Drupal 7 is here! Commence Rejoicing!

Submitted by kendall.totten on 14 January, 2011 - 18:59

On the 7th, I celebrated the release of Drupal 7 in Jackson, MI, in the company of the Commerce Guys and a few other developers, designers, and drupalgangers. Rubbing elbows with fellow Drupal-lovers is always a good time, especially when you're celebrating something as exciting as the release of Drupal 7.

The dinner-roll-druplicaon.

It's been a long time coming now, with rumors of it's release beginning as early as September 2010. The date was continually bumped back as various issues were discovered, but the community kept hammering away until it was considered stable, reliable, and did I mention awesome?

So what's so great about Drupal 7 you ask? To the end user, you'll find a varied menu system that will take a little getting used to, but ultimately makes more sense.

Dashboard
Content
Structure
Appearance
People
Modules
Configuration
Reports
Help

Beyond that, users can also add custom shortcuts to the admin menu quickly and easily. When you click on any of the admin links, the options that appear are shown in a lightbox fashion, so as not to interrupt what you were viewing on the site. Meaning you don't have to open billions of browser tabs to adjust settings. A big plus.

The combination of built-in functionality and a streamlined workflow make it easy for even non-techies to manage and add content. Drupal boasts plenty of great features like media galleries, simplified views, e-commerce, forums, blogs, newsletters, social networking, and much more.

Cheers to all those who worked hard to make it possible! http://drupal.org/drupal-7.0