@Drupal breaking point - Need intervention
I love drupal, I really do. But our love has been bitter sweet.
It seems like, every time I need to do something in Drupal I'm hacking code. Things never work right, and theming is a nightmare that leads to more hacking. Advanced theming is a nightmare, I even have a book... but it sucks, does not go into details of template.php. The documentation does not either... maybe I'm looking for something thats not existent? IT seems like very doc I read on template.php throws you in the middle of it, tells you you can override functions with it, gives you an example function pulled out of someones a##, and proceeds to talk about how great this feature is without explaining anything concrete. And hey, maybe I'm not reading the right tutorials so if you have some great ones don't be afraid to post because I'm desperate.
I am considering switching to Joomla. I'm probably talking out of anger because of a major incident I had today with Drupal, and tomorrow I will return for more drupal punishment. But at what point do I admit I'm not cut out for drupal and give up?
Right now, version 6 of Drupal is amazing but half of the important are in dev. Already there is a Drupal 7 on the horizon, it looks like the community can't keep up. Like a carrot on a stick, just out of reach.
I need some motivation, I need some positive feedback to tell me why Drupal is amazing for developers and why I should keep it over Joomla. Right now, performance aside, Joomla looks a lot better (though I've only played with it). There seem to be many great modules for it, and major projects like magento integration are on the horizon. The control panel is made for regular people, with words that make sense and icons for visual people like myself. Looks do matter, but I would never judge a system by how good it looks... still, its an attractive feature. If you are doing anything commercially with drupal, drupal interface for client = cryptic and ugly.
OK enough ranting (though i do feel somewhat better)
1. Are you a developer or a themer, or both?
2. How was your first Drupal experience?
3. Why should I NOT switch to Joomla? (Yeah, I want a biased answer from all you Drupal fanboys :)
Cheers
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1. Developer out of desire, really bad themer out of need. ;)
2. I came to Drupal the week 4.6 was released. I struggled quite a bit. Things have gotten a lot better since then.
3. I haven't used Joomla. People who have say it's easier to get started with but harder to finish with. If you aren't doing anything complicated and are comforted by the icons and pretty face of Joomla, it may be a better choice.
Don't worry about 7.x. As soon as, and sometimes slightly before even, a piece of software is released, work starts on the next version. An actual release is a long ways off.
As for template.php, it's hard for docs to explain it in detail since it can contain anything. Some themes don't have one at all. It's basically a file where you put theme functions. There's nothing magic about the file itself except that it is included automatically so you don't need to do anything special.
I've been using Drupal for all my sites for over 3 years and have had my share of struggles but I wouldn't want to use anything else. I can do anything with it. It doesn't force me into any particular kind of site. For that, I'm willing to sacrifice some ease of use and handholding. Not everyone is willing to do that and that's ok. That's why there are still other CMSs out there. :)
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
I am both a developer and
I am both a developer and themer, but I must say that I have had good experiences with Drupal.
Drupal's power and flexibility is the cause for the complexity. It does A LOT out of the box, but when you need "Custom Feature X", you have to implement it using Drupal's system... which means dealing with complexity. That being said, you can make Drupal do anything, as long as you understand how to leverage its APIs.
Theming is evil in any system (not just Drupal), but I can do it, and I do it well. In fact, a large portion of my business is theme related. I can also write custom modules that integrate seamlessly with Drupal, and this makes up the rest of my work. I believe that all of this is because I am comfortable with Drupal's structure and APIs, and know how and why they function like they do.
That's me. I like logic problems and solving puzzles, so Drupal doesn't scare me... it fascinates me. I am confident that I could make literally any type of site with it... probably without ever modifying a core file.
Not everybody is like me. Most do not want to know *why* something works... they just want it to work. They think, "this is simple (in concept), so why can't Drupal do it?" The truth is, it probably really is simple, and Drupal *can* do it, but it can also do a bazillion other things... so you have to be able to cut through all of the possibilities and customize it for your individual circumstances.
