No Experience Necessary - Tell Newbies NOT to Give Up!
cjwysong - February 9, 2007 - 04:28
hello ALL! :-)
This week is a happy week for me:
I created at least something within a month. I have no experience and no knowledge of PHP, MYSQL, etc. nor any of that other foreign language stuff. I am a cut and paste guy!!!!!! Drupal understanding is a real feat for me!!!!!!!!
Please tell me what you think of my one month project by logging into the site at:
http://www.wystores.com
This is my first drupal experience and I am eager to find out what you think of the implementation of a newbie and also if I am not using it to full potential/etc.
I don't expect to make any money, I just expec to have learned a little more about this internet thing.
Thanks,
Mr. Chris Wysong
Proud Webmaster of:
Wystores.com
great post
It gets even better and faster, as you learn more
the tools Drupal brings to the webmaster are incredible, but like all tools you have to learn to master them
people forget,
if I gave you a saw and a hammer and told you,
I need you to build a house - there would be a huge learning curve...
I don't understand why people expect Drupal to be differenet from anything else in the world.
great post and welcome to the world of Drupal webmasters
JW
Thanks!
You rock! :-)
Yours Truly,
Mr. Chris
Visit Wystores
Way to go!!!
Nancy W.
proudly running 3½ sites on Drupal so far
Well
Well, I can sympathize with the posters' enthusiasm but if I had to start over again and had a choice, I would certainly not use Drupal. I now do have a functioning site but I totally disagree with the notion that you can do any project which would not be just a clone of prescribed drupalittes withou knowing CSS, HTML and php. As a matter of fact, you ought to know quite a bit about php if you don't want the site "to run you".
I think that my alternative would be to roll my own (yes it would take about twice as long but do exactly what I want) or use one of the more flexible CMS frameworks (leaving them nameless for this post).
And finally, I find it is discouraging to have less then one percent of questions answered with the stated philosophy of swim or drawn.
However, for a cookie cutter website, using a good ready theme, and a few proven modules, Drupal certainly is better then most.
Have to disagree
I had five sites up and running - and not cookie-cutter, IMHO - without a single line of php! And, up until the last couple of days, the only php I had at all was slightly modified snippets that were already available.
I am beginning design on another site that will even include a product catalog from which people can order and pay. I don't anticipate any php coding on that.
As for HTML and CSS, I believe that anyone who wants to administer a decent web site cannot afford to not be at least an intermediate at those "languages." Most of my changes to web sites have been in CSS. I don't use a WYSIWYG editor, so all my content is in HTML - but before I came to Drupal I built several sites with HTML alone. When I found Dreamweaver, it just made that process slightly easier and neater. Just today I answered a forum question from someone who (using a WYSIWYG editor) didn't know how to get two pictures on a single page! That is such simple HTML that I was floored when I read the post.
I don't really understand this statement. Are you saying that Drupal users shouldn't be helping each other? That's one of the big advantages of using something like Drupal - there's always someone there to help. If you roll your own, who's there when you have a problem?
That implies twice as EXPENSIVE too. Even without putting a dollar value on my time, it has value. If I can get something up in half the time and have it work as well as, and look as good as, Drupal, I'd be foolish to spend the extra money (or time)!
And that doesn't even count the ability to spread the workload of ongoing administration of the site, or planning for succession (should something happen to me).
Nancy W.
now running 5 sites on Drupal so far
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Site Design Notes
Congratulations!
I sincerely congratulate you on you success with Drupal.
Firstly, let us clear my errors in communicating my sentiments:
"I find it is discouraging to have less then one percent of questions answered with the stated philosophy of swim or drawn" meant what it says. Paraphrasing it: I got answers to 1% of my questions. I believe this is the philosohy of Drupalers.
I have so far written 5 pages of documentation for someone to be able to maintain the site I created in Drupal - no one from Drupal can help maintaing Drupal or any other site but the author. I am not finished. The default forum is not adequate for our needs and I have to ammend that, too.
I think your economics don't really work. Even if it takes me not twice but three times that long, at the end of the site lifetime, I will save: My code would be lighter and faster - running on a cheaper hardware. I will not carry tones of code which I do not need. If my hosting site switches from php4 to php5, the users will not loose their ability to log in and I will not have to spend hours trying to find out why. If my client requests a change which is not trivial like "move this mnenu over there" but something substantial, oh say like a conference rooms booking system, I will not have to spend time looking for a module which claims to do it, test it, post several issues to the module's developer ... but just roll it out on my own.
That all said, I did say that Drupal is best of its breed and I can see use of it: the way I already described. Another great advantage where Drupal surpases its peers is the language localization and the ease of use of it.
I'd love to see your sites - there is cerainly a few great Drupal sites out there. When I looked inside them I found that many of them have done their own themes and wrote modules/php/javascrips-AJAX ...
Enthusiasm
Nancy's cavalier enthusiasm certainly is catchy. I'm glad that type of cheerleading is present here, but I am also curious to see these 5 websites and judge for myself their level of sophistication because I, too, share Lanny's opinion that Drupal is only easy for cookie cutter websites.
Perhaps my mind will change with more experience.
