By Outpatientbill on

Can a non-programmer build a site using Drupal? Or is Drupal something I simply add on to an existing site? If I'm able to build from scratch, what are the exact steps I'd need to follow to get started?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

whatistocome’s picture

whatistocome commented

http://drupal.org/handbooks

Check out the handbooks for answers to all of your questions. This community encourages its members to search (thoroughly) for answers before asking questions in the forums. Don't take this as being snide, but helpful advice.

~Jason

syockit’s picture

syockit commented

Is there any way I can search the handbook? There's a book page checkbox in the advanced search menu, is it only for the handbook?

Also, I hope the search can sort results according to relevancy. As of now, I'm having trouble as to knowing what breadcrumbs are, and searching it will give you its applications, related modules, but not about breadcrumb itself, as the first results.

ugerhard’s picture

ugerhard commented

Yes, a non-programmer can build a complete site using Drupal.

But it is another question if Drupal will do the things you might want it to do out of the box :-) So the answer is: It depends on what you want your site to be like. Drupal can do lots of very cool stuff without any programming, even without using any of the very, very numerous contributed modules which enhance Drupal's functionality but have to be downloaded and installed additionally to the "core" Drupal files.

As for the exact steps you'd have to follow to get Drupal up and running, have a look at the appropriately named "Getting Started" handbook section:

http://drupal.org/getting-started/5 (That's the version for the current stable version of Drupal, Drupal 5.)

There you can learn about some of the basic capabilities of Drupal which might help you decide if you want to use Drupal, especially in the section named "Basic Content Management".

But Drupal can be made to do much more, even by non-programmers, by installing some of the addons. Have a look around

http://drupal.org/project/Modules

if you are looking for specific functionality that is not mentioned in the Getting Started handbook as chances are very good that somebody else has needed the same or something similar before and has written a module for this specific functionality which you can download for free and install (The Handbook describes how to install Modules and Themes - i.e. Skins/Templates/Designs).

itangalo’s picture

itangalo commented

A beginner can definately use Drupal, in particular if the beginner is willing to invest some time experimenting.
I'm no programmer, and I encountered Drupal last summer (2007) - now I'm running a few Drupal sites by myself!

The Drupal handbooks (see tabs on top of page) contains a lot of information for beginners and experts. I personally have learnt a lot from experimenting and listening to podcasts and lately also looking at sceencasts. Have a look at this page of learning resources if you're interested.

What you need to get started is a web hotel with PHP and MySQL, and a download of Drupal. (You can also run Drupal on your own computer if you install the right stuff.)

Good luck!
//Johan Falk, Sweden

Outpatientbill’s picture

Outpatientbill commented

Thanks for the advice and encouragement. I appreciate your time.