Drupal 7 programming advancements, differences from Drupal 6 upgrade or wait

Question

I was just wondering if there were any changes in the Drupal 7 code that effect server load and speed for large sites.

Also, with 7 nearing beta release, should I wait to build the sites with Drupal 7? I'm a future kinda guy. I would like to be able to develop Drupal sites for a freelance business I am owner of, and would like to start soon. Is Drupal 7 accepted enough to be developing live, customer sites for? Security Issues?

Thanks

Answer 1

At this moment, D7 is not even ready for development yet, so I wouldn't even think of putting a D7 site live. There is no upgrade path between alpha versions, so any bugfix could break your site. Once the first beta release is out, you can start developing.

To see what's new in Drupal 7, see the September 2nd sildeshow on http://webchick.net/node/70.

Keep in mind that there is more than Drupal core; you'll probably also need contributed modules. Figure out which modules you will need and make sure that they are available for D7, or help the module maintainer port the module.

To make the choice, I would ask myself two questions:

1. Can you afford to wait until Drupal 7 is stable?
2. Do you really need D7 features?

If both answers are yes, start developing once beta1 is out and publish your site when it's running on 7.0-stable. Otherwise, use Drupal 6.