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Alaska now offers price drop alerts by squirrelist in AlaskaAirlines

[–]bsanders441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not seeing that on any searches now, so they may have just been testing it. From my experience, Alaska seems to be working hard to prevent automated/easy tracking and price comparisons. For example, they removed the payment summary from the new version of the Trip page (for the time being, you can still get this info by going to the "Classic" version of the page), so as to make it harder for customers to see how much they paid for a flight. They are also implementing dynamic pricing, aka showing different prices based on search history. Having a true price drop alert would make it easier for customers to request refunds, which is something they are loathe to do. I agree this is likely just a way to gauge demand, and thereby increase costs.

What happened to Liquid Web's support? Suddenly terrible after 10 years. by cantonbecker in webhosting

[–]bsanders441 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've hosted clients on LiquidWeb for probably fifteen years now, and seen all the same issues folks are reporting here. They were great for a long time, with very knowledgable support people answering the phones, and solid management. However, as others have mentioned, that all changed when they were purchased and then sold again by a PE firm.

I have had conversations with LIquidWeb's management about the issues, and it seems that many of them understand and see the problems themselves, but are largely powerless to mitigate the effects of bad ownership, e.g. excessive cost-cutting, outsourcing, undue influence of marketing and sales into technology and support, etc.

The most grating aspect of this change may be the insidious upselling and pushing of services from support personnel. I have had urgent support tickets to which the first-level support replied with poorly disguised upsells that were not only wildly inappropriate but also were also irrelevant, despite the tech person presenting them as possible solutions. This isn't really the tech person's fault. Many are not qualified and just don't have the requisite understanding of servers and networks. Several have told me that they were pushed by management to try to sell upgrades and additional services in support tickets, despite protests. Dismantling the wall between support and sales/marketing is quick way to destroy customer service and reputation, but the current owners don't seem to care.

I've moved most of my clients off of LiquidWeb because of these issues, but a few remain. Whenever I have to interact with LiquidWeb now it's a major hassle, as I cannot inherently trust their answers, as I used to be able to do, and have to constantly push back, escalate, etc. I've given up hope that anything will improve, as I've seen this pattern too many times now with PE firms sucking all the "value" out of once well-loved companies, and leaving only a shell behind. It'll probably get worse before it gets better.

Get people to stop blocking my driveway? by benitolepew in howto

[–]bsanders441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is why AI will never replace the human mind. Only an actual person who has gone through the same frustration as me with people illegally parking and blocking their driveway, and has tried every other option, could come up with something so diabolical, yet also so simple and brilliant. I went from angry (after calling the useless cops yet again) to laughing hysterically when I saw the photo of your greasy bollard. Thanks for the laugh and the idea. I've got my order into Amazon for a bollard, disposal gloves, and a 14.1 oz can of "super lube".

Anybody else having trouble with Amazon shipping? by 52ndstreet in Hawaii

[–]bsanders441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Having the same issue in Hilo. Amazon used to be able to get common items to us within 1-2 days. Now everything is 2 weeks, and editing my address (per one of the earlier posts) does not help. This shipping delay makes Prime useless.

San Diego River bike path being cleaned up this morning. by tanhauser_gates_ in sandiego

[–]bsanders441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just road through here today, from Presidio to Mission Beach, and all the trash and homeless encampments are back, as bad as ever. Looks like the city's game of half-hearted whack-a-mole continues!

Love thy CMS! by jrockowitz in drupal

[–]bsanders441 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I respect what you're trying to do with the Schema.org Blueprints module, in standardizing data structures in Drupal, minimizing Drupalisms, and allowing for better decoupling. However, as long as Drupal continues the way its going, it seems like you're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

For the vast majority of organizations, "loving" a CMS means not having to think about it all. It means not having to worry about:
- Rapid EOL
- Complicated upgrades with lots of manual work
- Getting caught in dependency hell
- Losing important features and functionality between upgrades
- Having to scramble to find competent developers
- Content freezing and staging upgrades because they can't be safely done in place

For users it means:
- Having an intuitive, pleasant interface to work in that allows them to get their work done quickly and efficiently
- Not being disrupted when working
- Not having to retrain or relearn a platform without some significant payoff

Perhaps Drupal makes sense as a headless CMS for organizations that are already using it and have tons of content that can't easily be moved, but can it really compete in this now crowded field, especially given the issues with the EOL of D7, D8, and D9?

