What’s New in Drupal 7

What’s New in Drupal 7

on Jan 10th 2011 with 94 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Program: Drupal
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 20 minutes

Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) out there. To mark the new year, Drupal 7, the next major version of Drupal, is being released! In this article, I’ll walk you through some of the most exciting new features.

New Themes

The old themes have been replaced with powerful, new ones.

If you’ve worked with Drupal 6, you may have noticed the default “Garland” theme looks a bit outdated by now. Furthermore, using Garland for site administration and content editing is, frankly, not very intuitive.

Drupal 7 changes all that! The old themes have been discarded and replaced with a powerful theme trio:

  • Bartik - The attractive new default theme your users will see
  • Seven – The new administrative theme. If you’ve worked with Drupal 6, you will love this new administrative theme (more about that in a following section).
  • Stark - A blank theme that helps theme developers (aka the themers) understand Drupal’s default HTML and CSS

As always, these themes can be replaced by a theme you download and install from Drupal.org or by a custom theme of your own making!

Revamped Admin Interface

One of the most intrinsic functions of any CMS, be it WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, is to provide an easy way for end-users to update content. Drupal 6 has some very good administrative themes, such as Rubik, but Drupal 7 makes creating, updating, and editing content far simpler. Take a look at the following short video to get a feel for the new administrative interface:



A video demonstration of the Drupal 7 Administrative Interface

Improved Theming Layer

Meaningful HTML is not a strong suit of Drupal 6, but Drupal 7 delivers big-time.

Another important features of any CMS is the ability to take full control over the look and feel of the site you’re building. Drupal 6 has a fantastic theming layer, but it does have a few quirks that are ironed out in Drupal 7. As a note, template files in Drupal end with the .tpl.php extension, which is often pronounced “tipple-fip” for brevity.

If you’ve worked with Drupal 6 themes, perhaps the biggest change you’ll notice is the introduction of html.tpl.php, which is used to display the basic html structure of a single Drupal page, including DOCTYPE, head, html, and body. In Drupal 6, page.tpl.php used to include these elements, but is now used specifically to display the content of a single page. This change should free themers from declaring DOCTYPES, head, etc. in multiple files, thus making maintenance and changes simpler.

Unsemantic class names have been renamed. For example, the class block-blog-0 has been renamed block-blog-recent, and block-profile-0 has become block-profile-author-information. While this may seem minor, meaningful and semantic classnames can greatly speed up theme development and make debugging CSS issues clearer.

There’s far too much to cover in one small section, from hidden regions to new PHP functions. If you’re interested in learning more about changes to the theme layer, check out the following links:

jQuery Updates

For the front-end developers out there, this is a big one. Unfortunately, Drupal 6 still ships with jQuery 1.2.6, and upgrading isn’t simple. Luckily, Drupal 7 ships with jQuery 1.4.4, which is significantly faster than jQuery 1.2.6, and provides developers with access to fantastic features such as .delegate() and $.proxy().

Drupal 7 ships with jQuery 1.4.4

In addition to updating jQuery, Drupal 7 will also ship with jQueryUI 1.8. jQueryUI is a smart addition which should help standardize many UI components, such as tabs, drag & drop events, or accordions. There are loads of Drupal modules which try to fulfill these tasks in Drupal 6. Therefore, standardizing around one UI library in Drupal 7 should make front-end development and maintenance easier.

Drupal 7 Ships with CCK

CCK is the Drupal equivalent of WordPress’ custom post types

For those unfamiliar with Drupal, CCK stands for Content Construction Kit, and it is one of the coolest features of Drupal. While CCK used to be an add-on module, it is now included with Drupal 7 by default.

Essentially, CCK allows you to quickly create new content types, such as an article, blog post, or even music album. You can easily add fields to your content type using the administrative interface. For example, you could add Album Name, Tracks, Producer and release year to a music album content type. Once the content type is created with the appropriate fields, content contributors can start entering in content while you work on the technical parts of the site! If that explanation didn’t get you excited about content types, check out this quick video:



A video demonstrating the Content Construction Kit:

RDF Support

Drupal 7 is the first major CMS to implement RDF.

