My honest impression about drupal

Drupal is not the easiest (at the beggining), but after you manage it, it's great!

I have now many websites on Drupal, and can create a new website in 15 minutes or less.

Miguel Duarte

Webmaster of: Lisbon Guide & Love Poems

Drupal takes literally 5 minutes to install from a cmd line. It currently has a slightly higher intial learning curve for a lot more power. I am not a Windows developer but a Systems Engineer and I figured it out. I even wrote some docs on how to install and run it on IIS just fine (note to self, update the Windows XP docs in the handbook) which still work for the most part.

If you absolutly must have an installer, try the Civicspacelabs distro. It is Drupal 4.6 with some contrib modules and an installer. I think installers make things more difficult, but that's probably becuase editing the settings.php file is just easier for me. (It wasn't two years ago, but after two days it was). If it gets finsihed and sufficient testing before the freeze, there will probably be an installer for 4.7.

I have some more on installing Drupal on an IIS server on my site I am intermittantly working on if you are curious before I finish.

-sp
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Drupal Best Practices Guide - My stuff Black Mountain

Frank,

I must say your post was well thought out and well put. For what it's worth, I don't see it as a complaint.

I totally agree with you. I've been using drupal for a while and my eyes still glaze over when I have to go through something like the install.txt. I'm still learning - I share the same sentiments and I too tried out a few of the usual suspects before turning to Drupal.

My two cents is that the focus on CMS and CDTs (community development tools) like Drupal is either on the funtionality + flexibility or the userability + friendliness. Rarely is it balanaced..usually one way or the other.

What I found quite quickly from other CMS & CDT tools was that while I was able to get up and running very quickly, in minutes in some cases, I soon found that moving beyond just having a page and a few links, was generally difficult, restricted and clunky.

My point being that getting a site shell active within 20 minutes or half an hour isn't a reflection on the quality or value of the system, rather the amount of attention that has been put on that side.

I'm not knocking other CMSs or CDTs, everyone to their own, I'm just saying that it's perhaps incorrect to think that if you have the initial site shell up and running within a few minutes, you have landed and the CMS or CDT should be judged on that. I can get a drupal site up in 5 minutes now, from working with it and famililarity. To fully develop a presentable, ergonomic and valuable drupal web site takes me at least 1 or 2 weeks. If I tried MAMBO now, i could probably get a site up and running in 15 minutes and it would take me at least 1 or 2 weeks to create a decent site - with less functionality than drupal.

In Drupals defence, I think the core team know only too well that the install procedure and general language interface between the developers and the users could be improved and it's a work-in-progres.

On top of the flexibility and sheer power of drupal as a CDT, it's the community that is Drupals main strength. I didn't know sweet fanny adams about php before drupal and I had difficulties setting up my first ever mysql database.

What's perhaps ironic and interesting at the same time, is that because I was helped out so much by the people on the forums when I started out with drupal, I feel compelled to drop by now and again and help out others. Contributing "This is how I did this in drupal" in baby steps even I could understand myself (a great way of learning by the way) and inadvertantly dumbing down or reducing the gap between the developers - who have their head stuck in the code and the users - who range from tech wizards to graphic designers who want functionality behind their vision.

So as the other poster, er, posted...bear with the stumbling blocks..it is worth it.

Cheers

Dub

There was talk of a better installer for Drupal 4.7; I'm not sure what happened with it.

I don't think Drupal mainstream is too difficult to install--but what I do find difficult is the installation of modules and their many SQL files. It becomes a huge pain when dealing with several third party modules. I'm working on my own installation script to help automate this kind of thing.

Other than that, there are managed Drupal hosters (*cough* not that I am starting one or anything) that setup Drupal for you. You may want to look at Bryght too.

--
My Drupal websites: Personal home page | Nabla Design: specialized Drupal application hosting

XAMPP is a totally different ball game. It's an operating system, MySQL server, PHP server and a few other things rolled together. The developers have absolute control over the operating system and all of the various pieces of the puzzle because they are a part of the install.

Not so with Drupal. The operating system can be different as can the version of Apache, PHP and MySQL. It's simply not fair to compare the installations because one has absolute control over the playing field and knows the players while the other must be able to play on multiple fields with any number of different combinations of players! I'd wager it's very hard to write an install routine that can cover all of the possible combinations of OS, db, script engine etc.

That being said, the installation could be made a bit easier with some form of an install routine but IMHO, I like it the way it is. Sure it requires a bit of knowledge to work under the hood but it's not that much of a stretch. If someone doesn't know how (or doesn't want to know how) to change the oil on their car they go to the local Jiffylube or dealership. Same applies here - plenty of folks here and "out there" that are perfectly capable of providing an installed, ready to roll version of Drupal.

And while we're on the subject of installs, installing Drupal has been one of the easiest installs I've ever done and I've tried at least a dozen other CMSs as well as a handful each of shopping carts and discussion boards. Maybe it's just the way my brain is wired but the install was very intuitive and the plugin modules so slick I would have kissed the guy/gal who thought the schema up had they been there that first time I installed one. Bloody amazing.

Heck, it's an open source application that stands head and shoulders above the dozen or so others that I've tried. Kudos to the dev team for creating what they have.

A easy installation tool isn't hard to create... I'm sure this will be fixed soon

Marcel
Wholesale DIrectory
Business Letters
Free Classifieds

Adrian and some others have long been working on an installer. But it is just not as simple as it might all seem, since that installer must be able to preserve Drupals transparancy, flexibility and power.

Just keep in mind that it will be there, one day!

---
if you dont like the choices being made for you, you should start making your own.
---
[Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com]

I found it very valuables learning Linux and developing from a Linux (BSD if you like) machine.
I have a mix of window and Linux at work and home.

Find your self a old P3 or even P2 and install a distro of your choice ( http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity good place to look for distros ). I am a Slackware fan. Most distros will have Apache, mySQL and PHP installed for you, Samba is also sometimes installed. If samba is installed then all you need to do is create a samba share of your /var/www/html and map it in windows.

If you are a windows users get putty ( http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/ ) for remote ssh from windows. For mysql you have many options. A popular option is phpMyAdmin ( http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/ ). I have a old copy of SQLyog form when it was still free, not the case anymore.

I came from a windows only background. It took me a while to learn slackware and I have tried many distros since., but must say learning to use Linux / BSD has been invaluable in my work and Development.

I have tried the XAMPP route on windows 2000 many weeks back and I must say it is still much easier for me personally on Linux remotely using ssh.

Since going the Linux route on a separate box on my network I have found the automatic installers ( like mambo ) to be more complex than needed. I prefer the Drupal way. An installer would also make having multiple sites on one drupal install a lot more complex.

My suggestion to you get a old spare machine that is collecting dust or being used as a doorstop and learn Linux or BSD. You will be better of in the long run, even if in the end you don't use drupal.

My Thoughts.

How very true all this.
Why is drupal so hard to install? (it really is)
Once its up and running its okay.
But honestly before you reached that point a lot of people will stop and look elsewhere.(who can blame them).
I,ve got it up and running after hours of hard work but thats not the way to attract people to this system.
Maybe something to consider for a next update of drupal is to think andimplement a more friendly install procedure.
All these people with the same install problems can't be wrong.

I to was a victim to other types which offer easy installation, but after reading and learning its functionality, I turned my back and uninstalled everything.

My first impression with Drupal that it was the one I really wanted, but after asking the TechSupport of my host I took Joomla and got tied to long sleepless days trying to fit my design to its enviroments. Frustrated, I should have trusted my heart and instinct.

I'm now setting up Dropal the enviroment that I should have chosen in the first place.

Geez, I wasted a week with Joomla . . . well actually Drupal's icon was the one that appealed to me before its features.

Yours truly,

Patrick Grey

P.S. If your going to do the Wiki Manual Thinggy count me in the development group, I'll do my best to help in anyway to help new people like me understand easier ways of installing and learning. Other than wasting precious time referencing technical terms and lines, just to know that you can skip the process and use a simpler method. Geez, I really wasted a lot of time . . . oh well.

As previosuly stated, XAMP is something completely different from Drupal. If you you have XAMP up and running or all the elements up and running through your own installations then installing drupal ain't hard at all.

As long as you can unpack the tar bar and then have the ability to drag and drop, then there are are really only a few settings modifications (settings and htaccess) to really have to edit, if at all, to make.

Sure, you need to know how to use MySQL, but it isn't particularly difficult to read through the various INSTALL.TXT files. Once you have read a few, you don't really need to bother after that.

The biggest gripe I have about Drupal, which I am "living" through at the moment, is the invalid code in some of the additional modules, some of the inc files and the engines....

Certain modules I just can't seem to get working with the engine I am using, try searching for solutions - but it generally means "hacking" at certain things which means, for me, that upgrading may be pretty difficult.

However, after writting a couple of small CMS myself and trying many installations of some of the biggies (Mambo etc...) I must say that Drupal is the best and versatile CMS that I have encountered.

When I get the hang of the system properly I am sure I will contribute to the code in some way...

Good luck with whatever you choose.

Regards

Jamie

227net

True.
I am new on Drupal as well and I have also tried Joomla! (a.k.a Mambo). I found Mambo... (I mean Joomla!) a lot more easier to install via nice wizard and what I really like it is package installation for modules and components. That is so nice. So why did I moved out from Joomla then? Well, How I see Joomla is that it's one of those web-site-in-a-box. I can setup a blog or portal very easy and fast but if I want to customize it things get a bit hairy. Drupal in the other hand feels more a content managament framework.
I am still evaluating Drupal but so far what is under the hood is more suitable for my needs than any other OSS CMS I have seen so far.