You don't have to be a coder to use Drupal, but it does help. The forums are also helpful, but we need specifics in order to know what you are trying to accomplish, so that we can advise you in the best way to handle it.
I won't tell you to stay with Drupal over Joomla. I would advise you to use whatever is best suited for the site that you are trying to build. For me, that choice has always been Drupal.
I remember the fascination the first time that my website interfaced with the Google Geocoding API (before there was an official module for it), or when my website integrated with the Flickr API. I remember when a friend (who develops Flash applications) mistook my Drupal theming customizations for embedded Flash. None of it was "easy", but it was all possible, and that is what is important. Nobody could anticipate the requirements of some of the sites that I work on, but Drupal has always been up to the task.
As I said before, I can do anything with Drupal, and I will stay with it until it proves otherwise.
- Corey
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"I remember the fascination the first time that my website interfaced with the Google Geocoding API (before there was an official module for it)"
Oooh, me too! I did that in Drupal 4.7, IIRC. I had it pretty cool where you could click on a place link on the left and it would show it on the map on the right. This was before location/gmap came on the scene. Took me forever to figure it out but I thought I was pretty hot stuff when I got it working. LOL
Sorry, totally OT, but I had a nostalgia moment there. :)
Michelle
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See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out life in the Coulee Region.
:-)
1. Poor coder and themer, but I can build sites --thanks to Drupal. Yay!
2. Sort of magic. Drupal isn't all that easy to start with (as you and almost everybody else says), but I had lots of experience with Xoops so I had some basics covered.
3. I can't either tell you which CMS fits your needs, although I can tell you that with Drupal (along with a great community and forums packed with answers and tips) I can make anything.
Warm regards from sunny México!
Pepe
:-)
I won't deny Drupal can be frustrating
I won't deny Drupal can be frustrating for us mere mortals. (I know CSS/HTML reasonably well, but only enough PHP to be dangerous). And yes, it could do with some significant usability improvements. I also agree Joomla interface is much more friendly for clients (though have you checked out SilverStripe's interface? Now that's sweet).
But none of them can do what Drupal can do, and I don't think any has the selection of modules that Drupal has. (So many of Joomla's "contributed" components are commercial now, aren't they?)
In particular, I'll give you two good reasons to stay with Drupal -- CCK and Views. Case closed.
OK, theming isn't easy. But one thing I've noticed in Drupal forums is that some people make theming more complicated than it needs to be. Quite often there's a simpler solution than attacking template.php. With a good base theme like Zen or Genesis, you can do so much with just CSS.
Still, I know what you mean about theming documentation/books. There seems to be some good stuff for beginners and experienced developers, but not much in between. These days, I'm finding that I'm learning more from looking at other themes.
I agree with everything said
I agree with everything said here but you've summed it up beautifully:
joomla may have the prettier face, but its functionality doesn't come anywhere near what drupal can do. however, if you can get what you need done with joomla without any customizations (that's the key), then it's probably the easier choice. If joomla comes close, but you still need to tweak it, that's where drupal shines brighter. You'll spend far more time fighting joomla than it would take you to tweak drupal. At least that was my experience (i used joomla briefly before finding drupal).
2 modules i would add those would be panels2 and nodequeue. have you seen d6 panels 2? It's magnificent. Nothing and i mean nothing, commerical or os, equals the functionality of core drupal with cck, views, panels, & nodequeue-- all without writing a single line of code or spending even 1 cent.
btw-- i'm not a developer, just a code jockey and, like michelle, a themer out of necessity. fwiw, i don't think it's that doing in things in drupal is itself difficult, it's grokking the 'drupal way' that takes a learning curve. Once you do that, actually figuring out how to do things with drupal is not bad. in contrast, when i was using joomla, it seemed to take hours and hours and hours to figure out how to do even the smallest thing and then it wasn't applicable anywhere else. toward the end, just before finding drupal, i would have preferred sticking a fork in my eye to trying to tweak joomla.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
Your replies are awesome.