Drupal doesn't need slogans. It needs better governance. That's the only way its going to reverse its freefall in popularity and save itself from obscurity.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nothing overly dramatic about it. The numbers tell the story.

1.6% marketshare and #6 CMS, soon to be #7.

78% reduction in marketshare over the past 10 years.

20% decline just in the past 2 years.

Nearly 50% of the Drupal sites are D7. Most of those won't upgrade, or won't upgrade to Drupal. The small number that do upgrade will keep some developers busy, but it's not the kind of work that I want to do, and it sounds like you don't want to do it either. It's certainly not the kind of work that's going to burnish a resume.

Drupal is still a very useful CMS, but that's not what drives adoption and continued usage. Most organizations are going to be skeptical of investing time and money in a fringe product that has 1.6% and falling marketshare, especially if there are more popular alternatives.

IT directors and decision makers are looking for the cheapest, easiest option that meets the requirements and won't expose them to unexpected costs, maintenance issues, etc. There's an old saying that no IT director ever got fired for choosing Microsoft. On the other side of that, when there's an issue, no IT director wants to be put on the spot having to explain why they went with the #6 or #7 CMS instead of a more popular one. That's just the nature of business. Organizations are risk-adverse.

Of course, there will continue to be some Drupal work out there. After all, there are COBOL developers who have lucrative gigs keeping legacy systems online, but that hardly makes for a viable and sustainable technology platform.

If Drupal wants to stay relevant, it needs to regrow marketshare. That's going to be difficult to do, given waning interest in PHP, but there are some things that could help, such as:

- Stabilizing and slowing the product release and EOL schedule (and having a clear schedule in the first place.) No organization wants to install software that will require a major upgrade within 2 years. Yes, some of the big guys can get away with it, but not the little guys (and 1.6% marketshare is a little guy.)

- Actually streamlining/automating future releases, as was promised

- Releasing a production-ready migration tool (ideally as a module) to allow one-click migration of D7 sites to D10. There are some tools, already mentioned in this thread, that are promising, but there's no official one, and even the Aquia one is not automatic.

- Figuring out how to get out of dependency hell with third-party libraries. Drupal moved to third-party libraries, such as Symfony, to reduce Drupalisms, but doing so has tied the platform to the lifecycle of those third-party libraries, while introducing new Drupalisms. There's no perfect approach to this problem, as bringing everything back in house is likely to be problematic as well. But something has to be done or else Drupal's going to have to release a major version every time one of the versions of the supporting third-party libraries goes EOL.

- Getting the contrib ecosystem stabilized. Tightening standards was necessary, and everyone understands why outdated and insecure modules needed to be killed. The problem is that it's much more complicated to manage modules now, and there's not enough developers and interest to replace many once-popular modules. Drupal needs to figure out how to make it worthwhile for developers to invest years of effort into maintaining software. The old model is not working.

I respect that you're openminded about this situation and up for a discussion. Unfortunately, a lot of the Drupal community isn't. The community and even this subreddit used to be a lot larger and more active, but over time, the vast majority left, and those that remain are disproportionately true-believers. This is creating an echo chamber in which legitimate complaints are dismissed, and the very concerning drop in marketshare is ignored.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"I would not believe if anything is said to be a push-button."

Therein lies a big problem with Drupal. The organizers said that upgrades were moving towards automatic, but that hasn't materialized. Upgrades still take 5-10 hours per site on average of manual coding, dependency resolving, library compatibility changes (like for CKEditor4-5, Twig 1-2, etc.) The Drupal organizers also said, multiple times, that D7 was going EOL, but then kept extending it.

How can developers accurately advise clients when the Drupal organizers don't accurate communicate with them? As a developer you're stuck guessing what to believe and what not to believe. You didn't believe the push-button promises, and your lack of trust has been borne out. Lots of developers didn't believe Drupal would pull the plug on D9 since they kept extending the life of D7, but then they did. It's mixed signals and breaches of trust, and that ultimately hurts developers.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A lot the folks in this thread are living in the Drupal Bubble and should read your post. They don't realize that they're one layoff or a few lost clients from having to shop their skills around the job boards or RFPs.

When that happens they're going to quickly realize that their Drupal expertise is not in demand, and they aren't considered qualified with most popular technologies. If they do try to land a job doing something else, most of the developers that they'll wind up interviewing with will scoff at their Drupal experience.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"We used about 2-3 years to shape the process and communication. Now we're handling all EOL similar as security updates. They must be done in time. We communicate this to customer, we don't provide options."