Have you heard of the Semantic Web, otherwise known as the Giant Global Graph? According to Wikipedia, the semantic web is a group of methods and technologies to allow machines to understand the meaning – or ‘semantics’ – of information on the World Wide Web. In practice, the semantic web should vastly improve search engines, mashups, and data mining.

But what technology is used to implement the semantic web on our sites? That technology is called RDF. Drupal 7 is the first major CMS to implement RDF.

If you haven’t heard of RDF yet, and remain unconvinced of its usefulness, I would highly recommend you watch the following video from DrupalCon to get an idea for what RDF can do for your site: The story of RDF in Drupal 7 and what it means for the Web at large.

Conclusion

This article has covered many of the most exciting features of Drupal 7, but there’s even more! For those interested in Drupal module development, Fields are being overhauled and should make the creation of modules even simpler. Installation profiles have become easier to create and maintain. What are you favorite features of Drupal 7? Tell us in the comments!

Download Drupal 7.

Tags: CMSdrupal
 
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Howdy y'all. Brian Egan, web cowboy, here. I'm a designer & front end developer working for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Libraries, where I get to build websites that house fascinating photographs of Mining Boomtowns, Howard Hughes, and more upcoming goodies! You can find me on Twitter or check out more of my work and writing at brianegan.com.  

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Newer Comments →
  • http://jimmykramer.com Jimmy

    The DrupalCon RDF link is password protected. :(

  • Johnny

    great post, i would like to see more drupal articles here in nettuts.

    • SCOTT

      I agree. MORE DRUPAL!

      • Andy

        More drupal 7 please! :)

    • NorthM

      Specially on THEMING! There is no good tutorial out there that gets you started on theming for Drupal 7. Most of them focus on customizing a core or contributed theme, but I was not able to find any good tutorials on theming from scratch. The theme guide on Drupal.org ain’t to much help either, it’s mixed with D6 instructions, some placeholders, duplicated sources and too much of the “click here and there to read more”-sort., it’s frustrating and confusing.
      So please, if any Drupal themer guru reads this – we need some tutorials that don’t expect that the readers allready are hardcore themers. Tutorials that gets you started and leaves you with the feeling of being ready to do some serious stuff on your own, that again gives the readers the experience we need to improve the themer guide on drupal.org

  • Helen

    “Meaningful HTML is not a strong suit of Drupal 6, but Drupal 7 delivers big-time.” Let’s count all meaningless DIVs on the index page of drupal.org: 134. 134 DIVs for an outstanding mediocre design that hardly contains anything.

    • http://www.drupalsites.net Andrey

      Right. But from very beginning Drupal core idea is to give you much much more classes/IDs/divs then it might be needed just to give average CSS folk to deal with it.

      It’s not that bad idea actually for rapid development (as you have almost everything right now). But of course you can grab another “restrictive” theme which will limit it.

    • http://mogdesign.eu jojototh

      Drupal.org runs still on Drupal 6 not Drupal 7

    • http://www.jonathanpthomas.com Jonathan Thomas

      drupal.org uses Drupal 6.

    • Mike

      Drupal.org is made with Drupal 6.

    • PixelTunnelVision

      Pretty sure Drupal.org is on Drupal 6. Also, one thing that kinda irks me, is how people stress SO MUCH how the sheer number of a few divs, especially nested, is such a huge determinant of telling the difference between an ok front-end developer and an outstanding one, even though in the grand scheme of rendering and even Google placement it won’t really make a huge enough difference to cry about it. Kinda comes off as front-end developers scrambling to find more than three ways to set themselves apart from the huge ocean of competition they face. What next? Your “footer_right” makes you a better developer than the guy with “footerRight?”

      • http://bensheedy.com Benjo

        Actually, neither footer would be good as having the “right” is not semantic :)

  • http://www.egydes.com Husien Adel

    great article, actually i have bad experience with drupal but may be now will change my opinion for new improvements for new version ;)

    wish from you a list for best e-books or tutorials to learn Drupal as theme designer-developer

    thanks Brian ;)

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      Hi Husien,

      Definitely give it another shot! Drupal is hard to fall in love with at first site (har har har), but it’s really powerful once you get used to it.

