Is backdrop still developing ?

Dear dd123, 

What are your criteria for this "still developing" and what makes you doubt it? Have you ever tried to make a website with Backdrop CMS or do you want reliable 100% guarantees before trying at all?

I have been working with Backdrop CMS (as a regular user, I am not part of the developer community) since 2016 and I can testify to how in practice the system successfully develops and improves with each new version.

I am only mentioning the integration of the most frequently used modules into the core.

There are already over 1000 additional modules for the system, and their number is constantly increasing. Unlike Drupal 7, here you will not find many competing modules with similar functionality, so this number is even more impressive and efficient. 

Work on adding new modules is underway, gradually and systematically - month after month, year after year.

The planned development schedule is strictly adhered to, the next planned version is 1.31 - in May 2025.

https://backdropcms.org/roadmap

The forum and community channels for user communication work responsively, there was practically no important question that I asked and I did not receive a timely answer and solution.

Regarding the Backdrop 2.0 version - I am confident that it will be implemented when the time comes, by the way, many of the goals set years ago for implementation with version 2.0 have found and continue to find a solutions in version 1.0. Including multilingual support e.g.

Usage statistics are not very reliable and should be used only as a tool for tracking trends. Many users who maintain multiple sites turn off the module sending information about statistics because they do not want to receive multiple identical messages about updates, they need only one site to do this.

https://backdropcms.org/project/usage

My company maintains over 70 sites with Backdrop CMS but only a 3-4 of them have an active Update Manager module - which sends data to create these statistics.

Just in the last 1-2 months, after the suspension of Drupal 7, there has been a unusually high trend towards an increase in the number of sites using Backdrop CMS, and according to platforms such as wappalyzer.com, the system is used by over 10,000 websites. 

Wappalyzer and similar services are also not reliable statistics data because it depends on the site declaring exactly what system they use, and there are those that exclude this self-declaring or they mask it for security reasons.

They can't count the exact number of websites, but they can register trends, and that's important.

Therefore, I would advise you, before starting work with Backdrop CMS, do not look for a 100% guarantee, no one can give one. Instead, just start working and experience itself will show you that you have made the right decision.

What's more, when you work with Backdrop CMS and report issues, you are actually participating in the development of the system you rely on.

As you wrote, Backdrop CMS is an option. I would add - it is the only option. And we should be extremely grateful to the community that gives us this option.

I'm one of the developers. Backdrop is being actively developed.

We've found a lot of ways to keep improving Backdrop 1.x and keep backwards compatibility so we haven't had a need to go to 2.x which would break some of that. 

It's already been said, but development is still going strong for Backdrop CMS. We have a weekly core developer meeting and have released Minor upgrades with new features every 4 months for the last 10 years. Our 30th feature release was in January of this year and was one of our biggest ever. Feel free to drop into one of our core developer meetings to get a sense of what is happening or watch the recordings here:

https://www.youtube.com/@backdropcms/streams

Backdrop CMS 2.0 has been delayed, for a few reasons:

1. We have a very strong commitment to backward compatibility and have not seen the need for any major upgrades that break APIs. We've gotten pretty good at making significant improvements without the need for a major release.
    
2. For a long time, we were committed to avoiding a major upgrade until at least 2 years after Drupal EOL, to provide Drupal 7 site owners considering a change some sense of stability. As Drupal 7 EOL was pushed, so was our timeline. 
    
3. We just don't have any many priority items for BackdropCMS that would require a major release anytime soon. 

Here is a blog post from March of 2024 with thoughts on 2.0 at that time.

https://backdropcms.org/news/what-will-happen-in-backdrop-2x

We have over 1300 projects (not all of these have official releases) for Backdrop CMS and Drupal 7 modules continue to be ported on a weekly basis and completely new new modules are still being created for Backdrop CMS. 

You can get some sense of contrib activity in our contrib space on Github. There are some big modules like Commerce that do not have an official Backdrop releasse yet, but are being used on Backdrop sites and inching closer to a release soon. NOTE: UberCart is strong and healthy in the Backdrop space and has been meeting the commerce needs of our community quite well. 

A great opportunity to gauge the health of the community is coming up in a few weeks. Twice a year, we host an online event called Backdrop LIVE, and the next one is on April 3-4.

https://events.backdropcms.org/

Hi dd123,

I belief, the question, why Backdrop's still at version 1 has already been answered. There hasn't been an urgent need for v2 (no breaking changes that require a major version change).

Can you elaborate why you "don't see lots of D7 moved to B"? Where did you look for that information? And what did you expect?

"From outside" you may not see the activity, because as a true OpenSource community we don't have a marketing department. :-D To get a better sense of what's going on, the best way's to get involved in the community.

Backdrop CMS is a great tool to build and maintain (also complex) websites on a budget.

I am satisfied with Backdrop 1.x, I prefer stability. No need to complicate life with new versions, as Drupal does.

If you have a "new project" being created from scratch, that isn't already in Drupal, and there is no need to migrate, some of my comments in this post may not be relevant.  As an Administrator, and now solely responsible for 2 sites created in Drupal 5, then migrated to D6 and D7, I am very happy with my move to Backdrop and the community support I've received.  

Support:  There are "Office Hours" meetings every Wednesday, where people stop by to chat about what projects they are working on in Backdrop, and get help, advice, or recommendations.  Feel free to stop by and meet some of the developers, and ask all the questions you want.  People can show you what's available, and I promise you will feel welcomed.  The first time I attended, they helped me get the migration of my sites started, and I got a good idea of how things worked.  

Learning curve: One very important benefit to me was how much like Drupal it was.  The learning curve was so tiny, it was insignificant.  Yes, there are differences, especially in themes/ layouts, but people are very willing to help navigate/ explain how these work.  A few of the modules I used in Drupal weren't ported, but there were alternate ways to get the same functionality, or someone volunteered to port them when they also had a need for that module.  When some of my issues needed minor tweaks to settings.php, or a configuration page was confusing, they were there to help me make it work.  

Migration: If I were a programmer, many of "my issues" would not have been issues, and I could have immediately recognized the tweak that would make it work properly.  I have access to cPanel for my sites, which made some things much easier.   If you install and follow the instructions for "Drupal to Backdrop Migrate" it will provide information about your existing Drupal site regarding what has/has not been ported to Backdrop.  The Backup and Migrate module will help get the data from Drupal into Backdrop, with possibly a bit of help from the Feeds Module.  

My advice is to visit Office Hours a few times to meet some of the people involved in Backdrop and ask more questions.  And as StPaulTim mentioned, we have a Backdrop LIVE unconference coming up in April.   Hope to soon see you as another happy user of Backdrop!

Here is an interesting perspective from a site owner that explains why people move to BackdropCMS  https://backdropcms.org/showcase/pgsuper-open-source-girder-bridge-design-software#testimony