Drupal 7 for Production Websites Part 2: Contributed Modules

Welcome to part two of three in my series about Drupal 7 being ready for production websites. Part one covered Drupal 7 Core and you can find a link to it at the end of this post. This time I will write about contributed modules for Drupal 7, their status and what you can expect.

The #D7CX Pledge

Drupal 6 was released in mid February 2008, but it took a long time before it was really adopted as the version to build Drupal based websites on. The main reason for this was that very few contributed modules where ported to it. This was especially true for the most popular ones. The first official release versions of Views and CCK wasn't released until mid October and beginning of November for example. Due to this, production website wasn't deployed on Drupal 6 until 2009 in any big numbers.

To avoid the same situation with Drupal 7, the #D7CX pledge movement was announced by Moshe Weitzman on his blog the 1st of July 2009. Module developers simply put something like:

#D7CX: I pledge that [module name] will have a full Drupal 7 release on the day that Drupal 7 is released.

on their project page to indicate that their ambition is to have an official release of their module available for Drupal 7 at the same time it is officially released. The movement quickly gained momentum and today you will find 202 modules listed there when you click on the link above.

Not Everyone Can Commit to the #D7CX Pledge

Since Drupal is open source and everyone is participating and contributing to it on a voluntary basis, the #D7CX pledge is of course also voluntary. There are many of the top modules that are not part of this movement. That doesn't mean the maintainers don't have the ambition to port their modules to Drupal 7 as quick as possible. It only means that they can't make the commitment to have an official version ready at a certain date due to their other, mainly work related, commitments. This is especially true for maintainers that are paid by companies developing modules for the needs of that company.

When filtering the modules list on drupal.org using Filter by compatibility: 7.x you get a list of a whopping 492 modules, more than twice as many compared to the #D7CX pledge (who of course is included in that number as well).

That means that already when Drupal 7 still is in alpha, there are almost 500 modules that either have pledged to be ready when Drupal 7 is ready or are being developed for it (both ported and new modules). more modules are added to both lists almost on a daily basis.

In my view that is absolutely fantastic and will make sure Drupal 7 has every possible chance of being adopted much quicker than Drupal 6.

Status of Currently Available Modules

The current status of contributed modules for Drupal 7 is, to say it gently, a mixed bag. There are some modules that actually have official releases, some that are alphas or betas, some in dev versions and then some that are not even available for download yet.

As you know, Nutshell is running on Drupal 7 and I have written many posts about my experiences both with it and the contributed modules I use here. First Impressions of Drupal 7 alpha 6 contains a list of 14 modules used and Drupal 7 Views & Insert Make it Look Good covers the latest ones enabled. Most of them are only available in dev versions and are far from complete. But, as Nutshell is evidence of, they are already somewhat usable.

Another great resource for finding out what modules are already usable is Drupal Gardens. If you have an account there, simply go to the modules page and you get a list of all the Drupal 7 modules you can use there. Just be aware that some modules are hidden on that list, such as Views and the Media module. Also, some modules Drupal Gardens is using is not available on drupal.org. It will still give you a general idea of what you can use today.

Drupal 7 Beta will be a Game Changer for Modules

When the first beta of Drupal 7 is released it will mean something extremely important - No more API changes!

Until the beta there are still the odd chance that API's will change and in return that might break a module that worked just fine for a previous alpha version. Due to this, many module developers are waiting for the beta before they really start working on porting. They simply don't want to spend time and then later have to go back and change this just because an API they are using changed.

You don't need to be an oracle to predict that shortly after Drupal 7 beta is out, we will see a rapid growth in the number of modules being available in dev version all the way up to release candidates or in some cases even officially released as Drupal 7 modules.

Conclusion

As mentioned above, its safe to say that the slow adoption of Drupal 6 wont be repeated for Drupal 7. I base this of two factors:

• Drupal 7 Core contains so many more, and important, features that it itself can be used to build quite complex websites.
• The Drupal community learned their lesson from Drupal 6 and are working their socks off to not repeat it. The #D7CX pledge is just one piece of evidence about that.

Also, during my experience using Drupal 7 and contributed modules here on Nutshell, I am more than convinced that we will see Drupal 7 being quickly adopted for new website projects. Upgrading of existing websites will take longer though, but I'm quite convince this to will happen quicker than what it did from Drupal 5 to 6.

Lastly, there are several very exiting module projects being directly developed for Drupal 7. The Maestro workflow module which I wrote about last week is just one such project. The Media module is another that will completely change the way multimedia is used and managed with Drupal.

Those two and many other modules will open up for very exiting possibilities building websites with Drupal 7.

No wonder everyone is so excited about all this!

What contributed modules are you looking forward to for Drupal 7? Feel free to discuss it in the comment section below.

Posts in this series:

• Drupal 7 for Production Websites Part 1: Drupal 7 Core
• Drupal 7 for Production Websites Part 2: Contributed Modules - (this post)
• Drupal 7 for Production Websites Part 3: How you can help