Chosing a system for one site can be hard. But I think you need to find the system that fits a need not try and have all the needs fit into a system. I have live sites with Drupal, Joomla, Mambo and others. Each system has its own strong and weak points, the real trick is not in choosing the best one, but the best one to use in a given situation.

Lance

...my twin pennies

I am reading a lot of articles on comparing MAMBO/JOOMLA. What about TYPO3 ?

FrankEsser,

Were you able to resolve this problem? I'm a windows user and I'm running into the same problem. Do I need to load a free mail server on my development machine? This is what I'm trying to avoid...

Thanks

Tung

Let me preface this by saying I don't speak geek, I don't own t-shirts with "root" emblazed, nor do I read cryptic installation manuals on my vacation. I am that dreaded end-user programmers speak of.

I love Drupal. I never touched an install file. My webhost automatically installed Drupal. At first blush, Drupal seems barren with the personality of a cardboard box. But if you have the slightest spark of creativity, you can make this CMS shine.

Now, I've tried Mambo (or Joomla) and it is gorgeous right out of the box. Until you attempt to go beyond the prepackaged themes or templates. Then you'd better have your aspirin ready and plenty of hair, because simple things such as changing a template can make you go stark raving mad. Mambo has thousands of premade templates available probably for this reason. Drupal has a dozen or so premade themes, but the system is so easily-understood (essentially just some CSS and a bit of PHP) that even I was able to modify a theme to my persnickety liking. (Check out my site.)

I've tried, then discarded, a dozen possible CMS'. I've always returned to Drupal. There has to be a reason why, don''t you think?

Ed

Wi-Fi Living

I can't argue with you (Frank) that Drupal is not that easy to install and set up. I consider myself an experienced geek but I found setting up Drupal to be quite a READ-THE-MANUALS challenge. Of the other CMS's I have toyed around with, there's Joomla and bitWeaver, and then some others I simply forgot about.

I just would like to say that the other CMS's were very easy to BEGIN setting up but as you go along with them, you pretty soon realize their weaknesses and become frustrated with their shortcomings. And hacking their code IS FAR DEFINITELY MORE CHALLENGING and unappealing.

Like so many dudes above, I really had to move back to/come home to/make peace with Drupal. And oh, so light-weight to the resources. And oh, so easy to hack its code - I can't complain. Where else can you ever find code that's so elegantly and finely written, it's as though uzis have been targetted on the heads of the authors ready to fire if they had made anything remotely HARD TO UNDERSTAND? And yet, I'm a 80/20 ratio Windows to Linux user. The ease of using Drupal lies in its very high tinkerbility rate and very steep post-initial-setup learning curve. Now, I can safely conclude that the simplicity of other CMS's lies in deceptively simple setup routines - BUT THAT'S MY TWO CENTS WORTH. And the simplicity of Drupal can be found everywhere, inside (the code) and out (the results).

The only other problem I found with using Drupal is that I'm losing a lot of sleep setting it up (I'm on my 2nd site - a home-cooked one, my 1st is an intranet in the office). My wife pretends that she understands me and I, in turn, pretend to be awfully sorry about how we're missing sleeping together on time. Mind you, I'm not losing sleep because I'm finding it hard to configure, I'm losing sleep because I'm enjoying and loving configuhacking Drupal!

Now, I'm two cents short!

Loloy D
http://home.loloyd.com/

I had no problems installing Drupal for first time, I was at very beginning of my web development career and I must note that after trying it first time on my local machine, with no mail server configured :) I have uninstalled it, and reinstalled it a few times, before understanding, that this is the best platform for all of my projects I have more than 20 web site, 3 of them are running Drupal. I think that install wizard is not that important.

[ a ramble of hopefully useful notes for anyone trying to get going with drupal]

(0) I started knowing very little - but got lucky!!!!

1) register a domain at godaddy.com for $9.00
2) pay $12.00 for a year of basic hosting at mher.org
(setup usually after about an hour)
3) open cpanel once they get your account setup.
4) got to fantastico and click on drupal
5) make a default root installation of drupal

- steps 3-5 take about five-ten minutes.

6) get freeware filezilla.com to upload and download a few specific files to edit.

