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Earlier this week, I announced a new site that I'm working on under the domain SocPub.com. What I didn't say in the announcement was which CMS I was going to use for the site. I also didn't say that my choice in the CMS version could be considered by some as risky. I have decided to use the alpha/beta/release candidates of Drupal 7 for the SocPub site.

Using an alpha version of any CMS for a production site is never recommended, but I have some personal reasons for why I want to do this. No doubt, there will be bumps in the road using these early versions of Drupal 7. However, I'm hoping the benefits outweigh the risks and in a small way testing early versions of Drupal 7 may offer me an opportunity to give back to the Drupal community. For example, installing Drupal 7 has allowed me to collect some screenshots of a Drupal 7 Alpha 1 install.

If someone wants to use the screenshots below for one of the image galleries at Drupal.org or any Drupal community site, then permission is granted to use the images.

Using the above image, one of the first things you will notice is that you now have a choice in the type of Drupal install you would like to do. Currently, you have a choice between a "Standard" install or a "Minimal" install. I personally never like to make things more difficult than they should be and so I recommend you select "Standard".

As the image above reminds us, Drupal 7 has some server requirements that must be considered. Is PHP 5.2 or greater available on your server? Have you initiated your settings file correctly? In Drupal 7 this walk-through is improved by letting you know Drupal's latest requirements and giving you some hints on how to resolve potential install issues.