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By adbeglad on
Did anyone else think they could set up a drupal page with only limited programming skills?
There should be a large warning before installation " not a developer? dont bother "
I'm posting this as a rant, pretty lame i know.
but incase there are others out there totally confused by this system you are not alone.
( you would think that adding an image to a blog post would be a pretty standard simple thing? not so... )
[Moderator's note: Title changed for accuracy.]
Comments
adbeglad, instead of ranting
adbeglad,
instead of ranting why not use the forums to benefit yourself? My questions to you are:
1) did you use any of the site handbooks? http://drupal.org/handbooks
2) i see from your tracker info, this is the only post you created. why not create more before deciding?
3) i assume you didn't read about drupal before installing? drupal is not a all-in-one cms, it is a framework to allow all sorts of big and small sites to work off of.
if you don't like drupal go on to another cms and see how quickly you will install and build on top of it, then come back and do the same with drupal. i am willing to bet you will find drupal more friendly and the community here is much stronger.
good luck with your project.
Got your proof right here
Thats is exactly what happened to me.
When I (re)started with Drupal it was such a headache but by the end of the first month I was on a roll because I started to understand the Drupal way.
I don't know php or mysql and I find Drupal easy.
Well, Drupal is not for the
Well, Drupal is not for the weakhearted, that's for sure. But beyond a certain point the same is true for any CMS worthy of that name. You can, of course, "set up a site" in no time, with Drupal as with any other CMS. If your aspirations don't go beyond that, take Drupal, take Joomla, take Wordpress or whatever, they all work. Some come with more, some come with less built-in functionality, that's a matter of choice. Some user communities are active and helpful, some are not. It all depends what you are looking for. One thing Drupal does have more than any other CMS I've tried (and believe you me, I tried many of them) is the ability to grow. If you want more than what comes out of the box, Drupal is definitely the way to go. Its framework is meant to be used as a foundation. It can be used for a quick-and-dirty, highly standardized site of thirteen in a dozen, the same as any other CMS, but it should be used for a one-of-a-kind, very much fine-tuned, really-the-way-I-want-it website, and that is far more difficult with any other site. The openness of their architecture is usually so-so, whereas Drupal has openness built-in. There is a downside to this, of course: you need to familiarize yourself with the way Drupal does things. But that is also the case with other CMS's, and with these you'll quite probably end up with some barrier beyond which you cannot go, simply because that system was never conceived to accomodate for the kind of openness you may require.
Does it help to have a working knowledge of PHP? Sure it does! Nobody (except those scumbags from the marketing department) ever said that CMS's are the 8th wonder of the world. Let's face it: a CMS, any CMS, is just a bunch of (mostly) PHP statements. If you want to go "deep", you too will need a good understanding of what PHP is all about. The main difference is: at what point does the PHP of the CMS stop being helpful, at which point you'll need to write your own PHP stuff. And that point, in my opinion, is reached sooner with other CMS's than with Drupal. But one day, that moment will come.
Ludo
I'm not a developer
I'm not a developer and I get by with drupal quite happily....In fact I love it!
Like all good things though you get out what you put in! It is frustrating at first, just drink more coffee take regular breaks and don't blame the tools.
I can't cook, it doesn't mean my oven sucks!
I'm not saying there isn't room for improvement but maybe there are more consturctive ways to point those out.
_ _ _ _
Stuart Mackenzie - rojojam.com
- slow like snail, furry like panda with the roar of a donkey!
- will freely sell soul for links to or comments on my blog!!
- trying to learn the dark arts of drupal!!!
=-=
According to this OP's tracker. He/she has ever only posted this rant. Thus showing that not once did he/she ever even turn to the community to ask questions.
Thus any new user that a post like this may worry should seriously consider the source of the rant.
The title should actually be, "Drupal is not right for me". sub- because I came into Drupal with my own set of expectations and they weren't immediatley fulfilled at the check of a checkbox.
_____________________________________________________________________
Confusious says:
"Those who seek drupal answers should use drupal search!" : )
I'm not a developer either
I know HTML reasonably well, am dire at CSS and can do a very limited amount of PHP if I can find a "nearly what I want" bit of code in the snippets.
The key to Drupal isn't going deep into code, it's to grasp the fundamentals of Nodes and Taxonomy, and to spend time considering what functions you really need, and what you can live without.
Get that right and you can go a very long way with Drupal.
And if none, do, but if your need is probably shared by others, wait a while, someone who can write it, soon will :-)
My site - www.likal.com is built using pretty much standard modules, a hardly changed at all Zen theme, and a very small amount of php taken from snippets.
Ian Dickson
Likal.com
(no title)
For adding an image to a blog, two possible solutions are:
Inline module: Perhaps too simple. You just type a tag in the text after
uploading the image as an attachment. No browsing of already uploaded images available.
http://drupal.org/project/inline
IMCE module: For easy uploading and placing, and for browsing your already
uploaded images. It works well with TinyMCE.
http://drupal.org/project/imce
For more advanced image placing needs, there are other more complex solutions. For example with the image + img_assist modules you can organize a repository of images, and with the CCK + imagefield modules you can place images automatically at a predefined place.
Probably you are right that some simple method should be available in a core installation.
The comments in the answer about going away and coming back to Drupal are correct. I have done it myself, and returned soon, when I realized that what you are getting out of the box with other solutions is pretty much all that you are ever going to get. I remember specifically Mambo, where I was looking for a way for members to publish content straight away without being "Publishers", and it was impossible at that time.
Drupal is not "love at first sight". You can call it unfriendly to one-time visitors, and a demanding lover. But there is nothing similar. If you want a good blog site and nothing more I would recommend Wordpress, which is designed for this purpose.