I really really want to upgrade this site to Drupal 4.5. Now the release candidate has been out a while, I think the 4.5 release is just around the corner. There’re many nice changes, especially in the accessibility side of things.

Problem is, I’m now busy writing my thesis. And it will be a bad idea to upgrade now if I takes a whole afternoon. Also, this time I want to do a fresh install and then migrate all my old data onto it (which I have never done before). This is because ,after 4-5 previous upgrades and more than 20 module trials, my SQL database is filled with craps.

New features I look forwarding to use: (I’ve tried them in CVS a few times and think they’re really great)

• menu configuration
• tab, tab, tab navigation
• user profile customization
• node-level permission
• more real-world comment system (not every site is a cummunity site)
• better syndication
• theme system changes — perhaps the most noticable change of them all. This will take many hours of my time, for sure. _”
• new filter system, more complicated, more customizability. I like.

List of modules I currently use and their status on drupal.org

• aggregator, archive, block, blog, blogapi, book, comment, node, page, path, ping, search, — updated (part of core)
• article — still 4.4
• atom — still 4.4
• captcha — still 4.4
• codefilter — updated to 4.5
• form_mail — updated to 4.5 (but not listed in the project page yet)
• glossary — still 4.4
• html_tidy
• latest_comment — already integrated into comment module
• node_image — still 4.4, this could proved a big problem for this site.
• quotes — still 4.4
• smiley — updated to 4.5
• textile — updated to 4.5
• trackback — updated to 4.5
• weblink — still 4.4, this could proved another big problem for this site.
• welcome_page — this is modified from Michael Angeles’s welcome.module, guess I’ll have to do it again.

So, the main problem seems to be node_image and weblink, although they are maintained by capable peoples and are fairly popular, I’m sure they will get updated soon.

Some new modules I’d like to get my hands on:

• Attachment
• CSV-filter — for inputting tables in csv format
• FSCache — This is a filter caching module and should speed up the site
• Img_assist — This adds inline_image, perhaps I’ll have to switch to this if node_image doesn’t get up to date. This module relies on image.module, which I don’t like. Let’s hope for node_image 4.5
• Mail — too bad this wasn’t available when I use Drupal to run NTU Thai Society site. Then we would not have need to set up the mailing list.
• paypal_framework
• Scheduler — adds schedule for publishing or unpublishing nodes
• Spam — I’m not famous so comment spam hasn’t been a problem, but it’ll still be good to have this in place. Uses bayesian filter.
• Summary — I’ve never got this to work the way I wanted, wonder if things have changed at all.