Drupal 7 First Impressions

The Alpha for Drupal 7 has been out for a week now so I had to download and install it to see what this new version is going to be like.  I installed it on my Mac running MAMP as that is the sytem I used for development and testing.  The install went easily enough.  Enter the Database name, username, and password and you are on your way.  There were a couple more choices for options during the initial install but those are pretty self explanatory.

 The first thing I noticed when I logged in was the Dashboard and admin menu.  I am really liking that this is now part of Drupal Core since I always installed the admin menu module as one of the first things I did whenever I install Drupal.  I love the new menu overlays.  They make things much easier to find.

 The other thing I noticed right away is that it seems faster.  Granted I am running with a very Basic system with no extra modules enabled yet but it seems faster out of the box to me.  I am going to take more time this weekend to setup a copy of my Website running on the new version to see how well it works and go through all of the options to see what else i can find.

 Based on what I have seen so far, I can't wait for Drupal 7 to get to a Release version so I can convert my existing sites to it.