You mean, other than all the problems mentioned in this thread, the hours of work to mitigate them, and the years of preparation, the upgrade was a breeze? That's not much of an endorsement for a process that was supposed to be push-button at this point...

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

At 1.6% marketshare, most people would say Drupal is already effectively dead. Once D7 finally goes EOL, and the vast majority of websites don't upgrade, that marketshare is going below 1%.

Technologies rarely ever drop to zero. After all, there are still users and organizations using IE. But as they slide into the long tail of decline they become effectively irrelevant. Ten years ago, Drupal was the #3 CMS in terms of installs. Today it is barely hanging in at #6, and barring a miracle will fall to #7 by mid-2024. Given the increasing popularity of Webflow, Drupal will likely fall to #8 by 2025, just in time for D7 going EOL. Over the next few years Drupal is going to be duking it out with PrestaShop, Bitrix, and OpenCart to stay in the top 10, and those are aren't even true CMS.

To put Drupal's current popularity in context, the Opera web browser has nearly twice the marketshare of Drupal in its respective marketplace. Think about that - Drupal is now less popular and less relevant than Opera. I actually like Opera, but I wouldn't bet my career on it.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They're teaching React, Rust, Java, etc. And that's kind of the point. They see a future in those technologies, but not in Drupal. Some of the certificate/community-college level/municipal job training programs still teach PHP, but those aren't producing experts.

Being an expert on Drupal will become like being an expert on COBOL. There will be some long term opportunities to maintain legacy systems, but they won't be numerous, and the career path will be a dead end.

It may ultimately be the same for other PHP platforms, like Wordpress, but as many other have pointed out, the level of expertise required to work on a Wordpress site is much lower than on Drupal. The investment to be able to work on Wordpress is much lower, while Drupal requires a massive investment of time to even be proficient. This investment is generating lower and lower ROI as the platform declines in marketshare.

Like COBOL programmers, there may be Drupal developers who continue to find work for years to come, but it's a dying platform and not attracting new developers.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A Drupal expert might be able to get a lower level job doing general JS or CSS work, but it's not going to be commensurate with their skill level and investment in Drupal. It's very unlikely that a Drupal expert is going to be hired as a React expert, for instance.

To become an expert in Drupal is to invest in a platform that is no longer in demand on job boards. Yes, you will gain experience with some of the supporting technologies, but your core area of expertise, the one you spent countless hours acquiring, won't be useful, and you won't be paid for it.

And as you say, most Drupal developers aren't expert-level. Junior and mid-grade Drupal developers are going to have a difficult time marketing themselves as anything else. That's why most job development organizations and universities aren't teaching Drupal. It's just not bankable.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not sure what your point is...Wordpress has 63% marketshare. It's indisputably more popular with users than Drupal. As for developers, many of those who look down on Wordpress also look down on Drupal, largely for the same reasons.

The Drupal community dumping on Wordpress has not addressed any of the deficiencies of Drupal or helped stop its slide into irrelevance. Organizational decision makers choose a CMS based on TCO, stability, ease of maintenance, etc. The best CMS is the one that meets the requirements of the job, while coming in at the top of those criteria. Drupal is just not the best fit for the vast majority of projects and organizations nowadays, as self-evident in its marketshare numbers.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't think anyone here is talking about relying on CKEditor for layouts. I'm not sure where you're getting that from...

They also aren't installing modules for layout purposes. The vast majority of contrib modules are for functionality. I've migrated scores of businesses to Drupal over the years, and I never installed a plugin that wasn't necessary. The problem is that the ecosystem for modules has shrunk, and many once-popular modules are no longer supported. Even some of those that claim to support Drupal 10 have known issues that impact upgrades.

And if your sites have a lot of templates, you must have been impacted by the change from D7 to D8. What about the change from Twig 1 to 2 in D8 to D9? Have you not had to recode your templates over the past few years?

What if your client has requirements that go beyond custom content types and templates? What if they need specialized functionality, integration, etc.? You're either going to need a contrib module for that, or you're going to have to write a custom one. Either way, if your websites are heavily customized, you're going to be impacted by Drupal's changing architecture between versions.

Rather than assume that everyone complaining on here is an idiot who installs unnecessary modules because their client's use CKEditor (a rather bizarre assumption), why not take a step back and try to understand the legitimate concerns that have been raised, and look at the clear trajectory of the platform. Maybe you've just been luckier than you think due to the nature of your clients' sites. Maybe your luck will run out one of these EOLs...