      Top theming recommendations:

      Official Docs (good place to start for an overview) – http://drupal.org/theme-guide/6-7
      Theming Drupal: A first timer’s guide – http://www.designtotheme.com/ebooks/theming-drupal-first-timers-guide
      PSD to Drupal Theme – http://www.designtotheme.com/ebooks/psd-drupal-theme

      Also, I’m going to be writing a series for NetTuts on this very topic.

      Thanks for reading!
      Brian

      • http://www.egydes.com/ Husien Adel

        Oh ! that’s great from you Brian :) waiting your series
        keep going ;)

      • pixelBender67

        Can’t wait to see them

      • Tony

        Any updates on your plans Brian? It’s soon been 4 months since the last article about Drupal on nettuts (this one) and that you announced your plans. I do not mean to nag, but theres really no great theming guide that tackles Drupal 7 in depth (i’ve subscribed to several automatic google searchfrases and i have checked every single link for months) so im still looking forward to see your tutorials on the topic.

        Thanks
        -Tony

  • Kenan

    Finally something about Drupal! – Thanks for that! refreshing!

  • http://vinhdesigns.com Vinh

    I was hoping the logo but thats cool

  • http://www.imageworksllc.com Joshua Briley

    Selling sites that use Drupal as a backend has always come back to haunt me. I’ve NEVER turned over a Drupal site to a client and not had it bite me directly in the buttocks. I can recall spending countless hours training clients, over and over again. Lost more money than I care to mention.

    On sites that I need to manage, I don’t mind using Drupal. It’s pretty damned powerful.

    • http://www.createinside.com Morten Najbjerg

      That’s weird. My experience is completely the opposite.
      By using roles and permissions in Drupal I find that it is often easier to make the backend much more simple and easy to understand for the customer than other CMS’ like Joomla! or Typo3.
      If the customer wants access to everything it is more complex of course.

      • http://www.talktopatroon.nl Hilko

        One thing that took me a while to ‘get’ was that part of my job was ‘creating’ the backend, because drupal, out of the box, sucks as a CMS. Drupal 7 is a lot better in this regard, though. In fact, if I understand correctly, making it better out of the box was one of the goals for D7.

        Still, for D6 I ended up adding my own stuff to make the system as simple as possible. Once you’ve got that figured out, you can adjust for all clients.

        For example, some of the sites I built give the webmasters little edit icons on nodes, views rows, and (panel) blocks. This sends them straight to the node edit form (in the case of blocks this is a ‘block content type’), and completely avoids the drupal backend.

        By using Rubik as an admin theme together with nodeformcols to display in columns and hide irrelevant or confusing elements, the ‘node add/edit’ page is very user-friendly and displays all relevant data on a single screen. All this is pretty easy to reuse, and a lot has become irrelevant with D7.

        My point is, building a Drupal site includes, to some degree, configuring/altering the backend. Moreso than with, say, WordPress, which has a yummy administrator interface out of the box.

      • http://imageworksllc.com Joshua Briley

        Hi Morten,

        Thanks for your feedback. Maybe we serve a different client base? I mostly deal in the small business arena. And just for the record, I personally like Drupal… alot.

        I like the roles and permissions in Drupal. Reminds me of Active Directory a bit. Even the scaling of permissions and roles has provided numerous challenges in the past. In all fairness, the biggest challenges lie outside of Drupal. I would guess that almost 75% of my personal clients get excited about the ability to manage content on their websites. However, 50% of those clients don’t want to take the time to learn about content publishing and another 25% of them are “afraid” of “breaking” their websites. I end up managing their content anyway. These types of clients request things generally fall outside the scope of general content management, and the time it takes to explain why the consumes the budget of the change request in the first place. Never mind the training up front… in one ear, out the other.

