I know this has been said many times before but it needs saying again. Documentation basically sucks and unless you/I are prepared to be either very patient or are very lucky, then finding things is a royal pain in the backside.
I'll admit to being new to Drupal, I accept it's a damned steep learning curve. I've got decent HTML, CSS and limited PHP skills - as I guess many have who turn up here.
The real problem is there's no way a newbie can realistically get beyond the kind of basics you'd find in a WordPress or EE without tearing their/my hair out trawling through these fora. OK, so Drupal is aimed more at the geek end of things. But even that's a poor excuse and as I trawl through posts, it's clear that even smart people struggle.
What's needed IMHO is a set of simple instructions that spell out:
1. Template structures - how they fit together, styling ground rules for Drupal and general 'shape' of Drupal sites
2. Taxonomy -how it works, what it does, its limitations and how to kick start your efforts.
3. Roles - how these work, the controls that can be put on different classes or user
4. Navigation - how to set up, how to hide from general view
5. A set of simple examples that illustrates each main point
This is not a complete list but would serve as a good start. In addition, this set of docs needs aggregating and putting somewhere central (I'd suggest Wkipedia - great resource, works very well for WP community) as well as prominently on the Drupal forums.
Before anyone says - 'well go and do it' - I repeat, I'm a newbie. I don't know this stuff very well. I've spent 60 hours with Drupal and would say I'm 10 metres into the 1500 metre crawl. Like many other newbies coming here from the relative comfort of the blogging world, I'm here because I want something more. But I want to get productive - at least in pilot - as fast as possible. That isn't happening at the moment. And it is this IMHO that's driving most well-meaning people to distraction. I don't know, but it may contribute to the abandonment rate.
What I can say - even at this stage - is that Drupal looks as though it has the potential to be a very powerful CMS. It is what I'm looking for to deliver value to the communities I serve but getting out the starting blocks is proving a veritable pain.
I can see from the various posts in and around this topic that many people are either in the same boat, or, are pressed because of their own projects. It's the price of sitting at the 'hard end' of CMS at a time when there is huge interest in the topic. Is there a way that drupal.org could fund a well seasoned Drupal pro to do this? I'd edit it - I am a pro writer by first trade and I'd be more than happy to do it because it is a genuine chance to learn. Bryght have started something that goes a long way towards this but it isn't enough.
I'm sure that given the right resource, this would help large numbers of people who want to work with Drupal but are put off by its steep learning curve.
My sense is that if it doesn't happen sometime soon, then the potential for creating great CMS for smallish companies (100-500 users) will be lost sa the commercial people buld out more 'just enough' functionality to keep people sweet(ish).
I trust the community will see this as a constructive post, meant with the best intentions going and not 'just the ranting of another lazy person who can't be bothered to learn Drupal.' I would, if I could get off those damned starting blocks <::>
Comments
easy there, tiger
hold on,man. it's not that bad. Let's take it a step at a time...
What's your first issue?
100% correct
He's right on the money. Been using Drupal 2 months, I'm a coder by trade since 1996 and have used dozens of CMS's in last 5 years in LAMP. Drupal was steepest learning curve I've ever had.
It has sucked (for me) so bad in fact, I've been posting the ongoing saga to my Drupal site, weekly or as I get updates and things fixed..
Before everyone makes us out to be the loners, please read up on others that have the same issues...these are common complaints (steep learning curve, hard to get started, difficult to install, too many configurations, settings in too many places, etc, etc.):
my original Why does Drupal Suck post.
a well thought out Why Drupal "Sucks" post by Eaton.
here's I Gave Up, Drupal Wasn't For Me
and there's How in the *$&! do I upload pictures?
also Drupal is driving me to despair
and How do I create a web site?
and Would Drupal be suitable for my website (personal site)?
also Can we have a forum for absolute beginners
and Newbie, site's up and running but am stuck on designing
and Allowing users to do things
and US$20 via PayPal to the first person that helps me out here
and Newbie's point of view
and Help for a total newbie, how and where to start
I read postings like this and mine in the forums every week. I like Drupal and I'm sticking it out, but some don't and leave before they get anywhere. Newbie help is necessary beyond the handbooks. People constantly screaming for newbie help should be an indicator that what is currently available is not good enough for the masses you are attracting (and even educated developers are having a hell of a time).
I would add to the list of simple instructions:
6. Intuitive install of modules with automated updated option (like Firefox)....on install module asks "do you want to add access roles, do you want to configure, do you want to assign to a category, do you want to add to input format..." rather than leave us to read the install and readme files and hope they are right, and we understand everything.
please help out
Everyone knows that Drupal could use better documentation for newbies. However, to reach that end, Drupal needs more people creating good documentation. Now that you have been working with Drupal for a couple of months, perhaps you can help out? In fact, I would add that you are particularly well suited to do so. Newer members who have recently gone through the experience of learning Drupal are often going to be some of the best people for the job. You will perhaps be more in touch with newer user needs than those who have been using Drupal for a long time.
It's not so easy...
I had suggested, as did others, in previous posts for some new forums for newbies, lessons learned, tips, etc...and was completely shot down in flames by people that wanted to use the existing Handbooks and Best Practices pages.
It's a documented fact that the search on Drupal.org leaves a lot to be desired (biting my tongue here). If I can't find it in 3 clicks - why the hell would I search? I can't even limit my search to forums, manuals, etc. My idea was to add new forum topics for stuff like this - because it's where people are going NOW.
For example - why did it take me 2 months to find this page of Drupal PHP Snippets?!? Come on! That should have been a sticky topic in one or more of the damn forums!
I may be in a good position to document certain things, but I'm still spending 4-6 hours per day (like today) trying to fix things from the initial install 2 months ago!
I just found out today why captcha doesn't work on anon comments - you need to patch the core (oy vey!). img_assist still doesn't work, adsense won't work on bracketed input, trackbacks not working, referer spam is killing me, and no rich text editors are working. And a lot of the time no one answers my forum posts (even though I'm trying to answer as many as I can for others).
For now, I'm just concentrating on fixing my initial problems and documenting my trials and tribulations on my own site for people to read what I've been doing through, and figured out so far.
If there was a way to submit quick tips to get indexed in some kind of archive I would - but everyone wants you to author a damn "handbook" page, and I'm just not up to that right now.
Lessons learned and tips can
Lessons learned and tips can easily go into the handbook. Anyone can post a page, anyone.
Search.. gosh. There was a front page article asking for people to help out. People to commit their own free time. People to commit there own free expertise. And guess what! Search was tested and improved for 4.7. Is Drupal.org running on 4.7 yet? Nope. Guess you'll just have to continue waiting for those unpaid lazy people to get around to it. Ya... if only those unpaid lazy people would do what you tell them as yelling and cursing is an ever so effective motivator for volunteers you don't know.
As to your being unable to find the php snippets? I don't know why it took you so long, it's certainly referenced enough. Sticky posts in forums is bad bad usability. The handbook is where long term information is stored. That is it's purpose in life. If you look on the handbook page you see it in the Configuration section.
As to captcha, captcha is a contributed module. I've never downloaded it till right now. I see it says in the readme that
Perhaps you could file an issue against the captcha project and politely ask that sentence be expanded on. It does mean that if you use captcha for comments, you need a patch and provides the patch number for you to look up.
I glanced at your sites rants... wow, you are very angry for someone who refuses to contribute. Click submit content, book page. Type your content. Yep, to much work.
-sp
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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
O my
You seem to blame a lot on Drupal....
--
Tips for posting to the forums
SEO
Gotta laugh when someone compleains that that Drupal is well search engine optimized. LOL
isn't it great?
I myself get that warm fuzzy feeling when people complain and complain and use swear words and continue to hold the free work of others in contempt and refuse point blank to contribute back.
It makes me want to continue to help and donate my time and writing. Some days it actually does stop me and I wander off to do something else.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Can anyone say irony?
+
= Maybe all those months it lurked behind that fourth click.
Then:
+
+
= How about a handbook page with links to threads that are particularly useful to newcomers?
Based on your above comment, you are capable (despite the inherent weakness of Drupal's oft-pilloried search feature) of finding and linking to threads critical of Drupal. Just duplicate your above post with an annotated list of links to threads that are useful. Submit it as a book page in the "Is Drupal right for you" section.
Seriously. I've read some of your posts, and if you devoted a fraction of the time you devoted to complaining to helping, you could contribute a fair amount. I'm not even saying you need to stop complaining. Just complain a little bit less, help a little bit more.
I realize that, jt6919, in your eyes this post probably qualifies me as one of the masses attempting to shoot you down in flames. For what it's worth, that's not my intention. I also spend a fair amount of time trying to help new users find their way, and I don't see how threads centered around complaining help any users -- new or experienced -- get more from Drupal.
Cheers,
bonobo
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
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http://www.funnymonkey.com
I agree
"For example - why did it take me 2 months to find this page of Drupal PHP Snippets?!? Come on! That should have been a sticky topic in one or more of the damn forums!"
I've been trying to learn myself Drupal, I was just about to give up when I also just discovered the snippets site. Now at least I know there are blocks of code not so big as modules I might be able to use. That's still a lot of work for me to learn, but I have a little hope now my project (http://drupal.org/node/69729, http://www.makingthesite.com/drupal_test/) is possible.
I agree, that snippet part should be somewhere right on the front page on the right at 'download' (the green stuff).
Let me begin at the beginning
Back when Wordperfect was the greatest word processor around, I fired up my copy of it, to be greeted by a nice blue screen - the Wordperfect default page. Easy enough, I figured, but after that nothing happened. Me being me, I looked all over the instruction manual and never did learn how to get to a menu. Wordperfect went in the trash and I switched to MS Word 3. This taught me something about geeks - they LOVE obtuse references. Even better than a reference that adds to even more confusion is NO REFERENCE at all! This way, one doesn't have to waste time writing references, or explaining them afterwards! But then, all those manual writers would be unemployed, instead of just dis-employed or whatever you call it when useless people get paid for ruining a person's day :)
At any rate, I finally found my answer to WP in the first couple of pages. It says hit the grey plus key. Me being color blind, and mentally challenged most days, I always thought keyboards were shades of beige and brown. And if you are looking at new keyboards - well, forget it. No such animal.
