Genuine Juice

Drupal 7 recently launched, and no one at Genuine has as intimate an understanding of what it can do than Mike Miles. He was our lead developer on the recent MFA.org project, among others, which we recently built in Drupal.

I asked him what he was most excited about with the newest release of Drupal and this is his report:

• The Drupal 7 core has been completely rewritten, is now more secure, performs and runs better/faster and has better support for SEO.
• Now supports jQuery 1.4.2 (Drupal 6 was stuck at 1.2.x). This creates an easier process to install and update modules (like WordPress, modules can now be updated/installed over the web, with no FTP access required).
• CCK module is now a core module, allowing for native creation of custom fields. The administer module is included into core, allowing for easier navigation for users not familiar with the Drupal admin interface.
• Improved handling of image & file fields: Drupal 7 now natively handles file fields, and has some additional functions for uploading and validating files, which it didn’t really have before. With image fields, Drupal 7 has better handling of third-party image libraries for uploading, editing and managing images, such as the ImageCache module.
• Easier process for developing Drupal modules with existence of new hooks. For example, hook_query_alter which allows you to alter a structured (dynamic) query. This means you can alter a query from any other module before it runs. Also, hook_admin_paths which allows you to specify whether or not paths defined in the hook_menu are to be considered administrative.

Finally, I asked him if there was anything Drupal 7 might allow him to do, from developing a certain type of site to crazy functionality for a site, to handling new types of CMS requirements) that he wouldn’t have tried in Drupal 6.

His answer, which I love: “Not that I can really think of, but that’s because I’ve already done crazy stuff with Drupal 6.”

Rock on, Mr. Miles!