This website (http://www.therevival.co.uk) is built using drupal 6.

It has been based on drupal since early 2008 - within a month of the launch of Drupal 6 and one of the few early sites at that time with moderate complexity that could use Drupal 6 that early (Drupal sites generally use the base CMS as a framework with other modules used to add finctionality - the new version 6 of drupal had been released, but some big and important modules were not compatible for a few months).

Now almost 3 years later, more later than the people involved with Drupal expected, the next major version of Drupal, Drupal 7 is close to being released.

This leaves me with three options:

1. Ignore Drupal 7 completely - don't fix what aint broken
2. Move to Drupal 7 in a few months time when all the minks have been worked out
3. Move to Drupal 7 as early as possible

I think I prefer option 3 from there (as we are close to christmas and that may give me an opportunity to get some things done), but that also requires some work and some... introspection.

Back in 2008, the move to Drupal was a big big thing - there was a lot of new potential that moving to drupal created, or made easier.

Much of this potential remains unrealised (but it has made the task of managine this site a doddle - it used to consume much time before making sure everything was working correctly and kept up to date etc). Adding content is better more convenient than before (but still needs improvements) and basic website integration is a boon (before, the forums were a totally separate alien system).

At the same time, the site is now complicated and it breaks some basic user interface design principles, where getting around is not as easy as it should be.

Some of this is by design (I don't want new people to always find tribune and then stick to only that - even if it is on the main top menu), while other bits are not - I wonder how accessible the forums are.

There are few people creating blogs, forum posts, uploading pictures etc, so this brings some questions too as to the why of it - is it because they have nothing to add, or that there is a barrier either due to dificulty or inconvenience that needs to be overcome.

The front page, while functional, is not flashy, but here, keeping it functional may be the best.

As for one of the biggest parts of The Revival - the magazine, is that easily accessible? could something be done to make it more obvious or useful?

And what of the tagging system - not many use it, others find it confusing and very few use the tags to find related content, mainly because finding the tags themselves is not an easy task.

Other functionality which could have been added to the site, but I consciusly refrained from it, waiting for this next verison of Drupal where it would be simpler. An example of this is adding images to comments like we do to other posts - currently this does not work like it does for blogs, articles, even the first post in the forum topic, but such idiosyncrosies can now easily be fixed.

On the other hand, many modules used by this site are not ready for Drupal 7 (including tribune), but this can be a strength, where the site can be evaluated, and work done for the important functionality, while leaving the less important things for later.

As for the theme, the upgrade may force some changes, or it may be more or less the same, which is a downer as a good catchy new theme would be much appreciated - two column seems to be the future.

There are a few questions in this blog, and probably more things missing. Feel free to chime in any time.

All of this ofcourse is subject to my laziness and other things, so dont hold your breath.