        I’ve found that the majority of “small business” owners are fine with a simple CRUD system. If I did work for Magazine publishers, or other entities that require “real” content management, I agree that Drupal would be a better solution.

      • PixelTunnelVision

        Sorry, Hilko, but Drupal is an excellent CMS. If you think it sucks then either you just suck using it, or it doesn’t conform to your subjective biases and preferences. It’s also amusing to note, you aside, that many Drupal haters often cling to things like Worpdress, which isn’t even a real CMS and is far from perfect.

    • Grant K

      Based on my experience and that of a number of my own and my friends’ clients, I’d say you’re doing it wrong. Yes, I know client budgets can be limited, but in my experience site developers rarely allocate enough (if any) development time to usability, which is a pity because there are a host of Drupal modules and a couple of great admin themes that improve the user experience greatly, many of them requiring little or no configuration. They eliminate most of the kind of back-end issues you’re talking about. Out-of the box, D6 did not do it badly, but did not do it well either. However, a little investigation into usability and you find many recipe’s like this one: http://www.mmt.org/blog/drupal-administration-recipe (under the Admin and Theme sections in particular) or you can find recorded sessions from past DrupalCons, etc. UX can be drastically improved, but you have to make UX a priority and many don’t bother/don’t have the time/didn’t get it in the budget. The good news for those of you who had these issues is that D7 will do most of it for you, out of the box. I estimate that D7 will free me from adding 10-25 modules on every site I build. Even if you hated D6, you have to try D7. It’s a whole new CMS.

  • http://www.createinside.com Morten Najbjerg

    I think 2011 is going to be a great year for Drupal. Drupal is in my opinion one of the greates and certainly most flexible CMS’ out there. I hope all the people that was scared away by the Drupal 6 default theme and missing UX is going to give Drupal 7 a spin. It is definitely worth it!

  • bud

    The story of RDF in Drupal 7 and what it means for the Web at large.

    this link is password protected. is there anywhere mere mortals can see it?

  • Ashwin

    Nice introduction to D7. Thank you

  • Kurtis

    Great article, will be looking into Drupal for future projects. However, the third theming link has now crashed my browser (chrome) 3 times in a row. Anyone else having similar results?

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      Ack! It appears as though my links to the DrupalCon Sessions are being password protected now for some strange reason. I’m not sure what the deal is, so I’ll try to find alternatives. Thanks for the heads up!

  • http://www.lifeisaprayer.com/ Jeff Geerling

    Between using drush and site aliases to allow me to easily manage, patch, and update over 45 individual Drupal sites (some with hundreds of users, others with more than 100,000), and being able to let my family share photos on a photo-sharing site, deploying community websites with a few clicks (install profiles), etc… Drupal rocks!

    I’ve recommended WordPress sometimes for the person who wants to get started with a site online quickly and easily… but I’m more and more leaning towards recommending Drupal Gardens instead (http://www.drupalgardens.com/).

    You should try out DG if you haven’t been in the Drupal arena lately – it’s basically a way to get a free Drupal 7 site – for testing, or even for your personal/business use.

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      Thanks for the Drupal Gardens shoutout, it’s definitely the easiest way to start playing with Drupal 7!

  • Karoly Negyesi

    CCK is the Drupal equivalent of WordPress’ custom post types

    Not even close. WordPress’ custom post types are the custom post types from Drupal 5 (yes, five).

    • Thera

      +1, WordPress custom post types are way less flexible than CCK, even moreso in 7.

  • http://levelup-gfx.com Anselm Marie

    Thanks for the amazing article!!!! Drupal 7 is very powerful and now can stand toe to toe with WordPress Backend. I’m already using Drupal 7 for two current website and can see why Drupal 7 is way better than Drupal 6.

  • http://www.drwsoluciones.net Darwin Betancourt

    Great post.

    I’d like to know more about Drupal and Semantic Web, is mean like as SIOC module at Drupal 6.x with this module you can generate RDF.

    The DrupalCon RDF link is password protected.

    Congratulations again.

  • GK

    Hahahaha. Is the stretched, fat-looking Drupal logo at the top of the page your subtle way of calling Drupal 7 a little bloated?

