Just last Friday, Drupal celebrated its ninth birthday. Not too shabby, seeing as Drupal 6 was recently anointed as the runaway success story in Open Source of 2009. Since 2001, Drupal has released 6 full versions and is on schedule to release Drupal 7 in 2010. They would like to release it sooner rather than later and, in fact, have asked for its developer community’s help to expedite the release. Drupal 7.0 Alpha 1 has officially been released for download and testing.
The Drupal 7 Alpha 1 is an alpha version, which means that it should not be used for production sites. They expect at least one more alpha version, followed by a few beta versions, before Drupal 7.0 is finalized and released. After nearly two years of development, the alpha version includes tons of new features and improvements for both users and developers. Here is a quick overview of what changes you may expect to see from Drupal 7: