CMS Critic

The Drupal Release Model and Why it Needs to be Revamped

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Drupal today released a total of four versions of the popular open source CMS. Yes, I said four. Drupal 6.23, 6.24, 7.11 and 7.12 releases were put on the servers today.

On the release announcement, they are stating that they want to release version that include only security updates and versions that include security + bug fixes. While I can appreciate that they are trying to follow the “try to make everyone happy” model, they are, in my opinion, just adding to the general consensus that Drupal is a complicated and highly technical CMS.

While this may very well be the target market that Drupal is aiming towards, one would think it would be more sensible to attempt to follow suit with the whole customer experience movement that is occurring right now and try to make things as transparent and easy as possible for the end users.  Unfortunately, it seems that the Drupal team is not heading down this path.

In my opinion, Drupal should offer separate release announcements. One for the 6.x series with a countdown as to when this series will stop being supported so that those on the platform, know when it will be grandfathered and will be better able to plan a transition to 7.x.

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For those on the 7.x version, I would personally just offer a single version. However, if it’s absolutely necessary to have two types of installs, why not simply offer one version and within the upgrade process have a prompt for the user asking them if they’d like to do a complete upgrade (with security + bug fixes) or a partial just to address security issues and have the system do what’s needed. Single file, single download, no confusion.

For release announcements, I think that Drupal needs to spruce things up a bit and write-up announcements that give more detail and less technical terminology akin to the way that the Joomla! and WordPress teams do their write ups. It’s a fairly easy change to make and is more likely to get picked up by people and get them excited about the new release. If  the customer wants more technical information, link to a more technical document. Otherwise, follow the keep it simple methodology.

I am aware that the Drupal teams have a ton of work and do the best they can with all of the tasks at hand and I don’ t want to come across as someone who doesn’t appreciate their efforts. I do, however, believe that there is always room for improvement and it is my hope that they take this writeup as feedback and not as an attack.

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Mike Johnston

Mike is a CMS Analyst & Consultant who founded CMS Critic in 2008. He regularly consults with companies to assist them with the CMS selection process and is available for speaking engagements. You can contact him here or follow him on Google Plus.

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  • http://purkiss.com Steve Purkiss

    I don’t see what the issue is here apart from perhaps the Drupal community not communicating as best as it could as to why updates are released like this (I have many clients who *only* want security updates), and how easy it can be to perform updates. For example, I updated my http://purkiss.com Drupal 7 site in five minutes using the command ‘drush up’ – but I could only do that because I RTFM; stuck to the API, and didn’t go hacking around where I shouldn’t – most sites become hard to upgrade because people don’t stick to the API, then blame Drupal because “it’s too complicated” – which is a bit like getting in a car and driving around without having any lessons or teaching yourself first, then moaning that cars are lethal when you crash into something and write the car off.

    As for major version upgrades – I love the fact that Drupal does change, there are always very good and valid reasons for doing so and it means we get to work with the latest technology and don’t end up being stuck using ten year old technology just because it provides backward compatibility. Many of the Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 changes are fairly easy ones (for example hook_block now split up into hook_block_view, etc.) and there’s modules such as coder which show you exactly what you need to do to upgrade a 6 to 7 module.

  • Manu

    Hey Mike,
    I totally agree with your statement, Drupal is technical and not as easy to use as WordPress. (I don’t know anything about Joomla, but heard not the best about it).
    But in my opinion, this is exactly the reason why Drupal is a CMS and WordPress NOT. Every graphic designer can build a WordPress website and in most cases it’s OK for the first time. Absolutely NOT OK is that heaps of those guys charge a lot of money for a job that could have been done by a 12 year old student with a hang on web-stuff.
    People don’t know where the difference between a good and a crappy website is, because wordpress looks pretty and it works. Most “wordpress developer” stitch together some code without a little idea about how it works and instruct the client to never run an update – so they’ll get hacked!
    I hate to tell the people that their existing website is a big shit and the thousands of Dollars were just wasted.
    So Drupal ensures that you know what you’re doing, otherwise it wont work or it wont look pretty. Of course, you can mess up the Drupal code as well, but it is a lot harder to get even started.
    I just started learning Drupal a couple of months ago, and on the way I learned so much more important stuff like version control with git, using ssh and drush to create a command-line based, but absolute secure and fast development environment and so on. That’s how you SHOULD work, and it ensures that others can maintain your website in case you’re leaving the project.
    Drupal will never compete with WordPress. Different worlds, different users, different tasks and different levels of quality. It’s complicated for a good reason, and it’s worth to dig in if you’re serious about building websites.
    I hope it will divide graphic design and web design again!
    But anyway: You’re right, injecting a bit more usability is never a bad idea and every software can be improved :)

    • http://www.cmscritic.com Mike Johnston

      While I appreciate that you agree, I disagree that being difficult is what makes drupal a cms. Its what makes drupal hard to use. A cms is not defined by how difficult it is to use but rather what it does. This article isn’t about WordPress being better or not. Drupal isn’t good because its hard to use… this is the type of thought process that drives these types of issues as people seem to think it should be… I appreciate your input .

  • http://www.brightside.ee/ Tanel

    Good article, good point. It is a must to a have clear and solid release model. In enterprise usage it’s very important to know what will happen to my software in future, for how long will it be supported and when will be the next major release… and what will it take to upgrade?

    If major version upgrade means tons of work and developer can’t be sure when will the support end for the certain version it’s getting difficult to plan long time maintenance and it’s funding.

    • http://www.cmscritic.com Mike Johnston

      Thanks for the input, its nice to hear that someone else agrees.

  • http://www.lab2net.net Samy

    They confirm that Drupal is not for newbies.
    I want to migrate a website form JOOMLA to drupal 7, but after several tests, it is too heavy !!!

    • http://www.cmscritic.com Mike Johnston

      Agreed that they confirm this but they should be working towards changing that perception in order to increase adoption, imho.