We’ve opted to build our Core Publisher product on a new platform, a very new platform. Just how new? We’re working on an alpha version of the Drupal 7 open-source content management system. That’s alpha, as in “comes before beta.” And pretty much nothing comes before alpha.
The Drupal project itself, I should mention, is not new at all; in fact, in web years, it’s positively ancient. The latest stable version of Drupal (6.0) was released over two years ago. Drupal is used by a wide variety of organizations: media companies like Sony and Warner Brothers; non-profits like Amnesty International; educational institutions like Harvard; open source projects like Firefox and Ubuntu. And Drupal has a large, engaged, and just plain smart community behind it. There are now over 6,000 contributed modules (i.e., software plug-ins) for drupal — all of them completely free of charge. Choosing to develop on Drupal, in other words, is a very, very solid choice.
But one might ask: why not just develop on Drupal 6? On the tested, stable platform?
It basically comes down to an age-old question: do you want to go through a little pain now? Or more pain later?
It’s human nature to delay the pain. But we’re forging ahead; we’re ripping the band-aid off with one quick motion. Sure, many modules aren’t yet fully ready for Drupal 7, causing us to write more custom code than usual. And changes in alpha releases have broken our code. Also, the documentation, to no one’s surprise, lags behind the changes in the code. Back here in the developers’ room, there’s been a noticeable uptick in profanity.
But when Drupal 7 is officially released and others start scrambling to upgrade, we’ll be ahead of the curve. We’ll be familiar with the core code and all the API changes. In addition, we’ve become more involved with the Drupal community – as we help fix bugs and provide documentation.
Of course, the paradox is this: we’ll never truly know the amount of pain we’ve avoided, simply because we won’t experience that pain.
Are we crazy to develop on the edge like this? Well, I’d say that we’re daring and forward-thinking, and maybe a tad – just a tad — foolhardy. But we’re definitely not crazy.
Tags: drupal