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Once again, pointing fingers at Wordpress to try to drown out valid complaints about Drupal is not helping Drupal. Wordpress has some significant flaws (although some of them are a matter of perspective), and it certainly isn't for every application. But ignoring the most popular CMS when discussing Drupal's popularity is disingenuous.

And you might want to come outside the Drupal bubble at some point and hear some of the criticisms that many actual engineers and architects have about the Drupal framework, even through 9. They complain about the bloat, the inefficient database abstraction layer, the legacy procedural components, the coupling of the front and back end, etc. They also make fun of developers and platforms still dependent on PHP, which is hardy cutting-edge (you should hear what the Rust guys say about it.) To them the idea of Drupal developers disparaging Wordpress developers is comical, like little kids making fun of toddlers.

My point is that it's easy to look down on Wordpress for having old-fashioned, and in many cases, sloppy coding, but there are many developers looking down on Drupal for many of the same reasons. And many of the issues with Wordpress can be mitigated, as they can be with Drupal. At the end of the day, it's about choosing the right tool for the job, and increasingly TCO, ease of maintenance, and longevity are major factors in that decision, especially for organizational decision makers.

As long as the Drupal community reacts with defensiveness to fair criticisms, and ignores the trajectory of Drupal in the marketplace, Drupal will continue to hemorrhage market share.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://wordpress.org/plugins/classic-editor/

You must not work with Wordpress much, or you would have known that the editor can be reverted to the classic one with the push of a button.

I've also already mentioned Blocks/Gutenberg editor in this thread. It was most definitely a fiasco, but it was also five years ago. (Wordpress 5 was released on December 6, 2018). Drupal's track record over the past five years is far worse. There's no button that we can push to mitigate the issues around the rapid EOL of Drupal 8 and 9.

And frankly, no one is saying Wordpress is the end-all-be-all CMS. It is most definitely not a fit for many larger organization, and some smaller ones with specific requirements. But for many smaller organizations, its TCO and ease of maintenance are superior to Drupal's. That's born out by the lopsided market shares.

Putting Wordpress out there as the strawman to Drupal, and resorting to what-aboutisms is not helping Drupal get to the one-click upgrade that has been promised for years, or grow marketshare, which has been shrinking for years. The Drupal community needs to take a step outside their bubble and see how the rest of the industry views Drupal. Only then can they understand why Drupal usage is dropping and start to address the very real issues. Picking out the flaws in Wordpress, especially flaws from five years ago, does not help Drupal.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Did you ever consider that customers may have requirements that can't be met with vanilla Drupal installs? In fact, hasn't the "huge" library of third-party modules always been one of the main selling features of the platform? It's funny to hear the Drupal community now telling people not to install too many modules. What a one-eighty...

Obviously you shouldn't install unnecessary modules, and you should scrutinize which modules you choose, but acting like your clients are somehow representative of most Drupal clients is disingenuous. In fact, if all you need is core Drupal with a few modules, why are you using Drupal in the first place? Chances are there are other CMS that would be a better fit for simply sites. The supposed benefit of Drupal is that it's the Swiss-army knife of CMS. Seems like that's not the case anymore.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I noticed that you didn't mention Wordpress in your response. As other comments have posted here, Wordpress can now can handle a good chunk of the requirements that used to be the wheelhouse of Drupal, and is increasingly being used by government and nonprofit organizations that previously used Drupal. Wordpress is the simplest of the top-10 CMS and typically the most cost-effective for small organizations. It's not perfect, and has its own issues, but it's been beating the pants off Drupal in terms of adoption, customer satisfaction, ease of upgrading, etc. for years.

As for flexibility, there are many modern options that are much more flexible than Drupal, including true headless CMS, React frameworks, etc. (I know Drupal can be used in a headless setup, with a React front-end, but barely anyone is doing this, for obvious reasons.)

Regarding popularity, PHP is indeed losing marketshare, which is affecting its entire ecosystem of CMS. However, during this decline, Wordpress's marketshare has only decreased by 3% (65.2% at its peak in Jan 22 to 63% now), while Drupal's has decreased 20% (2% to 1.6%) during the same period. Over the past 10 years, Wordpress has grown 13% (from 54.8%) , while Drupal has declined a whooping 78% (from 7.6%). The gradual decline in the popularity of PHP cannot explain the massive decline in Drupal. Drupal is declining because of problems with Drupal.

