Symphony.

Like others I imagine, I'm trying to talk myself either into or out of jumping in with version 2 for current projects. I'm new to Symphony but would love to dive into using it and XSLT for forthcoming projects.

For those who have been up to their elbows in both versions what are you choosing to do?

Is 1.7 still a good choice to develop in with 2.0 around the corner? Particularly with the prospect of wanting to update your templates and content to the newer version eventually.

The additional customizability of 2.0 seems very attractive but are the current bugs or missing core features and lack of extensions making it unwise to use for live sites and client work yet?

Any insight and feedback would be greatly appreciated; currently spinning like a top amidst choices... ;)

Best, Clayton

This is my personal opinion... Symphony 2 is definitely stable enough for a live site. However, I would not recommend it for client work just yet.

I'm using s2 to develop 3 or 4 different sites.

Thanks Lewis. Thanks czheng. That's good to hear.

Lewis, what distinctions do you draw between a live site and a client site?

Your biggest problems are going to be:

1. Stability. Whilst I believe that Symphony 2 is very stable, there are areas that haven't been fully tested. Nothing worse than half way through development finding a bug that prevents you from delivering on time. Or deploying, only to find a bug renders the live site unusable for whatever reason.
2. Upgrade Path. We don't promise that there will be an upgrade path between revisions. While we would love to do this, it is time consuming and adds to the amount of support we need to provide. Also, we want to feel that we can make radical underlying changes to Symphony. So, it could be hard, or even impossible, to update client sites to Symphony 2 final. This isn't too much of a problem if the site is working (it ain't broke, so don't fix it), however if you are affected by point 1, then you might be wishing you waited until the final release.

All that said, we have already worked closely with a number of clients in deploying Symphony 2 beta in a production environment with great success. We aren't washing our hands of everyone here if we intentionally forego any update path or hit a major bug. It is in our best interest to do right by the community (and clients), but we make no promises.

The question right now is: Does the current level of stability warrant the expanded feature set? Given the general stability of S2, it seems to me that if I'm eventually going to need S2 features on a project, then I'm going to have to translate anything I develop now into S2 final. I may have to rebuild it from S2 beta, but I know I will have to rebuild it from 1.7. Even if the upgrade path gets broken, I'm still going to be better off planning the site with S2's feature set rather than rethinking the whole thing from 1.7 to 2 final. Or is this just me rationalizing?

Those really are questions that only you can answer based on your particular needs. For me, I've gone with S2, because given the kinds of projects I'm working on, the pros outweigh the cons.

Regarding the upgrade path issue (either from 1.7 or 2 beta to stable v2 release) what does this affect in general? Is it mainly a matter of rebuilding or adjusting templates, utilities, etc. to reconnect them to existing database data or would one have to actually re-enter all of the data into a new database?

I guess I'm thinking particularly about beta v2 > stable v2 since I think I had read that 1.7 vs. 2 use different table structures...

Knowing just enough to be dangerous to those around him ;)

Clayton

There is no upgrade path from 1.7 to 2 due to the vastly different database structure and implementation of XSLT.

I think Alistair's post sums it up. The way I see it, what's good for Symphony 2 might not be good for the beta community. Having said that, I know the team is well aware of the fact that the success of the beta period is the direct result from the beta community.

Lewis, what distinctions do you draw between a live site and a client site?

I'm using 2 for personal projects and friends but I wouldn't use it for clients who would be less tolerant of possible hiccups.

Thanks again Lewis.

Best, Clayton