After days of effort, trial and error, some success, two steps forward one step back I have finally decided to throw in the towel with Drupal. I have switched to MODx.
Let me explain. Although I have three years programming experience I am not especially technical. However I really applied myself to Drupal even working through a pretty damn thick book from Amazon. It was always such a struggle but the prize was a supposed very flexible and powerful CMS. Alas the gain is SO not worth the pain – the learning curve is punishing and utterly unrewarding by the end of the journey.
The final straw for me was the Category module. Yes, the real world needs a quick and easy way to build and maintain a URL structure like this:
Mysite.com/Section1/page1.html
Mysite.com/Section1/page2.html
Mysite.com/Section2/page1.html
Mysite.com/Section2/page2.html
Etc ...
Why should tWhy is this so d*** difficult for Drupal? See below for the bug ...
Fellas and gals I have a business to run and just cannot justify wasting any more time. So in desperation I switched to MODx. Within after hours yesterday (Saturday) afternoon I had a basic skeleton site and basic understanding of MODX achieved. Btw, I used a basic free CSS template, MODx will let you use ANY template you want, it does not require it to be specially designed unlike Drupal.
Sunday morning I learned how to build SEO friendly URLs like above – NOTE: done with three clicks in checkboxes and NO additional module to install. In fact I have not had to install ANY extra module ... no pathauto, no fckeditor, no page-title, no site-maps, no token, no xmlsitemap ... I could go on. I am not saying there aren't plugins, there are, but you don't need them to get a sensible site up and running.
While trying to work out which of the 10s (100s?) of Drupal settings was causing pages from Section2 have URLs to contain the name of Section1 (site.com/Section1/page-from-section2.html) I suddenly wondered what on Earth would happen if I build a site for a client. Do you guys seriously expect ordinary office workers to maintain pages with the Drupal interface? You’re having a laugh!! There is no way! And it's so easy to screw-up in Drupal. MODx has a visible tree structure that more or less resembles a Windows file explorer layout. The support calls would be enormous! A money-losing nightmare.
Why am I writing this? Well in case there are any other people out there at their wits end (and judging by the constant avalanche of posting on all your forums there are) I wanted you to know there is a simple, elegant and user friendly alternative.
Arrivederci
Comments
Goodbye and Good luck ..
Goodbye and Good luck ..
MODx will let you use ANY
MODx will let you use ANY template you want, it does not require it to be specially designed unlike Drupal.
Really? Cool! Be sure to post a link when you've got some Drupal themes running on MODx. I'd like to see how that magic CMS does it's thing where there are no rules for templating and everything just works.</sarcasm>
Drupal is best when you plan to build custom functionality. If your site is just a bunch of static pages in sections, yeah, you'll be happier elsewhere. Good luck.
=-=
Some days I love the exaggeration in posts.
Problem #1 = trying to use the category.module to work with paths.
Problem #2 = 5 weeks in the commmunity and only 4 - 5 questions asked.
and would someone kindly remind the user that path.module is part of core ; ) therefore userfriendly urls was only a few clicks as well.
I jest though. Drupal can be frustrating when you first start out. We've all been there. Once you feel pigeon-holed by some of the other scripts out there you'll be back. Most of us have left and come back at least once : )
With regards to what this OP was trying to do.
It can be accomplished with pathauto.module and the sections.module. That's one way to go about it.
Though I'd avoid using .html on paths as it's unnecessary.