Journey to Drupal [ follow the brick road ]

What's this all about

As a new user of Drupal, this is my attempt to shed some light on my Journey to Drupal and hope that it may inspire other newbies who may feel overwhelmed by the Drupal CMS. JTD is not meant to be a technical write-up, but rather a more inspirational perspective to help newbies lay their own bricks to understanding the Drupal CMS.

Drupal Nirvana In Four Days
It took me about 4 days to get my Drupal site up and running and one of the challenges I faced in addition to trying to figure out how Drupal worked was could Drupal match what I had with wordpress. It took me several plugins and a lot of hard work to make wordpress act like a real CMS, with Drupal not only did i duplicate my wordpress setup but it provided me with so much more power and flexibility, it really was Nirvana.

Another Drupal article

Another one bites the dust and another one and another one. Drupal Handbooks offer the new user a plethora of knowledge on how to use the Drupal CMS. Every time I read another article I can't help but sing "another one bites the dust" meaning I obtained one more Drupal nugget to add to my understanding of how to work the system.

I'll be the first to admit, there's a lot to read, one thing that has helped me I only read a little at a time, the handbooks are there for us to read at our leisure so take some time and read. The Drupal Cookbook is a great resource for beginners (the newbie).

Don't Fight It - Learn it

Something I've come to terms with as a new Drupalonian is that the more I use and learn Drupal, the easier it gets and rather than fight it, I decided to learn it instead. I came to the realization that fighting with Drupal is a losing battle and that going through the process of learning Drupal will in the end benefit me greatly.

Relative Points Of Views

There are many different points of view on how a newbie should learn Drupal, I'll be pointing to a few here shortly, for now just understand that an advanced user doesn't always know how to speak to a new user and vice versa. The Handbooks are only part of the learning process, there needs to be some flexibility in speaking Drupal so that everyone can learn from each other as well.

The Node Wizard

According to the dictionary, the word Node can mean "a point at which lines or pathways intersect or branch; a central or connecting point." I look at this from a Drupal point of view where Drupal CMS is the connecting point that gives us the power and flexibility to manage our space on the web. How Drupal is setup can be confusing with words like Nodes and such but, once you begin to understand how it all works, it really does act as a central point where Drupal itself is our own personal CMS wizard. I can't wait to interact with it everyday.

Calling All Drupalonians

• Newbies - Did i leave something out ? Anything got you frustrated ? Let me know and I'll write something about it
• Experienced Users - You got the experience, how about sharing any important points and I'll add them here
• Developers - Annoyed by newbies ? Too lazy to write so a 4th grader can understand ? No problemo, you work on the engine and let me know what you want to say and I'll try and translate it in newbie language

I'll add more later,