it doesn't change very much, I've grown a bit tired of spending 90% of my development time dealing with the limitations of that CMS - particularly design issues, as Joomla is cursed with infinitely nested tables and hardcoded design parameters.

To date, I've played around with Drupal on several occasions - and it seems every time I return, there's a new version of Drupal, or a newer version just around the corner. And apparently, these are MAJOR updates - which I guess is very cool if you want to have the most advanced website possible?

Not being a coder, what version of Drupal is best for a beginner? Should I start learning with RC1, or stick with Drupal 5.x - or is 4.7 the most proven and best documented?

Also, is the upgrade path simple, or extremely difficult between versions? From what I understand, something called flexinode has been replaced by something called cck, which made several modules obsolete - thus no upgrade path?

We run latest Red Hat Linux on Dell Web server.
Before installing Drupal 5.x:
Do we need to be aware of any possible software conflicts with other CMS systems?

My number one concern before investing any time and effort into any system is web standards. This includes both W3C and Web Accesablity Guidelines.

I have visited many of the sites you list that use Drupal and many others as well. None of these sites validate and none of them meet web accessability guidelines.

Is this due to a deficiency in the system or a lack of the users' ability to use the system?

If it is a lack of the users' ability to use the system, how dificult is it to get Drupal to create sites that meet both W3C and Accessability standards?