Drupal 6 was released today after several months of development, and over 1600 issues being closed. Drupal 6.0rc4 was just released on February 8th, leaving the final release a mere week in the future. As is typical, contributed modules (many of which are fairly integral functionality for many users) are not all up to spec to the 6.0 infrastructure. As such, for some Drupal users, 5.0 may still be the best release for some time yet. Also of note, Drupal 6.0 is the last major Drupal release that will run on PHP 4 - as part of the Go PHP 5 initiative, Drupal is using their clout to help push the industry to PHP 5.2 - and Drupal 7 will be PHP 4 incompatible.

The changes in 6.0 are significant as usual - here are some of the interesting ones:

• A new wizard-like installer/configuration system.
• Drag n’ Drop Everywhere
• Actions and Triggers Workflow engine
• Drastically improved performance in menu engine
• Path Alias Administration improvements
• Improved Teaser Management.

Check the link for the complete story. I imagine I’ll be working to upgrade my core Drupal sites as soon as all of my necessary contrib modules are available.