I'm a reasonably accomplished designer who works with very customized sites. I have played with eZ Publish, Plone, and some other lesser-known CMS. I once played with Drupal about 4 years ago with the help of a developer, but it took us weeks just to massage it into halfway decent shape. I was impressed by some of the sites on Drupalsites.net but realize a lot work must have gone into making them happen.
Translation: it ain't easy, y'all.
Encouragement is a good thing. I'm just starting into the forums and hope they'll be useful information there. Updating online documentation from the 4.6 series to 5.1 series would be incredibly helpful. I'm delving into themes now and the preferred method seems to be xtmpl, but we're warned it may be deprecated in the future and Drupal 5.1 does *not* include a single .xtmpl example file at all. Not one, despite the online documentation indicating there should be example files you can work from.
I hope that enthusiasm continues to exist but in a way tempered by maturity and not tainted by pollyanna.
Well...
I guess my cavalier enthusiasm must come from having 4 different sites up in my first 5 weeks with Drupal. You may call them cookie cutter, but I don't. Each one is a bit different, certainly the content is. Granted, none of them is overly complex. Only two have what might be considered "dynamic" content so far. My sites don't require news aggregators or specialized user interfaces.
As for seeing them, I don't feel a need to list them all here again; I've done that several times. But it shouldn't take any one much effort to find at least three of them.
Nancy W.
now running 5 sites on Drupal so far
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Site Design Notes
I'll poke around and see,
I poked around and saw a couple of your sites, Nancy. It was enough to give me some sense of your skill level.
I maintain that your voice is needed here to encourage certain types of users. That's important. At the same time, one must keep in mind that there are professionals who should not be mislead as to the complexity involved in rolling Drupal in more demanding scenarios.
Admittedly
Admittedly my sites thus far are not complex, although at least one is more complex than you are able to see (it's in the restricted section). But then I am relatively new to Drupal (something like two months now). I am still learning and realize I have a lot farther to go. On the other hand, of all the sites I look at on the web, far and away the greatest percentage is not complex. Yes, some people put a lot of effort into "glitz" but all they are really doing is slowing down what amounts to simpler sites.
I am starting to get into do some e-commerce building and am, frankly, underwhelmed by what I see so far. For example, the OSCommerce solution has lots of bells and whistles, many of which I actually need, but they way it's structured it takes way too long to create a product. Drupal's solution is easier to administer, but doesn't have some of the features I need.
Another project I am tackling, and which will improve my knowledge level, is a parallel site to some others which will feed people into the main one, but will also have news aggregators and affiliate links (thus, hopefully, a small stream of income).
Lastly, I am a "professional." Just because I haven't personally built a multi-gigabyte, million-clicks-per-day site yet doesn't make me any less so. I have been in the computer business for over 30 years and am a certified IT project manager. I may be somewhat new to actually building web sites personally, but have managed projects to build sites probably bigger than any you have done.
Nancy W.
now running 5 sites on Drupal so far
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Site Design Notes
Yes, I did, too. Nice, clean
Yes, I did, too. Nice, clean design and colors. I am not surprised that Nancy is so enthusiastic about Drupal. In Drupal 5, sites like these are really easy to do, modify and otherwise maintain.
My "learning drupal" site was complete in one day, blogs, fora, and all.
But for my real needs, and the emphases is on my, I am better off rewriting the site in something less "good-for-everything", and that is the only sentiment I was trying to convey.
4 years ago?? Time to try it
4 years ago??
Time to try it again.
Drupal has improved leaps and bounds in the 18 months I have been using it.
I can only imagine how much better it is than 4 years ago.
I agree
I agree.
That's why I'm back. Just installed recently. Yesterday, I started going through the process of configuring a site and building a theme from scratch (converting others' poorly coded themes is a waste of time for my needs). Define some regions, create some blocks, move onto PHPTemplates that call blocks (after learning XTemplates are not preferred any more), and making decent progress for a short period of time.
Congratulations!
That's the spirit. Great job on your work. I'm a newbie, too. I managed to put a little something together in the past few days, so I'm pretty excited.
I'd like to make a suggestion for your website, if I may. I think it should state very clearly, in big letters, in one short sentence, right on the front page, what your site does. I don't understand what it does from watching the ad. Besides, if I weren't curious about looking at drupal sites, I wouldn't have enabled scripts so I could see it or sat through the slow ad in the first place.
If users don't see what the site does within a few seconds, they'll usually surf away.
It was a good test run! :-)
Hi All!
Okay, I am so happy to see what I see out of what I wrote. I found out a lot from this post and others and of course surfing and reading on other things. Nancy appears to have done quite a lot and I have her site in my favorites! THANK YOU!
However, after looking at my first site... it really didn't have any oompf. Users really don't know what the heck it is for as previously stated.
My second "new and improved" attempt turned out much better! A completely different topic and much more fun to boot! I was able to play much more in depth with it!!! Anyway, I think this is going to be the number one hobby site from now on out.
This is so fun and keeps my sanity in check too! :-) I just wish I knew how to get users to actively participate. That would be the true pay off, if you will. Any suggestions on how to build a small following? How long does it take people to find you usually? Advice on how to get them to stay? Just some thoughts...
Anyhoo, that second shot at it is at: http://www.leapyearbaby.com in the event any of your are interested.
Thanks again!!!!
~Chris
Sincerely,
Chris