    That aside, my favorite thing about D7 is usability. My estimate is that when I upgrade our organization’s site we will need about 2 dozen fewer modules, mostly around admin-interface stuff, plus D7 fixes and/or simplifies a host more issues that many devs just don’t worry about. D7 will be better for designers,lazy developers, amateurs, programmers… well, basically everyone. That’s a pretty remarkable achievement for any project’s new version.

  • Ciwan

    You know what would be nice ? If Jeffrey Way walked us through the theme-ing of Drupal 7 from Scratch in one or more of his amazing video casts.

    That would be soooo awesome.

    Thanks

    • PhJ

      As a person used to theming in WP i would really love an introduction to theming in Drupal 7.

    • Ingo Fahrentholz

      I agree with this ;)

      Regards

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      Hi Ciwan,

      Keep an eye out, cus I’m working on that series as well! I’ll be taking the “Warm, Cheerful” series and turning it into a D7 theme!

      Cheers,
      Brian

    • arnold

      +1 on that..

    • Carlos

      Yeahh D7 theming tut please!

    • Tunox

      Lullabot folks have done some of the best Drupal video tutorials out there. They’ve done a great job explaining basic/advanced theming, but also other aspects of Drupal like CCK, Views etc. Paying material of course, but worthy every penny if u need a detailed look on these topics.
      Nevertheless an intro into Drupal themeing by Jeffrey will do only good to Drupal popularity.

  • http://jiewmeng.tumblr.com Jiew Meng

    I haven’t used Drupal b4 but it looks great. It will be great to see a similar article on Joomla 1.6 too

  • Kevin

    What is this?

    “CCK is the Drupal equivalent of WordPress’ custom post types”

    Drupal has had CCK since version 5. WordPress only got it in version 3. Drupal was the model for all other CMS in that area.

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      You’re certainly correct, but I think you’re being a bit hard on me :)

      I didn’t say “Drupal stole the idea of post types from WordPress.” I was simply trying to relate the idea of what Custom Content Types are to people who may be familiar with Custom Post Types in WP3.

      Thanks for reading!
      Brian

      • http://twitter.com/kevinquillen Kevin

        Not being hard on you, just wanted to be sure I read that right- kind of gives the misconception that Drupal just received it.

  • http://www.visual-blade.com Daquan Wright

    The number one problem with drupal/joomla imo is usability. They just aren’t as intuitive as wordpress and maybe that’s impractical based on the wide range of roles you can use these full scale cms for. I look forward to Drupal 7!

  • Helmi

    “Drupal 7 is the first major CMS to implement RDF.”

    If I’m not mistaken, ExpressionEngine already support this feature in their 1.x version.

  • http://www.module-developer.com Drupal web developer

    Hi, Drupal 7 have some additional features also it have high security,usability and Testing measures. Its way of handling the files is more secure than that of Drupal 6. Drupal 7 integrates popular contributed modules like CCK (Content Construction Kit), Token, FileField, and Poormanscron into core. This comes with the removal of some core functionality like related terms for taxonomy terms, per-user theme selection, the blog API module and having a minimum number of words on the body field.

  • http://hirephpdeveloperindia.com/drupal Nehal

    Many Thanks for this post.

    I am quite big fan of Drupal and It’s been great news to see drupal 7 come up with lot bunch of features.
    I also request brian to coninue his effort on continuing new post related to drupal. Thanks for sharing nice features and theme.

  • Chaz

    Drupal 7 is great but not ready for Prime Time. Take a look at Acquia – Dries and the boys haven’t even released a version of it due to some very important contributed modules that make any serious Drupal development a necessity. Date and Panels modules being two of those.

  • http://www.jonathanpthomas.com Jonathan Thomas

    Just started a few projects with D7 and it’s a lot nicer to use than Drupal 6.

    I’d recommend Drupal to anyone, and I’ve used all three of the big players (Joomla, WP etc.), Drupal can “just do it”, and it’s support and community base is massive with every experience I’ve ever had has only ever been a positive one.

