Reviewing 1st week with Nutshell on Drupal 7

Nutshell.nu was launched on Drupal 7 May 31st, just over a week ago. In my first post, Being Brave With Drupal 7 alpha 5 I described my reasons for it. My main reason being that I wanted to help the Drupal community in some way to iron out bugs in it, but also to do it in a more fun way than just clicking around hoping to find anything.

Now it is time to summarise my experience building and running a website on Drupal 7.

Was it More Fun?

Yes, it was definitely more fun searching for bugs this way. I am sure I also found many more than if I just had fooled around trying to break things.

When building a real website I had to do it the right way and use it properly. Some problems I did find I stumbled on by mistake because I forgot to do something. Some other issues was not found until I almost had a feature ready.

In the Drupal 7 Foundation Almost there for Nutshell post I mentioned I had a few ideas regarding Taxonomy. The ideas seem to be possible, but I ran into some bugs, reported of course, that forces me to postpone making that live yet.

How stable is Drupal 7 alpha 5?

I would say it is very stable. I have looked in the log and there is only two warnings that has to do with code, neither of them breaking anything.

While working with building the site, as well as content, there are still issues to iron out. In some cases, such as I described in Drupal 7 First Impression of Field API and Image Styles, regarding embedding images in the textareas, it is more to do with that contributed modules aren't ready. That I have no problems with at such an early stage.

Is Drupal 7 Ready for Production Sites?

No, it is definitely not ready for that. If you like me have a personal blog and have a keen interest of getting Drupal ready ASAP, then it is ready. I can also promise that you will have much more fun doing it this way than just playing around with it.

One thing I am both looking forward to and not, is what will happen when the next release comes out and I will update this site to it. Hopefully that will work just fine, but I wont know until I try it.

Since it is still in alpha, there is chances that API's might change and break some of the contributed modules I use. That happened between alpha 4 and 5 so it might very well happen again.

How Ready are the Contributed Modules?

Many of them are very ready, while others are far from it. As mentioned above, changes to API's still make it and break it for some modules.

I wasn't around when Drupal 6 was released, but from what I have read we are looking at a completely different situation now. I am convinced that we will see a much quicker adoption of Drupal 7 with lots of contributed modules available, or nearly ready, almost from day one.

Conclusion and Impression

I really really really like what I have seen and experienced the last week. Drupal 7 is fantastic to work with. It is not perfect, far from it, but compared to Drupal 6 it is a monstrous improvement.

A lot has been moved around and changed, but when you get used to it you do like it. It is also much quicker to work with. A lot of work has been done to combine settings and configurations more logical. In many places there are now only one settings page, while before it was split into several.

Thanks to vertical tabs, and using drop down menus instead of long lists of radio buttons, the UI's are much more compact. This gives you a much better overview and the need of switching tabs or scrolling up and down is almost completely gone.

I am still not quite used to the admin and shortcut bars at the top. They are not as quick to work with as the Administration Menu. Compared to before though they are a fantastic improvement.

The one administration feature I have fallen in love with is the overlay. Being able to work with content, perform administration tasks, add modules, features and almost anything and then just close it and be back on the page you started is so great. I just saw webchick's Tweet that since alpha 5 it has been improved and is now 800% quicker. I thought it was pretty quick already, but eight times quicker I don't say no to.

Everyone involved in getting Drupal 7 ready for release have done a fantastic job. I can't praise their work enough. Hopefully my little experience have been of some help for them.

What's Next for Nutshell?

I will keep working on the site, adding modules and features and of course blog about it.

Now though I have an OK foundation and the site is working nicely so I hope I also will be able to blog about some of my other interests and ideas.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my posts. If you have, come back again because there will be more of it.

Have you tried Drupal 7 yet? If so, please tell me about it in the comments so we can exchange ideas and experiences.