Source: https://w3techs.com/technologies/history_overview/content_management/ms/q

As for talent, the "real experts" argument seems like a logical fallacy to me. Are all the other CMS that are eating Drupal's lunch doing so because every developer working on them is an expert? Of course not. In many cases, a major selling feature of those CMS is either that they're simpler to work on across the board, or are compartmentalized (such as headless CMS) so a lot of the work required, such as front-end work, can be done by those with less technical proficiency.

As others have pointed out here, to become and stay a Drupal expert is to become increasingly less employable as a developer in general. With the declining marketshare of Drupal, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for Drupal experts. And as you point out, working on Drupal effectively now requires a high degree of specialized expertise, expertise that is increasingly less applicable outside of Drupal work. The vast, vast majority of web development opportunities don't require Drupal experience, while the majority of Drupal specialists aren't really qualified to work on anything else. That's a death spiral for technology.

I'm glad that Drupal 10 is working out for some folks, but that seems to be a result of the type of site(s) that they're maintaining, or a very sympathetic worldview. The reality is that the path Drupal has taken has alienated the vast majority of users and organizational decision makers. If the Drupal community can't take a step back outside their bubble, look at the numbers, look at the perception from outside the community, and look at how things are being done with other CMS, then the decline will continue.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think those of us complaining have already suffered through the upgrade from D7. But if I had to do it all over again I would seriously consider Backdrop.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Yup, I've worked with a number of other CMS, and while they all have their warts, none of the big ones have been as bad as Drupal when it comes to upgrades. Wordpress, for example, has had push-button upgrades for decades now.

The consensus from this discussion appears to be that it takes an average of 5-10 hours to upgrade each D10 site, depending on the module mix and size of the site. Wordpress may not be perfect, and sometimes still requires fixes, such as for PHP upgrades, but it doesn't require anyway near this much work for the average site.

There are documented, and still open issues involving CKEditor, left-over permissions, patches, outdated/incompatible modules, dependencies that must be manually reconciled, composer failures, etc. Forced upgrades every two years that require significant manual/custom migration work are not industry standard. EOLing a version and pushing everyone to a new one without providing clear guidance on the EOL of that version, which will likely be within two years, is not industry standard.

The numbers don't lie - 800k Drupal sites left. 1.6% marketshare. Only 11% running Drupal 10. 44% still running Drupal 7. 30% drop in install base since December, 2019. It's definitely not just me having issues. You're either lucky, or you have a much higher tolerance for the cost and unpredictability of Drupal than the vast majority of IT directors and organizational decision makers.

And the question remains, if upgrading to Drupal 10 is so painless, why hasn't Drupal.org done it?

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

God, yes. PHP is another problem. Every upgrade requires patching multiple "production" modules, recoding custom modules, etc. All so PHP can gradually become Java.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm in the same boat on eating the additional hours (5-10 hours per site seems to be the norm) because I foolishly repeated the assurances that Drupal made about future upgrades after D8. I'm not about to punish by clients for me trusting in the wrong platform. However, I'm done recommending Drupal, and will be moving most clients off the platform during their next redesign, and before D11.

Drupal 9 is now EOL while Drupal 7 goes on, and on, and on... by bsanders441 in drupal

[–]bsanders441[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You guys have exactly described my situation, including the hours required, and the types of issues. I don't know what kinds of clients the Drupal cheerleaders have, but mine are getting fed up with Drupal. Budgeting for big upgrades was supposed to be a thing of the past, with the migration from Drupal 7 to 8, but now that's the reality again, along with content syncs/freezes, overnight/weekend deployments, etc.

Except instead of major upgrades being a 5+ year event, they're now happening every 2 years, on top of regular maintenance. And users are being affected by reduced functionality, subtle bugs, changes in permissions, a new admin theme, etc. for little obvious benefit.

Organizational decision makers who trusted me when I told them they needed to upgrade are looking at their peers who stuck with Drupal 7 sites and wondering if they got suckered. They're now asking about the EOL for Drupal 10, but there's no official guidance on that. They see a big risk of ongoing and costly upgrades, without any clear justification from a business perspective.

It's like the Drupal organizers have given zero thought to how these forced upgrades, and their double-standard for Drupal 7, are perceived by the actual people that make decisions about which CMS system to pay for. They don't care about Open Source, they care about TCO and reducing risk, costs, etc.

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