The official release of Drupal 5.0 is just around the corner. [According to "this":http://lists.drupal.org/archives/development/2006-12/msg00304.html and "this.":http://drupal.org/node/105004 ] The cycle time is looking to be shorter than it was "for 4.7.":http://ichris.ws/2006/11/01/drupal-5-0-beta I was itching to play with it since Beta 1 was released 2 months ago, but it is just impossible without a working version of "Akismet module.":http://drupal.org/project/akismet This site gets around 30 spam comments a day.

The first Akismet development snapshot for Drupal 5 was release the night of the first day of 2007, and that's the night I upgraded. The experience had been very pleasant:

* New installation is very easy now. Upgrade is as easy as in 4.7.
* "Modules get updated":http://drupal.org/node/82257 to DRUPAL-5 very quickly. My guess is peoples are excited about the major numeric change in years. Drupal 4.0 was released in year 2002!
* Many nice new modules were also released. High on my list are "Release Monitor":http://drupal.org/project/releasemonitor | "Double Click":http://drupal.org/project/dblclick | A working "Flickr":http://drupal.org/project/flickr module | "Upload Preview":http://drupal.org/project/upload_preview | "Autosave":http://drupal.org/project/autosave
* The new admin interface needs some getting used to, but it is a major improvement.
* The new default theme, "Garland,":http://drupal.org/node/91964 will be good for Drupal. (The "controversy":http://acko.net/blog/wordpress-com-copies-drupal-theme aside) Bluemarine was butt ugly. It just turned peoples off.