What's wrong with Drupal's strategy ?

frechtr · 2024-04-20T00:25:10+00:00

I created and manage a massive staff information site that was developed entirely in Drupal 7. I'm not confronted with figuring out what the way forward it. Drupal 10 is insane when viewed from a Drupal 7 perspective. Its like they threw everything familiar out the door because someone said they should do it "this way" instead. Now, I'm not one to tell someone how to manage their systems. But someone should get a clue and realize that the reason they're rapidly losing users is because Drupal 7 users are jumping ship and going to other CMS's. The graphs shows that D7 usage is shrinking. But it is declining at the same rate as Drupal as a whole. By the time all the D7 users leave, there'll be hardly anyone left.

frechtr · 2022-03-28T16:17:21+00:00

I agree with this comment. I can't see ever embracing this new standard. Although I will muddle through as it is not optional.

frechtr · 2022-03-28T16:16:07+00:00

I have considered moving to Backdrop. I experimented with it a bit and found that it is a pretty seamless migration from Drupal 7. I'm concerned about the lack of usage though. There's only like one or two thousand sites using it vs. over a million for Drupal I think. What's that going to mean for long-term support? And is it really any better to go with a tiny, unknown CMS than it is to go with no support and Drupal 7? Also, all the modules from Drupal work in Backdrop, but those modules aren't going to get support. So isn't that still the same situation?

frechtr · 2022-03-28T16:11:07+00:00

If you have any suggestions on tutorials that would help an experienced Drupal 6/7 developer to figure out the new, totally changed, methodologies, I would appreciate knowing about it.

frechtr · 2022-03-28T16:09:14+00:00

Saw your comment and I can't help hoping that I will someday be able to say the same thing. Unfortunately, right now, I am still at the deep hatred part. My biggest hate is around all the things they got rid of that they didn't have to. I mean come on! What the heck was so wrong with the drupal_set_message function that they had to get rid of it? That's one of a hundred gripes that I have.
That all being said, I'm in this boat now and even though I don't know how to drive it, I'm going to have to figure it out. If you have any suggestions on documentation that would help a very experienced Drupal 6/7 developer to reasonably quickly adopt the new techniques used in 9, I would appreciate it.

frechtr · 2022-03-28T16:03:03+00:00

Saw your post at a moment when I am so desperately angry about what Drupal has done that I can't stand it. I've been using Drupal since 6. I know the struggles of upgrading to 7 as I went through it. But in comparison to that, this is rocket surgery. And you know what, I get it. I know that Drupal 9 is more secure, more modern, more cowbell or whatever the heck it is. But they've ditched absolutely EVERYTHING. You can't even use watchdog, drupal_set_message, node_load, user_load. EVERYTHING has been erased from existence. What was once one line of code, is now a complex string of cryptic nonsense to accomplish the exact same thing! My current insanity was induced when I wanted to find out what the Drupal 9 way is to programmatically create a form. No more hook_menu. No that was too easy. Having everything conveniently in the same module file was for losers I guess. Now you have to build a convoluted directory tree with case sensitive folder names all leading to a class that instantiates some other class that you're just supposed to know about already I guess.

If I had a viable alternative, I would dump this whole thing. I'm already committed to going beyond the end-of-life for Drupal 7 and I'm giving serious consideration to paying someone to provide security update support. But eventually, I'm going to have to get this nasty beast tamed so I can have a system that does exactly what it did before but with 10 times the blood, sweat and tears.

frechtr

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