Upgrading to Drupal 7: Modules

I have been looking forward to upgrading sites to Drupal 7 for a while now. While I have played around with it a bit, you never really know how things work until you use it for a real working site. So I might as well test the upgrade process on my blog here. Before I do, however, I have to make sure everything is in place so that the site still works. Does everything have to be the same? No. But I do not want to lose major functionality

One of the first things to check is whether or not contributed modules will function in Drupal 7. Is there a Drupal 7 version? Is there an upgrade path? I started by taking a cursory look at the modules I currently use to see their Drupal 7 status.

Here’s what I found:

Drupal 7 status for modules

Status listed below is as of June 24, 2011

Google Analytics

Status: Stable release

Wonderful! I can check my stats on Drupal 7.

Pathauto

Status: Release candidate 2

This module automatically creats nice and neat URL paths. Probably fine to use.

Views

Status: Release candidate 1

While not a stable release, my guess is this will work relatively fine. Pretty essential for any Drupal site.

Administration menu

Status: Release candidate 1

I use this all the time, as it makes administering a site much faster. Even though Drupal 7 has a simple administration menu, this module allows for more robust access to administration options. Should work.

Token

Status: Beta 2

This helps pathauto, and many other modules, to create text from other bits of text. Important, and it looks like it will work.

Node clone

Status: Beta 1

If you want to start from one page or post, and you want to create another one that is fairly similar, this module will create a duplicate of pretty much everything except the URL. I don’t use it all that often, so I will probably be fine.

Advanced help

Status: Beta 1

Allows modules to provide more detailed help. Not something I access too often, so no problem.

Page title

Status: Beta 1

This allows you to customize the page title that appears in the browser bar. Not the end of the world if it is not 100% ready.

Comment notify

Status: Alpha 1

This allows for notifications to go out when there are comments on a post or replies to a comment. I would miss this if it was not available, but I could live.

Weblinks

Status: Dev

I have links to some other sites, and this creates a field for those links within CCK. I can live without those links or find a way around using this, I am sure.

Nodewords/Nodewords by path

Status: Metatags module in Dev

This allows for meta descriptions and keywords to be put on individual posts. Not absolutely essential, but since I have done this for my blog posts, if only to spruce up the descriptions that show up on Google results page, I am a bit uneasy that this may not be functional.

Pingback

Status: Vinculum module in Dev

This module inserts a comment on a blog post when another blog refers to my post. It is a nice way to find out what others are saying about things I write. Not thrilled that this does not look ready yet.

Advanced Taxonomy Blocks (and jQuery Menu)

Status: none

These modules are used to create the blocks listing the categories of my posts. No Drupal 7 port yet. Frustrating. Maybe could be reproduced with Views.

My take

From looking at this, I think there will be some challenges with the modules I use. Most will probably work fine, but some will not. I will either need to find other options out there (suggestions welcome!) or develop the missing functionality myself. Enough modules are probably ready, however, that I could give it a try.

I will post more updates as I work to convert the site!

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