  • http://www.twitter.com/netblonde netblonde

    anyone a password to the DrupalCon pages, i cant seem to access it :(

  • http://www.fishmemory.net fractalbit

    WOW! I never used drupal before but i am really impressed from what i saw! The screencasts were very informative, thank you!

    I will definitely give drupal a try localy and maybe also in my next project! Thank you!

  • http://www.leafsign.co.za Whesley

    Great post! ! !

    Lets see some awesome drupal tutorials.
    It would be great if nettuts could host a list of tutorials that would cover all aspects of drupal from theme development to module development.

    I personally would love to learn how to develop my own custom modules and share them with others.
    Open source rules the internet! ! !

  • Ivanhoe

    After experimenting with many content management systems, I finally got settled with Drupal. WordPress is only for a blog (IMHO) and Joomla is too dirty with weak community and plugins.

    Drupal has a steeper learning curve, but it pays off definitely. Once you understand how it works, you will change your programming style as well.

    Modules are of a much better quality than average ones found at WP or Joomla’s websites.

    Community is great and documentation is very good.

    Structure is very organized, clean with good logic and much extensible.

    One of the best ready made OS CMS solutions.

  • Grant K

    Interesting hidden censorship you have here… and really, was it necessary?

  • Jason

    I’ve been using Drupal for years and I’ve never heard anyone say “tipple-fip”. I like it though!

  • http://www.websitedesignlancaster.com Schweb Design, LLC

    i can’t even tell you how excited i am about this. Now we’ll just have to see how long it takes for some of the more necessary / common contributed modules to release stable 7.x versions.

    Thanks for the great what’s new highlights- well done

  • Devin

    I don’t mean to sound so harsh but Drupal is great for developers who don’t like to develop.
    For those developers who do develop, it’s restrictive and the html that it generates is NOT efficient.

    That being said it is a great CMS for those that just need a quick site and can’t hire a developer.

    -Sorry

    • http://www.newsparkdesigns.com newspark

      Drupal is more than a cms. It also qualifies as a Content Management Framework.
      Take a look at the API and the list of industrial sites it powers.

      Here’s the thing about reinventing the wheel: your wasting your time on basic functionality. Want to impress your your friends and potential clients? Build a fine-tuned module with a sweet api.

  • http://www.justforthealofit.com/ TheAL

    Awesome breakdown. I’m still using 6.x since a lot of modules I love haven’t been ported yet, but I’m excited for 7!

  • http://www.isotopon.com El

    I am a bit concerned about the ajax interface but all th others are very promising

  • http://www.jauhari.net/ Jauhari

    Drupal is my fave CMS after WordPress of course ;)

  • http://twitter.com/madebycreature madebycreature

    For me, the big question is whether I should consider making a switch to Drupal from WordPress? Having always favoured WP (mainly for that oh-so-simple client-friendly UI), I feel I should maybe give Drupal 7 the benefit of the doubt. Maybe now is the time to give it a shot?

  • dixhuit

    Yey. More Drupal content please. Best open source CMS out there by a country mile.

  • http://www.arlexclocks.com Alex Aguilar
  • w1sh

    Drupals Improved Theming Layer…

    I’m never… going to be able to stop laughing. If Drupal figures out how templates should work by core 20 I’ll stop being vegan and marry my dying mother.

  • David Savage

    My only gripe about Drupal 7 (and really, most content management systems) is there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to implement ajax (i.e. load other pages via ajax rather than reloading the page). I’ve seen views seems to have ajax for forms or something, but I never was able to get it to work as I wanted, and became so frustrated I wrote a custom CMS in symfony! If anyone knows of a good link for a tutorial on setting up such types of ajax calls it would be greaaaaaaaaaaaaatly appreciated! :)

  • http://apcs.vn Hieu Vo

    I have been waiting a long time for the official release of Drupal 7 and not daring to use it on commercial projects, now I’ll give it a try.

  • http://sirwan.me Sirwan Qutbi

    Drupal is and will always be a complete waste of time.

