News @ Gameslate

Okay I've done the basic upgrade to Drupal 6.2, plus installed the Views 2 beta and recreated some of my views. Bit of a pain, but glad I've gotten around to doing it.

*shakes the dust from his hands*

Next up are some user profile customizations so people can start signing up on the new site. After that, I'll be taking a break to play some Age of Conan. *grin*

Views 2 reaching its second beta release for Drupal 6 is promising. =)

I may revoke my decision to just move along without it. I'm still torn over whether I should add another delay to my schedule. I'd need at least Views and Organic Groups in stable and upgradeable condition for Drupal 6.

Despite my little frustration rant being mistook, I do have enthusiasm for Drupal still. There's no question over whether I'll stick with it, but whether I continue to upgrade and keep pace is completely dependent on the migration issues eventually getting resolved, which I'm feeling pretty cynical about.

A CMS in particular is something that I want to run smoothly and not have to spend a great deal of time and energy maintaining. To be clear, this is my point of frustration: Drupal doesn't upgrade or migrate easily, if it did then waiting for modules wouldn't be an issue. Views & CCK make it even more difficult, data could be stored and presented in so many different ways.

The big question for myself and the lurkers that I know are following this, is whether I just go ahead with Drupal 5 or wait some more for the key modules I need for Drupal 6, because I'm going to feel pretty stuck to one or the other.

In many ways, it's easier to wait. I can certainly occupy my time elsewhere (my gf is moving in, trust me I have lots to do, plus Age of Conan is coming soon *grin*), but I'm not a mañana person, I like to get things done and wrapped up so I can move on. I think here though, frustrations with delays need to give into the wisdom of patience. =)

Update: Nope, I'm second-guessing this again.

. . .

Following my ponderings and expelling of frustrations last week, I'm bitting the bullet and moving ahead with Drupal 5, something that in hindsight I should have done months ago. Ahhh well, it's easy to look back isn't it. Now it'll feel good to get back to the grindstone.

My priority will be on moving the main Gameslate community features to Drupal over the coming weeks. I'd like to get the guild features in especially, since Age of Conan will be launching on May 20th. I'll be experimenting with different configurations with the Organic Groups module until then.

Gates Motel will come afterwards, I'm not feeling super rushed on it and would rather spend the time to get it running nice and stable like it once was. I realize after all this time that Gates isn't likely to gather the large community that it once enjoyed, aside from the time spent in a half-assed state, casual gaming has plenty of other popular avenues these days. Still, long live old BBS ports!

In the long run, it would be nice if Gameslate can carve out a niche for itself within game-centric websites. I don't necessarily want to compete with the big media offerings, the portal communities or the recent game-related blogs, but I would like to provide a cozy place for gaming peeps to gather around.

Now I just need to juggle this with other stuff that I've got going on. =)

After months of waiting for Drupal 6 to get up to speed, I'm getting sick of waiting.

The worst part is seeing Views 2 and other key supporting modules flounder while the core Drupal team rushes on to Drupal 7 before 6 is even usable.

Slow down, seriously. This is one recent adopter who's disappointed with the headlong pace and the near abandonment of what's just come out the door. I realize it's exciting and probably profitable to you, but when the codebase is a moving target and the next version significantly cuts into current development to the point of current = incomplete... well that seems an obvious Catch-22 problem to me.

Freeze 7 and finish up 6. You called it complete, but it isn't. You cannot complete 7 anyway since these are modules planned for the 7 core.

I'm not a site-designing company, so I'm not profiting from the steep learning curves, accelerated development and problematic upgrade paths. Overall I think the software is well designed, but the priorities of the companies that fuel most of the development are beginning to sit poorly with me.

Edit: I'm going to clarify here, because at least one person misunderstood the paragraph above. I'm not accusing anyone of being money-grubbing greed mongers. It's just that money and business tend to act like glue in regards to priorities such as these and that means the situation may be stuck this way./Edit

Granted, some of the forward-thinking features brought me to Drupal in the first place, but I'd just like a stable and complete platform to work with. It puts me at unease to realize that's two versions before what's being developed now.

This is me grumbling a little before I just make do with Drupal 5. I'm already past my original deadlines and Drupal 6 looks like it will still be stalled for awhile.

Well not much to say about it here, since I already said it there. I'm making minor adjustments and naming MMOROG back to NecroRogIcon, the name that really suited my blog best.

Following the holidays pause, I've been a bit stalled (the past two months, eeep) on my server backend work because of the pending release of Drupal 6. The current-at-the-time Drupal 5 was lacking some features in 6 that I really wanted.

As of today, Drupal 6 has been released.

Now however, the new pause is the wait for modules to catch up. Most notably Views and Organic Groups, both of which have been pretty integral to my site designs so far. Hopefully it shouldn't take too long for these modules to rework new versions for Drupal 6.