After the above rant, here is my question, since I am still justlooking at using Drupal: Is there a SIMPLE way of getting Drupal documentation and printing it out, as for example, a programmer's guide and command reference?
Each section of the handbook
Each section of the handbook has a link to export to DocBook XML or OPML or to a Printer Friendly page.
The developer code documentation is in the code you download for your site. One nice offline way is to create your own drupaldocs site
As to terminology, it's hard to not use the correct word for a specific term. You can look up words. Words also can convey specific technical meanings and if you try and invent new fancy words for things that have specific meanings, then no one can figure out what you are talking about. Words like taxonomy have meaning while a word like category while close, doesn't convey quite the same breadth of meaning.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Making progress
Thanks for that info. Actually I already had it but I still don't really know what it is. My Cisco router documentation runs about 2000 pages. Since every section is numbered and sectioned, eg Section 9-Page 232 I sort of know if I am missing a chunk out of the middle. The end has an index and the beginning has a title page. Hmmmm. :) Even so, in 2000 pages they missed some basic stuff that can get you in a lot of trouble if you try to fuddle through.
I realize such animals like titles are window dressing, but they help. So do I have the basic manual? I don't need an install manual, just want to get an idea what I can do easily and what will need tweaking. I've already done a fair bit of research and all I get now is versions of what are best called reviews for and against. It's time to get into the real nuts and bolts and decide. Thus the what I call programmer's guide request. Maybe it's in here.
I was planning on using iis instead of apache, just because that's our office stuff these days and that's the flavours of other software installed. Do I really need to do a full install to get more docs? Should I forget about iis? This chunk of documentation starts off talking only about apache.
I checked the drupaldocs, learned what a CVS is (Concurrent Versions System - seems like an excellent idea) ended up on a viewCVS site (http://cvs.drupal.org/docs/help_rootview.html) and ironically found several links outdated.
I got a whole stack more questions but once I started into that chunk of pages, many might be answered there so I won't waste anyone's time. Again, thanks for the help.
I use IIS. Works just fine
I use IIS. Works just fine for the majority of the stuff. Some modules require *nix specifc functionality.
What more do you need? I mean functioning webserver, database (MySQL) and download and follow the instructions. Here, this tends to work as a starting point for IIS.
It's not in the handbook because I am to busy to finish it, you need to have a working install of PHP already and php sites have better infomration for it, you need a working install of MySQL and MySQL sites have better information for installing on Windows.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Been there done that
There were bugs in my php and mySQL installs first time around. Working fine now. How come I get the stuff with all the unique bugs that nobody else gets?? The main thing I found was, don't be the first to try a new version!!
I expect some hard work in getting the stuff going, I'm not looking for a free ride. What I'm trying to say is, a person can go to an awful lot of work just getting a system up and running, before he or she has even scratched the surface of actually using the software.
I would rather spend a couple days if required, reading docs than spend a couple days chasing a haywire install, finally get it going, and then in the end find out the software ain't gonna do what I want in the first place. Ah, if only i had RTFM!!
I'm trying !
And thanks for that site, looks worthwhile to read it too.
If you find your MySQL, PHP,
etc, aren't working as predictably as you like, check out XAMPP from sourceforge -- it's a preconfigured install that gets you clean versions of PHP, MySQL, and Apache, as well as phpMyAdmin and some other useful utilities.
It's great for a local test site, but the security needs to be tweaked for use as a production server.
Also, it installs with PHP5 enabled by default -- it has a batch file that will switch the PHP version to 4.x, which is much more predictable with Drupal.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp
Cheers,
bonobo
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
It´s necessary perseverance
I am novice like you and I have spent one month learning, searching and visiting this site many times by day to understand more Drupal.
I agree with you, the sources of explanations are very basics and the search in Drupal is not good (Google is the best way), but there are always a new question in forum with good replys which help us much. The answers will emerge like a "drop". Very important as well it´s "to play" with Drupal, insights arise this.
So, by now it´s necessary patience because Drupal is not "ended", it´s "on the way".
Do you know this link?
I have set up
a pair of configured Drupal sites with documentation on my website -- I'm in the midst of posting this documentation into the Drupal handbook, but in the meantime:
http://www.funnymonkey.com/blog-based-site
http://funnymonkey.com/configured-site
Both these sites are designed for educational use, but they can be helpful for sorting out how taxonomy works, how the different content types work, etc. Both sites ship with the explanatory documentation so you will have a copy of the instructions on your local test site.
Cheers,
bonobo
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com
Tools for Teachers
-------
http://www.funnymonkey.com