I have recently built a news site in Drupal. I am not a developer, I hired developers. Is anyone interested in hearing my experience even if it is a negative experience?
These are some of the things they don’t tell you when you start a Drupal project:
The platform was built by the geeks and for the geeks, the theming, usability and graphic design is rudimentary. The out of the box themes are worthless and mostly poorly designed. This requires and second skill to theme a project. Some people ask a graphic designer to “color” the site and then they translate it into Drupal. This is obviously not an ideal path and requires massive amount of time to overcome misunderstandings and corrections.
It is extremely hard to find a competent Drupal developer. Most available people are novices and you pay dearly for their armature advise.
It is a major hassle to find a good hosting company for Drupal. Actually hosting a Drupal site is another delicate skill. It is not readily available.
If you as an owner have a limited technical knowledge by selecting Drupal you are now beholden to arrogant developers to do the simplest of corrections. Some of the basic functions in Drupal are not user friendly and clunky. Usability is terrible and almost all out of the box modules need to be tinkered with (another expense).
Bottom line if you want to build complicated site and budget is not an issue this is flexible platform, etc. But it is a terrible platform for bootstrapping.
[EDIT : Thread locked - sepeck]
Comments
Thank you
Definitely.
Yes, it was. However, a lot of effort has been put into Drupal to make it more user friendly, even if geeks do not need most of these features. Maybe Drupal still does not feel like a tool that is easy to use for everybody.
You mean "flexible". If you need flexibility, some convenience has to be sacrificed. What it comes down to is learning curve. Drupal does have a learning curve but it is not a steep one taking into account the power of the system. (Just my 2 cents.)
I don't follow you. What's specifically "poorly designed" in garland or zen? Site builders usually do not want another variation of a standard theme. They want their own theme.
I have no idea of what you are talking of. I have deployed Drupal sites successfully and without any problems on more than 7 different hosters. Can you describe the kind of problems you encountered?
It would be nice if you would take the time and go a little more into detail (maybe in a different thread) so your criticism can be used for future enhancements.
themes
I was lucky to find a great developer to do my theme (after I wasted money on the impostor). But the problem with bad themes is evident in the reply. Most people who do or hang around drupal are technical people with limited aesthetic standard. So when you say things like out of the box themes are bad, they don't even know what you talking about and hence is the problem. Take the attention to this in Wordpress community as a contrasting example.
Out of the box
That is just a misunderstanding regarding the meaning of the word "design". Of course, Drupal default themes are not meant to be deployed as they are. They are made to provide a starting point, not from a design point of view but from a technical point of view. That is what default themes are for.
Do I understand you correctly that you would have expected to choose from +/- 100 well made themes that would need only minor changes (different colors, header graphics, ..)? This would be a gap that could easily be closed as porting Wordpress themes to drupal is not a hard task to do.
Certainly you wouldn't want
Certainly you wouldn't want a theme that everyone else has, especially if you are trying to distinguish yourself and present yourself as professional.
And if your developer designed a good theme for you, then your beef really isn't with the lack of good themes, is it?
Also, not everyone here is "technical people". I'm not. I'm more like "designer people" myself. So I understand your comment about the themes. But anyone with a serious site wouldn't want to use a generic, overused theme. Even in the Wordpress community, professional and serious bloggers roll their own themes.
It seems to me you are quite
It seems to me you are quite frustrated. I don't know, but maybe a large part of that frustration is with an amateur developer who misrepresented his/her skill level, and what you got in return for your money was very little compared to your expectations, and you know very little about Drupal so you can't fix things on your own.
From the looks of this post (http://drupal.org/node/166903), it seemed as though development and design were going quite well for you. What happened?
Would you mind posting a link to your site?
ready answers
I asked if it was worthwhile to post. But you seem to have ready answers for everything before even attemting to understand what I wrote, this is typical.
I say hosting was/is hard. This is my experience. The person replies no, it is easy. Whats the point on this conversation?
=-=
A conversation requires two way communication. Something you aren't providing during your ranting and name calling.
_____________________________________________________________________
My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )
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Well, so much for trying to lend an ear.
Please specify the hosting problems
Please specify the hosting problems: name of hosting company, your package, the price. Then specify the load on your site, how many users per day, which kind of tasks performed on your site. Then specify the Drupal optimizations, that you have done on your site: throttling, special modules for high load?? cron configuration, etc.
Then experienced people may respond to your experience. Maybe this is not a hosting problem, but insufficient optimization of your site? Or just wrong cheap hosting package?
hosting
Arieh,
1. You realized that 95% of typical hosts can't handle a Drupal site. I.e. DreamHost told me flat that they are not good for Drupal.
2. When we tried some of the "shops that also do hosting" we found one of them simply slow (they outsorced hosting to some third party)
3. Eventually we foudn a good VPS. Still the people who run it through their hands up when you mention Drupal. But the problem is that as a boottsratpper you realize that the geek you asked to help you with the site:
a) knows nothing about theming
b) doesn't have the required skill to manage database hosting.
Before you know it your team has grown beyond your expectation and each wants top rate because "everyone is so busy".
