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By Demaster on
I have used Drupal for 2 days, and I'm pretty frustrated. Almost everything that I have done with this has not worked. Each time I try something new...I have to research how to make it work. Some examples are just the install. I originally had to do some edits to my .htaccess file. I finally got it working. I have not been able to change my logo like I should be easily. I did some edits to the .htaccess file in the file directory, and that corrected the logo problem (once), but I've change themes and have the problem again. It took my half a day to install TinyMCE which did not have clear instructions. Now that I've set that up...when I create content...the formatting changes done with the TinyMCE editor are not showing on my published page.
At this point...I'm about ready to clear my webserver and try a whole different CMS. I can't continue working like this. Each time I want to try something...I have to research how to make it work. This is just unacceptable. Does anyone have any idea how I should proceed?
Thanks for listening to my ranting.
Demaster
Comments
Help is here
http://drupal.org/handbooks ;-)
Take a few days to read and
Take a few days to read and learn. It IS a steep learning curve, but if you invest the time I promise you, you will find it worth while.
It may help to think of
It may help to think of Drupal as an application framework rather than a CMS, though it is a dang fine CMS in it's own right. Your problems are this:
1) Logo keeps changing
- each theme allows you to keep a different logo. You can change that admin->themes->yourtheme; It's very simple, and I don't know why you'd need to change .htaccess for that.
2) TinyMCE
- your input format for the nodes is probably set wrong. It'll need to be set to 'full html' as default, instead of filtered - as it is, it's simply (and correctly) filtering out all your html changes.
3) Drupal is hard.
- For simpler sites, Wordpress may be more of what you want, or perhaps e107 or Joomla. Drupal is one tool amongst many - a damn good one, but a complex one. If you don't need much, one of those may be easier for you.
It isn't hard to me
That isnt' the problem. It is just annoying that I have to research to fix things, and I've only had it two days. I'm working on a very small site now, and if I can get my feet wet enough with this, I'll use it for my company's intranet.
I'm very computer savvy. Been a hardware guy for about 25 years. Just not used to working this hard to get something started off the starting line.
Demaster
Drupal's unintuitiveness has
Drupal's unintuitiveness has been commented on before. But don't give up just yet. What server/db are you using? If its just for personal/trial purposes try XAMPP (works out of the box and circumvents having to tweak .htaccess).
What Drupal functionality are you looking for? We can point you to exact documentation instead of wading through the handbooks.
I have found that with
I have found that with Drupal it's often really quick and easy to make big exciting things work amazingly fast.
Then you get bogged down in not being able to work out how to overwrite a single tag, or your theme deciding to be bloodyminded about not letting you hide one dratted bullet point. Of course, this does get better with time (I hope it will go on getting better!). I think that the huge powerful 'how on earth did I manage to make *that* in a day' moments make it worth the 'why have I just spend three hours on this annoying tiny thing' moments.
I have Wordpress sites as well, and I would say that Wordpress is quicker and easier 'out of the box' but it doesn't have that incredibly flexibility. I've made things in Drupal that I would never ever have been able to program on my own. Some of the addon modules are like being able to strap on an extra brain for a project.
If you had such problems getting TinyMCE in, I am wondering if there might be something in your server setup that is causing you to have to fight all the way? I installed TinyMCE for the first time the other day on a new Drupal project and it took about half an hour - maybe an hour to customise the menus as well, and I'm definitely not an experienced Drupaller, nor am I (sadly) particularly adept at php.