Your replies are awesome. Thanks everyone.
I just canceled my Joomla FTP upload, what was I thinking?
I think this whole topic came out of frustration because I potentially p'd off one of my clients. Simplenews template worked when sending a "test" email, but didn't work when sending the real thing. Well, he sent his newsletter to his list... and the template didn't show up. My client will probably hang me tomorrow, but oh well, such is life. It is my fault for not testing this out first myself, but I thought... hey if it works in test mode, it must work in production. Do not assume anything.
I know Drupal > Joomla, I was just having a "apply-bat-to-monitor" moment.
I think my frustration comes from the inability to understand the inner workings of Drupal. I need to know how things work, and not being able to utilize template.php is frustrating to me. I'm 100% prepared to make some video tutorials on this to help new drupal users and people like myself, but I don't have the understanding to do this on my own.
In the template.php, I want to be able to do what contemplate does. Change node themes, because more often than not I'm finding myself using display:none; for simple H1 and H2 fields, way too hackie.
Anyway, I'm glad im not the only one experiencing growing pains with Drupal. Not that I want other people to suffer, but yeah... misery likes company I guess.
Again thanks for all the posts. I will look at some of the suggestions in this thread and give them a try.
I think my frustration
i think you've hit the nail on the head-- i found the "pro drupal development" book invaluable in this regard. It's the only book i've bought to date, but it was worth it's weight in gold. there's a new version for d6, but i've not seen it yet.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
AHH your problem is using the wrong tool for the job
Changing the way nodes are themed, though it can be done in template.php, is usually done in the node.tpl.php file or the node-(content_type).tpl.php file.
I understand your frustration. When I first started using drupal it was not a matter of 'could' the system do something, but a matter of 'which way' should I pick to do it. The most frustrating part of learning drupal for me was that there are at least 10 different ways to do anything and that in and of itself is confusing. Finding the right tool for the job is the key.
Stick with it!
I originally started with Joomla, because I had heard that it was easier. I did not find it to be any easier...in fact, I got my basic site up and running a lot faster in drupal. The logic of drupal just made more sense to me.
Some of the issues are inherent to open source: i.e., whether to develop in joomla 1.0 vs. 1.5 is the same issue as choosing drupal 5 or drupal 6. I'm a designer, not a developer, so challenges such as setting up a local server or understanding php, databases, etc., are the same whether in drupal or joomla (or wordpress, which I've also used).
Also, the developers I know all prefer drupal, and I trust their judgment.
I can't agree with you more
I can't agree with you more here. I did start with Joomla, didn't go very far into it though. It was a descent system, but it didn't work the way I did. Things seemed to be in the wrong places, so without giving it much of a chance I switched to Drupal. I loved it and still do, it has its moments... but that's like everything in life.
In terms of books, I do have Pro Drupal Development. When I got it, the first thing I did was read the themes chapter and a little bit of the intro. I think I gave up too quick on the book and will go back and read the whole thing. There are probably fundamentals in there that will help me to understand themes i missed.
I think the reason why I'm pushing so hard for template.php is because I'm both a designer and developer. And every developer post talks about template.php and how powerful it is. I have utilized page.tpl.php in the past, however, when skinning views or anything complicated this method becomes very difficult to work with. I think I'm a control freak, because when I make a view I want to be able to control everything. How the output is displayed, I want unique pictures in various places (above, middle, below my data), I want to have collapsible divs, utilize mootools, etc etc. I don't feel like page.tpl.php can give me all that, because you can only output regions in this file and not specific modifications on how content is displayed. Again I could be wrong and just not know any better... but I think for what I want to do i need template.php, I have no clue.
Well its a new day and I'm positive about further Drupal development.
Now I just need to call my client and deliver the good news. :P