Thanks for sharing
Celp, thanks for sharing this with us. I'm a developer and I find it interesting to read what you experienced.
I agree with you on some points and disagree on others. What I write here is my own experience. When I say I disagree with you, I don't mean "you're wrong" I just mean "my experience is different".
Drupal was built by people with a technical background, or geeks. This is an advantage as well as a disadvantage. Drupal's geek-factor allows me to tweak and adjust lots of details, so I can build it exactly the way I want. This also means that theming is, as you say, a skill of it's own, switching back and fourth between visual design and technical realisation. Personally, I enjoy balancing on that line. However if you have to work with designers who 'throw their psd's over the wall' without knowing what's on the other side, that can cause problems.
I am not a very experienced developer myself, but I wouln't call myself a novice either. I think you're right about finding a competent developer: I notice that many people are already interested in my skills, even though I'm still learning myself.
What you say about hosting, surprises me. The combinartion of linux, apache, mysql and php is very common of course. I have a simple virtual hosting plan for private stuff, nothing special, but it runs Drupal without any problems.
With Drupal in the hands of a competent developer, it is possible to create a flexible site which can be easily adjusted over time. Unfortunately, some developers don't use all the potential available in Drupal. I've seen examples of this more than once. For instance, I've seen a custom programmed module once for a simple block which could have been made with Views. When the title needed to be changed, I had to dig into another developer's php code, instead of changing the settings in the admin backend.
I'm am curious about your remarks that 'Usability is terrible' and 'modules need to be tinkered with'. Can you give us some examples?
usability
marcvangend, I am not a technical person but I am above average. I can't do a simplest change in Drupal. I once tried and messed up things. This is not a healthy set up.
Part of my problem was/is that the developer who steered me to Drupal used the project as his own learning exercise. I had to pay for his bad advise naturally. My attemps to find a appropriate skill in the middle of the project were only partially successful. This developer failed to give me a time or budget estimate for the project. As I said I found a great person for the theme, but this is only after I was misled about the complexity of that task and was wrongly told that out of the box themes would work with the project.
As I said this is not a platform for bootstrapping. The skilled Drupal developers are expensive and very busy. You are left at the mercy of amateurs. They set up is so complicated you can't do much by yourself and this is a real trap, when you realize that you need favors to do simplest of task.
By usability I mean the appreciation for visual elegance. Look even how this Drupal site is set up... I f you don't see it I can't help it.
Great Expectations
I can do anything I want in Drupal. When I mess things up, it is usually my fault, if not I submit a bug report. That's the opensource way to handle issues. I cannot say anything about the problems you encountered. My exprience with Drupal was very nice so far, but that does not imply Drupal being perfect.
I am curious what kind of tasks that were/are.
This seems to be your biggest issue with your project. On the one hand you complain that Drupal is too developer-oriented, on the other hand you find it hard to get a developer for the price you are ready to pay. Drupal needs to attract more developers so that people like yourself have it easier to find a savvy Drupalist.
Whatever can be done with XHTML and CSS can be done with Drupal (and then some). That is all I really can say, except you want to stick to pre-made themes.
Whatever can be done with XHTML and CSS can be done with Drupal
Lunulo:
Whatever can be done with XHTML and CSS can be done with Drupal (and then some). That is all I really can say, except you want to stick to pre-made themes.
The point is that for things to advance there needs to be a culture. I.e. culture that the look and presentation is important, very important. Due to specific geek constituency in drupal graphics are downplayed. Hence the ugly base themes and the comparative complexity of graphic adjustments.
Just take the wordpress community as an example of 180 different approach.
Base Themes
I fail to understand how graphics are downplayed by Drupal and how graphic adjustments are complex.
If you want to use a ready-made theme and do not like the existing themes for Drupal, why did you decide to use Drupal in the first place?
I'll put my $0.02 in
I'll put my $0.02 in here....
I've been using Post-Nuke for a number of years now and have experimented with Plone/Zope, Joomla, and now Drupal.
PN has a lot of basic functionality from the start, but doing creating advanced modules are difficult, especially since I don't have the time. P/Z is massively powerful, but also extremely difficult to use and implement in most hosting environments.
Drupal lies in the middle; it has a good initial functionality, but also can, through modules like CCK, be extended upon easily. Its also not too hard to set up on a LAMP server. I would like to see some more basic modules - I have not found a decent web link submission/management module, for example. I know I can build one in CCK, but... not sure how to do things like reporting a dead link. And it would be helpful to have for new users...
I am planning (for the last year or so) to move f1m.com to Drupal once I get a chance and once I figure out how to port my PN database to Drupal...
Eric
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Eric Aitala - f1m@f1m.com
The Formula 1 Modeling Website
www.f1m.com
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Eric Aitala - ema13@psu.edu
Penn State
224b8605113373e086cb27708ff301ba18ce394db1996e7e22928e4555e0d20b1b6cecc7f67c9bd9e536cb915779c485
Pretty much what I expected.