    Trust me guys, don’t waste your time with it. WordPress.org has been proven to be better in every way compared to Drupal… Why on earth would you want to waste time trying-out Drupal.

    With all due respect to Drupal’s massive development community, WordPress outflanks Drupal in every possible direction.

    Drupal just sucks. It’s a very programmer orientated CMS.

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      Trust me y’all, give it a shot! :)

    • w1sh

      As a Drupal & WP developer, and designer I can completely say this is false! Drupal is twice as horrible for devs than WP.

      Seriously, when are they going to stop pretending like they’re making changes?

      • http://newsparkdesigns.com newspark

        Once you learn drupal, wordpress is too limiting. Drupal has much better security and the extensive api is addictive.

  • http://mmshare.org Everlearner

    Hi Brian,

    Thank you so much for this article.
    It is nice to read Drupal article here.
    The whole article is very informative, though I don’t agree with the quote – “CCK is the Drupal equivalent of WordPress’ custom post types”.

    Some features of the WP custom post types are similar with some parts of CCK. However, CCK is more powerful and useful than WordPress custom post types and K2 component from Joomla.

    There are other useful, powerful modules in Drupal such as – Views, Panel, Rules, Token modules.., No other CMSs can do something similar likes these modules. I think most of the people using other CMSs don’t know (exactly) about these powerful modules. (Sorry for my bad English. Thanks)

    • http://brianegan.com Brian Egan
      Author

      Hi Everlearner,

      Thanks for your thoughtful rebuttal of my quote! I really appreciate the tone and manner in which you’ve addressed the point.

      I wholeheartedly agree with you. I simply didn’t want to start a flamewar with WordPress people. Therefore, I tried to relate the idea of what CCK is to WordPress folks, and in the video tried to show them why Drupal’s CCK is so awesome :)

      Drupal rocks! Thanks for your comment.

  • http://www.gold-price-today.com/ gold price today

    thanks
    i’m using drupal in some sites

  • http://www.websitetemplates.bz/ Casualty13

    Great article!
    I also have one about Drupal 7 on my blog http://blog.websitetemplates.bz/website_templates_news/drupal-7-is-released-to-the-public.html
    I understand that it’s not so perfect as this one, but what do you think?

  • http://orangeaura.com Tri Nguyen

    i think its amazing that CCK was added to core for drupal 7. Will you be making a video or article on the Views module for drupal 7 too.

  • http://www.think360studio.com/ Taylor

    Great news :)

  • http://handeyedesign.com Michael Richardson

    Thanks very much for this introduction. It’s interesting that the comments have turned into a “WP vs Drupal” forum. It’s good that there is a kind of competition between these two frameworks/platforms. I’ve spent the last few weeks testing and fiddling with both. Some observations:

    1. Drupal is excellent if you are building a site that will invite users “off the street” to create identities and join/consume: the security is well tested. Who wants to re-invent the wheel of things like password retrieval, etc. WordPress doesn’t have this framework: it’s better for a community of contributors who possibly already share connections and purposes: a small company, etc.

    2. WordPress is easier to theme & hack, and is easier for client-types of users to use “out of the box”. So, if you don’t need the “off the street” user experience, it seems like WordPress is just better: lighter, more intuitive, etc.

    3. Drupal’s new content-type manager is pretty cool, and it seems to leapfrog over WP’s custom data types, which are by no means as easy/clear as this. But WP lets you install plugins for this type of thing. I think the plugin model of adding functionality is a better way to keep the core code leaner. IMHO Drupal is over-coded and too opaque.

    Could it be that we need both of these frameworks — to address certain strengths, and to compete?

  • http://www.akrimony.com Rajat Agarwal

    What’s new in Drupal 7 is that its copying WordPress inch by inch in user interface. I did a detailed comparison on Joomla 1.6 vs Drupal 7 and reached the conclusion that both of them are copying WordPress’ interface.

    Here’s my blog post: http://www.akrimony.com/2011/02/joomla-1-6-vs-drupal-7-are-both-copying-wordpress/

    Drupal 7 is no longer just for geeks as its new interface is very easy to master.

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