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Today is the first time I entered Drupal website in order to get my head around it and was met by API pages for versions 6, 7, 8.

I think 8 is in production, but anyway - what is the best version to use at the moment?

apaderno
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jayarjo
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5 Answers5

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Drupal 7 is the current release version, but still relatively recent.

Here's my advice:

  • In most cases, pick Drupal 7.

  • Pick Drupal 6 if there are specific modules that you want to use which are not yet available for Drupal 7. (but check if they're going to be converted soon, or would be easy to convert yourself, or if there's an alternative module you could use instead, because you may still want to go with D7 anyway)

  • Drupal 8 won't be released for quite a long time yet, so there's really no reason to be looking at that now, unless you're planning to assist with the development of it.

[EDIT] Re the comment asking for further info:

Drupal 8 is still too early in development to say much about; they haven't even finalised what features it will have yet.

Comparing D7 vs D6: Here's the D7 release info page: http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0.

You may also find this page useful: http://drupal.org/documentation/version-info

Spudley
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  • Any good resource about the differencies between these (might be highlights only)? – jayarjo Jun 16 '11 at 15:30
  • @jayaro - I'll add some notes to the answer. – Spudley Jun 16 '11 at 15:45
  • +1, right now, Drupal 7 is the way to go for any relatively simple setup. The admin pages alone are miles ahead of what you get with a stock version of 6. The only drawback in that it is taking quite a while for some modules (even extremely popular ones) to get ported over. – Courtney Christensen Jun 16 '11 at 17:45
  • Those popular modules are often also rather complex (views for example). I've ported a number of large modules/projects (Privatemsg, Userpoints, User Relationships) to Drupal 7 and can assure you that it is a hard task, that requires a lot of time (both implementing and testing), especially if you aren't doing a minimalistic port but try to use the new API's, follow the new UX and so on. I think the situation is already much better than it was with Drupal 6, where it took much longer for most modules to catch up. – Berdir Jun 17 '11 at 00:55
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Having developed many sites using drupal I am still not confident in using D7 for productions sites.

Unless your needs are quite basic it's quite possible to find out that you are in need of a plugin that is not yet converted to D7.

If you are not planning to build your own theme, then there are still much more available (free or paid) for D6 than D7.

loucas
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You can also choose Pressflow which is a "performance, scalability, availability, and testing" oriented version of Drupal 6 (most improvements are ported to Drupal 7 Core)

http://pressflow.org/

steven_ght
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Absolutely Drupal8 from now is my suggestion. Because the Drupal 8 will save your develop methods and solve the performance of website.

user1350459
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Drupal 7 is the current release version.. And is the best to choose... But if you are ready to wait a little bit, then you can choose Drupal-8 which is being released with additional new features which the earlier version had as additional modules.

Here are the new and additional features available in Drupal 8:

  • Managing your content- from Mobile
  • Multilingual Capabilities
  • New Configuration Management
  • Accessibility Integration
  • Better user experience
  • Built-in Web Services
  • Fast theming
  • Views, out of the box

For more detailed information please go through Drupal 8- What’s new and Expected Inside

Nitha
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