This past May 9-13, the Drupal community members attending DrupalCon in New Orleans, Louisiana, did a senseless and imperceptible job by organizing a Drupal 6 Funeral Procession and Party.
Though it was just a prototype marking an end of an era and an onset of a fresh one, it?s unacceptable. It could have been done in a better way considering it?s unmatched contribution over the 8 years in making the World Wide Web a part of everyone?s life.
On behalf of every individual and business involved in the Drupal web development discipline, I pay my sincere tribute to Drupal 6. And on behalf of all those who bear some sense I condemn what happened in New Orleans on May 12, 2016, at 5.15 PM, outside the Hall H entrance to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
On this auspicious occasion, let?s get into the flashback of the framework that still empowers some 95,930 websites, serves millions of purposes and helps their owners build a trustworthy relationship with their customers. It was this very release that helped Drupal to cement its position firmly as one of the most popular content management frameworks along with veterans like Joomla, WordPress, Blogger, and Magento, and was often the first choice for websites requiring to handle a high volume of traffic.
Drupal that ruled the web development arena for almost 8 years was launched on February 13, 2008, and it became a game changer for the community and the world in no time. In this span, compared with Drupal 5 statistics, the number of Drupal 6 websites increased exponentially by 66.25 times.
Top 5 Features
Quick and easy setup
It introduced a fresh and easy-to-use installer to help a Drupal web developer easily download, install and set up the Drupal core database keeping all components intact with the hosting server. Getting started with the preferred language was also easier than ever.
Drag-and-Drop Administration
For the first time, Drupal got the drag-n-drop feature. Moving blocks, menu items, forums, taxonomy terms, uploaded files, etc. was made easier to help developers do more with the less effort. A similar set of features was made available for content management as well. From creating menus, sub-menus and adding/removing SEO fields to drafting and publishing content, all got a lot easier with Drupal 6.
Multi-Language Support
Drupal extended its support to all key languages (approx. 177) spoken on the planet from left-to-right (e.g. English, Latin, Cyrillic, modern Greek) to right-to-left (e.g. Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew). Translation feature was there to help developers work seamlessly with Drupal 6 modules running on a foreign language.
Related Topic: Drupal 8 Web Development: Dos & Don'ts
Great Theming
Developers have the flexibility to bypass complex PHP coding in Drupal 6 core module while defining regions, dependencies, and features. They can customize the website easy to give it the right look and feel required to woo the target audience as all themeable content is written in simple HTML only.
Impeccable Security
Drupal 6 put an end to the existing issues and provided a whole range of security enhancements to help developers counteract the emerging e-threats. Some salient features included: password strength checking, granular permissions and role-based permissions.
Owing to all these enhancements, Drupal 6 became the muse of web developers, a web platform to reckon with for its takers and an amazing experience for its audiences.
Hats off to Drupal 6!
