Nodes have been a core part of Drupal for 6 years but are reaching their limits in terms of flexibility and performance. The document discusses improvements made in Drupal 5 but notes nodes could be extended further through additional modes, HTML support, and hooks as well as addressing potential pitfalls around performance, conversion, and collisions when identifiers are used.

1. Nodes
* Lots of interest and energy
* Tugging the ‘node’ thread unravels the Drupal sweater
* Requires problem-solving and brainstorming
* That’s why we’re here.

2. Why?
* Nodes rocks! Why change?
* This WEEK, 6 years ago, nodes went into core. Drupal 3.
* Very extensible, but reaching the limits

3. Building
* Free-for-all approach
* DB/Structure mismatch (sometimes necessary)
* Collisions (vid, pid, bid)

4. Rendering
* Some improvements in 5
* Only two modes -- teaser, full
* Only HTML

5. Extending
* Node hooks
* Nodeapi to extend nodes
* CCK via fields, widgets, etc

6. Pitfalls
* Shufling the chairs
* Performance
* Conversion

7. Singing and Dancing