It's a Drupal 6 miracle - almost

I have to deal a lot with Drupal, which is the content management system that runs this site, my day job and some side projects. I am trying to get a new site set up for a friend of mine on Drupal 6, but there have been quite a few bugs along the way.

The thing about Drupal development is that many of the key parts are based in add-on modules, rather than the core program. Drupal 6 is a really strong improvement over Drupal 5 in most areas, but the modules have taken darn near forever to get solidified.

(And of course everyone ought to chip in - the more everyone helps, the less time it takes. The community as a whole is very amiable, and it seems to me this pokiness is certainly not due to lack of effort or infighting - just the complexity of the task at hand.)

Fortunately the real key elements are finally beyond beta, now at Release Candidate (RC) level. These combined modules, Organic Groups, CCK and Views, are basically teh building blocks from which many other developments can spawn. It'll be easier now to write more modules and themes that extend these big foundations... Nice.

Unfortunately they also rely on some big fixes that are due to be included in Drupal 6.3, which has not quite been released. Better be this week!!! Yarghs.

In many ways, this post below introduces the whole shebang:

Views 2, CCK 2, and Organic Groups Release Candidates now available for Drupal 6!

Thanks to all these developers - it's a huge task. I have been at least checking into the twin cities drupal group from time to time, and they are also very cool and helpful. However, they are quite reluctant to tangle with Drupal 6 because it has taken quite a few months to get to this point!

Finally, the Views team has a desperate call out for documentation help - which i agree is much needed!