7) start reading the drupal documentation online
(just click handbooks and go)
8) try finding the mambo/joomla documentation on their website
(60 minutes)

9) first focus on main features
- nodes (store content)
- taxonomy (makes category trees)
- books (of pages)
- forums (like this built in! )
- layout, user, security, loggin, management

10) study drupal template design and learn lots of CSS.
( learning CSS is essential to ANY web design tool anyway)
( decided to start with phptemplate / box_grey )
( - and then stripped that down to true basics )

11) install contributed modules to get nifty features
acidfree - makes great photo albums a NO BRAINER...

when installing certain modules that modify the database:
( such as filemanager which acidfree photo gallery needs)

- use filezilla to make a local copy of the .mysql file.
- go to phpmysqladmin from the bottom of the mysql admin page off of the cpanel page.
- click the green SQL button at the top of the page.
- click the browse button at the bottom of the page and locate the .mysql file you just downloaded.
- click go the execute the SQL commands.
- you will have modified your drupal mysql database.

Drupal really depends on the many contrib modules to make it sing.

After I loaded and understood a bunch of them I was impressed.

There is even a drupal module that lets your directly hack the drupal mysql database from INSIDE the drupal administration interface - now that is way cool!

-----------

I have started using/learning drupal after a hands on trial of many CMS systems including, expression engine, wordpress, b2evolution, mambo, joomla, pivot and others.

http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix

The URL above contains a large lsit of CMS tools and attempt to compare them that I found didn't reveal much about each of the systems.

- Only hands on use seems to reveal their strengths.
- I am about eight (80) hours into learning/evaluation drupal.
- Most of the other tools had many more roadblocks than drupal.

( I believe I am relatively objective thus far because I am not even certain I ~like~ drupal yet - but I do know the other tools had bigger limitations - costs - overhead etc. )

Also the mambo/joomla war seems really scary - usually only one of those kinds of things comes out on top because all the mambot and other contributes eventually flock to one of the systems and abandon the other to rot. A year from now will reveal some big stories about those two products...

(meanwhile with drupal ....)
- at least I have drupal working
- I got drupal installed very quickly on cheap hosting to test.
- it is understandable - grokable
- it has some flexibility
- it has many fixable design flaws

There really is a perception problem here between the network people and the Windows people who are used to just click on stuff.

There is an ingrained reaction that if you can't just click on it then it's hard. However installing Drupal is just a matter of cutting and pasting two or three commands into a remote shell (or a local shell however those things work in Windows). Typing a command doesn't mean it's not user friendly, it means it's using the interface that's suited to the context. The context here being platform independance.

So you had to read the install documentation ? For a server package ? The horror !
Would it be better to install server software that you're expected to actually work with and customize while not having the slightest idea how it works ? Have Windows people been conditioned that well at going without any documentation whatsoever that the very idea of reading it is repulsive ?

I can understand it when casual users who's only experience with software installation (or just software) has been installing the latest incarnation of Warcraft balk at first when confronted to the blinking cursor for the first time. But if you're an application developper, consider it as a good opportunity to get a glimpse at how the real computers work. If you ever have to work with enterprise systems, you'll see that it may be a valuable experience.

Regarding Mambo, it is indeed easier to install (you might want to actually use it before labelling it as "easier" though, especially after you notice the absolute lack of documentation, of any logic in the interface, or in the code, etc.). And yes, a wizard thing that checks that everything works would probably be good (the Gallery2 image gallery software also has a nicely done wizard), but I doubt anyone will ever make a Windows installer for Drupal (are there any Windows based hosting companies left anyway ?).

Clicking around is fine for some things, it doesn't mean you can't type a bit every now and then and even (gasp) read the documentation. You've encountered another culture, be curious and at least try to understand why we do things that way. I don't go around mumbling that Windows is hard because it's not Unix (well ok, I do, but only in private). In Windows I do it the Windows way (by clicking around). And now that I got a Mac laptop, I'm learning yet another way of doing things. It's new, it's fun ! Different doesn't mean difficult, it just means different. :)
Learning something different is often fun :)

I have dealt with website owners who insist on using those bloated and overhyped CMS just because they look nice like that.....

And then they screamed WHY cant they have all those nice modules like Drupal-powered sites have: categories, SEO, send, print, user profiles.....

And they discovered that the User profiles for most of the CMS are just LIKE THAT - standard input is your name, your ICQ, your AOL, etc etc...which is crap

And they look at http://drupal.org/user/44949 (My profile)
http://drupalmalaysia.org/gemilang/user/1 (My own site's profile)
http://drupalmalaysia.org/gemilang/cv/view/1 (Drupal 4.6.8 CV Builder module)

and ask how to have that? Sorry guys, you cant have that with Mambo Joomla Xoops, Nukes etc, and we cant help if you are hell bent on using others, we are specialists in Drupal (even though we are capable of others, for those 10 reasons we just dump the others)

I have enlisted TOP TEN REASONS TO USE / SWITCH TO - DRUPAL you can download the PDF.

http://drupalmalaysia.org/on/node/59