Pretty much what I expected. Your experience is becoming more and more typical as Drupal becomes more popular. What many fail to see before things start going wrong is that there are 25+ popular, top quality PHP CMS out available as open source. Some have equal or greater size to the Drupal project. These others exist for good reason. You can do many good things with Drupal , but you can't do everything. There are many contributed modules but unlike other projects, Drupal.org takes no responsibility for them. There are projects that do provide a certification service by the core developers. CMSes are like Linux flavors there is no one solution. When choosing you have to sleep on things and avoid being a victim of the hype.
Your particular experience, at least some of the bad parts might have been avoided by writing down your needs and comparing how each one of say 5 CMS would behave given the list of needs and wants. Remember also that Drupal is not immutable, when you hire a developer hire someone for thier PHP skills and not Drupal skills. This way you know that they can provide good solutions even when they do not exist in the CMS.
Hiveminds Magazine - for web publishers and community builders
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Drupal Support Wiki | Drupal Sverige
bankroll the experts
Hiveminds, remember I am not a technical person. I had a developer who comes and tells me you have to use Drupal, when the real reason is because he wants to use your project to learn this hyped CMS and get paid on top of that.
And then he tells you, its your fault, your wrong direction when in fact he failed to inform you or didn't know himself what are the limitations of the tool.
I had another person who probably still advertises his services here, plainly steal my money. If you are a technical person you know what questions to ask but for a lay person Drupal is trap unless you have money to bankroll the experts.
I really feel for you on the
I really feel for you on the PHP developer pushing a particular platform. It is probably no help in knowing that the same thing happens to others. I once got burned by a Perl developer who insisted that I use a particular shoppingcart then disappeared in the middle of the project.
One thing that you have done by posting this is to make me realize how lazy I have been about writing up good critiques of CMS projects, inparticular how they are designed and coded. Having to code Drupal 40 hours a week has made me a little blind to the fact that we as web developers are responsible for making sure our profession does not get a bad rep.
It is unfortunate that you have fallen victim of the trap of needing expert help but can only afford the amatuers. My advise at this point would be to try and find a willing newbie to drupal that is really good a taking advantage of the kindness of others, the experts. If you find the right person they can probably write to the forum and get help in accomplishing the tasks that you give them. But don't forget to write down everything that is wrong and where you would like to go beforehand.
Hiveminds Magazine - for web publishers and community builders
http://www.hiveminds.co.uk
http://demo.hiveminds.co.uk
Drupal Support Wiki | Drupal Sverige
a developer might not want to tell you
Hiveminds, my point is that there are various reasons a developer might not want to tell you about different CMS or even suppose that in fact Drupal is the best for the project, yet there is an asterisk*
* Compared to other CMS you will have to spend significant resources on a custom theme.
* The set up is so complicated an unintuitive that you will need technical help forever.
* There are so many crappy modules that a developer who has no experience with Drupal will spend 80% of his (your) time on sorting though the crap, only to realize that a module messed up install so badly that you have to start over.
* The flip side of the open source is that there are no checks and balances and the system is open to fraud, incompetence and self appointed experts.
Try to stay fair
In former posts you emphasized that your experiences were just that - your experiences. Now you are generalizing and trying to tell Drupal experts what Drupal is and what it can't do. I do believe most here know better that a basic setup (meaning a basic Drupal running on a LAMP system) can be installed by a newbee in less than 5 Minutes and most Drupal setups do not need any technical help once they are rolled out.
When customizing Drupal sites, I often thought, that this was unnecessarily complicated. Sometimes it actually is, the community is thankful for feedback and the development of Drupal continues to enhance things. But sometimes it is the inevitable price for flexibility. If you do not benefit from this flexibility, then less flexible systems may produce the same results with less annoyance.
As for the modules, I totally agree. Most developers of contributed modules do their work without any compensation in their spare time, some deliver excellent code and some do not. Drupal has identified this problem a while ago and a system for measuring the quality of contrib modules is close to being released.
Calp, I have to
Calp,
I have to respectfully disagree with you on the easy of use for non-developers. I just started with Drupal a few months ago for the first time after coming from Wordpress. My background is in the arts and I have no formal training in programming but I find the theming engine in Drupal extremely easy to use. While I really like Wordpress, it was always hard for me to get out of that blog look. It took me a few weeks of playing with a sandbox Drupal install before I got the hang of the basics and started to design a real site. I did have some technical hiccups along the way (all my fault) but I am now on my third Drupal site and loving it. The nice thing is that your site do not need to look anything like the typical Drupal themes if you know even basic CSS and I am looking forward to this getting even better in 6. I'm sorry that your experience was not as pleasant.
blog look
byanfu, its ironic that I was trying to get out of the 'blog look' myself and now I am thinking of going to Wordpress. I think that the entire news front page multi column format is overrated (readers don't like it). I hated the blog look but now I think differently. Email me what you want to do, you are welcome to use my setup, it is actually very good and looks professional.
Your post is a rant
Name calling is not constructive feedback. You cast thousands of people you do not know with this broad brush. You taint your feedback with your obvious frustration and evident anger.
Drupal is not for every site and building a site calls for a variety of disciplines. Constructive feedback is encouraged to help the community and developers. Name calling is not.
This thread is locked. You are welcome to post a new thread without name calling.
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide