By kennysto on
having failed to succesfully upgrade firstly from 4.3 cvs to 4.3 and then again from 4.3 to 4.3.1 regretfully i am giving up on drupal. Without a doubt Drupal seems to be the closest cms I have found to suit my purposes, but not having the technical or programming knowledge to customize it, or even handle simple tasks like upgrading an unmodified install it is just turning out to be too frustrating. Thanks to everyone who answered my queries over the past few weeks.
Kenny
Comments
How can upgrading from Drupal 4.3.0 to Drupal 4.3.1 fail?
How can upgrading from Drupal 4.3.0 to Drupal 4.3.1 fail? No database changes were made so all you had to do, was unpacking the Drupal 4.3.1 source tree on top of the existing Drupal 4.3.0 source tree.
Have you considered paying someone to help you?
Thanks for having tried Drupal.
Dear Dries, undoubtedly you a
Dear Dries, undoubtedly you are a very clever person but I think you fail to put your self in the position of inexperienced users. For a start you assume I know what 'source tree' refers to.
So where are these upgrade instructions? In the documentation I found this:
http://drupal.org/book/view/496
nope nothing usefull there.
So I search the forum for 'upgrade' and find a sack load of comments and nodes, some relevant like: http://drupal.org/node/view/4373#6811 and others not. Why I have to search a forum for such vital information baffles me. So I go ahead..
Lets look at the upgrade process.
I look inside the downloaded upgrade file and find install instructions and an update script. Nothing in the install docs about upgrading, nothing telling me what to do with upgrade.php, so..
- where does it say that all you have to do is overwrite your existing files.
- where does it explain if you have to run the upgrade script
- where does it say i should keep my config file intact
Writing good documentation is a skill, it is also a tedious and laborious job. It has to reach the lowest denominator, it has to try and cover all eventualities.
The forums in my opinion are not the place to find this kind of information and are perhaps used as an excuse not to provide descent documentation.
I appreciate that you would rather spend time on development and you are giving away a heck of a lot of your time away free to users like me, but at the end of the day no matter how many clever features Drupal has if I cant even do a simple upgrade what use is drupal to me? I dont know, perhaps it is just me, in which case you are doing a fine job.
Reconsider?
Kenny,
I hope that you will reconsider your decision. Not because I am connected with Drupal nor because I have enough fondness for it to be considered a zealot or even an evangalist.
I ask you to reconsider for your own sake, because *anything* worth doing is going to take some headbanging, hair-pulling frustration. I have gotten good at many different technologies simply by forging ahead when I was ready to kill someone and/or quit. This is hard to do but rewarding in the end. So many, in so many endeavours have given up when the goal was almost in their reach.
You are almost there with this stuff. Heck I am too. I have a site that is almost ready but cannot be released because of a text doubling problem (http://drupal.org/node/view/4044) but I am thinking that it will all come in good time.
These guys are giving a lot of their time to create an awesome product and documentation usually comes last with geeks. It's a fact of life. If you want good docs go buy a product. If you want to challenge yourself to learn how to do it using only the bare minimum resources (forums, mailing lists) then sitck around and grow yourself.
Whatever your choice, good luck.
You have an important point Kenny
I can clearly relate to your frustrations. I too am not a programmer. Sure I have had a lot more succes with Drupal, probably because I'am a nonprogrammer techie.
I believe that Drupal has taken steps towards accomodating nonprogrammer users in the past year, and I predict that Drupal will become even more "user friendly", but it takes someone like you - who cares to take the time to express your frustrations - to make everybody else aware that something is not as easy as we all may think.
Dropping in from Langemarks Cafe.
I agree!
I've also noticed that whenever there is a bug report about a tiny thing, someone is instantly there to help. If you critisize something about Drupal you are either ignored or shot down in flames.
I recently posted a question about flagging new posts. All I got was a link to a site with extremely techie stuff and no explanation or how to. Did it help me? Not a bit.
I asked if there were any plans on making the forum in to a more user friendly version and properly threaded. That generated one reply from someone who was trying to do something. Not a single word from anyone in the development team as far as I know. I have talked to other people using Drupal who have experienced the same thing.
And what is this about "obligation" to post something in the support book? Geesh!? Get a life. If the guy is asking a question he doesnät know the answer too, how is it expected that he is to contribute anything constructive in the book?
The analogy with the actors is really fitting.
/T - would give up on Drupal for two reasons: 1, lack of support. 2, the forum which isn't userfriendly. But stick with it for one reason - it is fast.
Forum module
/T - would give up on Drupal for two reasons: 1, lack of support. 2, the forum which isn't userfriendly.
We are getting off-topic here but maybe you could explain how you'd improve the forum module's user-friendliness and what you mean with 'properly threaded'? Maybe start a new forum topic to discuss this further.
I did!
Twice! And I supplied links of examples too. All in module development forum. It generated two replies. One from myself.
I've lost 2/3 of my users after switching from postnuke to drupal. Mostly thanks to the forum.
Ps. Yes, I knew this was off topic but at least this thread had the attention of the developers.
details
Tattirif, In your previous posts [1, 2], you don't really explain the details of what you are looking for. My understanding is that you want a threaded view of one forum folder as the default forum page. Without PHP knowledge and an understanding of the inner workings of drupal you're not going to be to replicate your old forum style. On the other hand, if you can convince the drupal developers that your approach to forum usability is better than what we have in place and offer evidence of such and be specific, maybe some of us will consider the changes. But we really can't do much or have a discussion about it when we don't know the exact details of what you're after or why you think it is a better approach.
You got it Mathias
Dries didn't, but you got it. That is exactly how I'd like the forum to work. Not just me but the other 300 of the users/IP I used to have before I moved to using Drupal. Lost 2/3 of them so now down to just under a hundred. The lurkers can't even be bothered going in to have a look anymore. Stats have gone right down.
I have next to no php coding knowledge. I do know people who have and one is a shit hot php coder in London. He is also very adept on hacking Drupal and have modified more or less all the modules and created som of his own. He had a look at the forum and the code (he doesn't use the forum on his site) and he came back with a "beats me. Can't help you sort out the forum to look like you want."
I have just posted on my site that I might change the system again. Not just because of the forum but mostly because of the lack of support and the attitude on here. My users are not going to be happy but maybe, just maybe, can I regain the ones I lost.
I run a webdesigning company and sadly, I don't feel that Drupal is something I can recommend my clients. The site I'm using Drupal for is one of my hobby projects. I'm now thinking of asking our developer to create what I want instead. Which is sad. Drupal could have been an excellent system for people to use but when usability and functionality is lost both for the admin and the end user.... I don't know.
And after reading all the upgrading problems I'm not even going to bother with going down that road. Why should I.
careful
If you carefully read Dries's post, you'd realize he's telling you that drupal already has "Threaded list - collapsed" comment controls, just like your old forum. He was providing you with more information to solve your problem. If you took a little time to learn how drupal works, you'd realize that what your after is not that far away (read: it can be done and it's not that hard). That being said, i would not want to see the drupal forums move into the cyboard style. Why would you force your users to click every comment in order to read it?
Ah
They don't have to click every comment to read it. They can chose if they want to read the whole thread, if they want to. A few of my users do. I could basically count them on one hand.
However, they want to see all the subject lines on every respons to every thread on that page in one go. They don't want to have to click on the topic and then get the thread and from there go back to the topic and so on. As far as I can tell there is no function for this in administration. I've looked at the code and can't find it in there either. since the forum uses two diffrenet tables I haven't been able to work out how to do my own forum and merge the two.
Oh well, never mind. I have suggested to my users that we could go back to postnuke and they all seem quite happy about that. Those who are still hanging on after the switch to drupal are about to lose their patience.
Thanks anyway.
Expectations
The Cyboard and Drupal forums (in "Threaded list - collapsed" mode) look rather similar to me.
That aside, you don't expect us to investigate both cyboard and superBB, to guess what you or your users like about it, to determine what you mean with 'properly threaded forums', and to actually provide you step-by-step instructions as how to mimic their layout using Drupal, do you?
You're right
Frankly, I do expect people to have minimal knowledge about webservers and databases to install Drupal, and some knowledge about XHTML and CSS (but not necessarily PHP) to customize Drupal. People that don't should either be willing to learn or should consider using a hosting company that installs and upgrades Drupal for them.
At the same time, I do realize that we have to try and embrace users like you by writing better documentation. Unfortunately, writing documentation is not my forte. I did, however, try to put a lot of emphasis on usability (and more recently on accessibility) to make Drupal more accessible to non-techies.
Many of us don't realize that you might not be familiar with the term 'source tree' (myself included) and secondly, as the documentation fits our needs, the thought of improving it does not enter our minds. Therefore, it often takes someone like you to figure out what is missing or what is inadequate, to formulate and communicate this with us and - finally - to contribute back concrete documentation improvements.
That aside, I just added review installation/upgrade instructions to my TODO list. Feel free to beat me to it ...
You're doing well
Dries,
I'm at home with a sore throat, and I have a little time to comment on this site.
I think that you guys in the Drupal developer team are doing well. You have taken Drupal some very important steps towards better usability. No doubt. And I'm sure things will be even better.
I totally agree that if you don't know anything, and don't have the time or willingness to learn, then let someone do it for you. There are people who will set up a Drupal site for (a little) money, and there are hosting companies that will install it for you. I can only recommend to everybody who does not want to get entangled in the inner workings of Drupal to take advantage of these offers. After all - lots of people drive cars who do not know how to change a tire, let alone change the oil.
Best
Gunnar
Dropping in from Langemarks Cafe.
I second that.
Dries:
I'd agree. I've been supporting Drupal in the form of Deanspace for a month or so, and recently we've had some bad press circulate in the form of word of mouth over the same issue.
My own feeling is that you're ahead to focus on the technical end of development. I don't see any reason to believe that this is to the exclusion of any particular level of user -- it's a matter of getting the best software possible to the people that will be able to make use of it.
Naturally, anyone that cares to is welcome to disagree, but the first thing you should be asking yourself is: "How many people are having the same issue?" It's just a law of averages. I know how frustrating it is to encounter an untenable problem; I certainly have my share. I've also spent somewhere in the neighborhood of providing technical support for fifteen years and I've put in my fair share of time with applications that generate a ticket for every third copy in circulation.
So far, where I haven't encountered novice mistakes or had some element overlooked (and there are a lot of them, it's easy to do), I've been working on people's server configurations. Bugs get bug reports and people work to fix them.
Today it was suggested that a code freeze be put in place to allow the developers to focus on ease-of-use issues and I about choked. Either we need more volunteers, or I need to learn to play better with others. I'd as soon do this myself. It's good busy work for flunkies, and I have an entire Christmas vacation planned around it.
In closing, one of my favorite quotes, and I don't remember who it's attributed to, involves a discussion between two actors during the opening night of a show. The younger of the two is pacing around and stressing out over what kind of reviews they'll get the next morning, and he turns to the older, more experienced actor, and asks "Does it ever get any easier to accept bad reviews?" And the second guy thinks about it a minute and replies "It's not the bad reviews you've got to learn to ignore; it's the good ones."
Since it's kind of an obtuse analogy, the moral is, nobody can really tell you whether you're any good or not. You just know.
about documentation
we use the collaborative book to document drupal. its key feature is that anyone can create or edit its pages. so when a newbie figures out something that isn't well documented, he is obligated by the laws of good karma to edit the documentation. this is the open source way.
repeat after me: "have I contributed to the handbook recently?"
Adding to the docs would be good...
Ya can't add what you don't know. I think that it might be important to know something before adding it to the book. :-) I'd love to add something to the book but its important to get it working first so that I would know what to add.
That means so that I can understand it and then explain it or add it to the knowledge base for the help of the other folks with the same problem.
Sometimes it is the simple things that we learn that are worth passing on, other times its a bit more important to understand what had to be done to get it to work.
Al
I understand the frustration...
As another Drupal newbie I get pretty frustrated as well.
While I have more background about running php CMS packages I have to tell ya that the first assumption (from what I've read) of the devs is always that what the person at the other end of the email is doing it wrong. Not that there may be a problem with the docs or the code.
Most of the time this is probably correct. But when there are multipul problems posted about the same things it ain't always the user. Sometimes there are other problems.
While I'm sure that it's frustrating for the people that are a part of the project its also frustrating for us out here that know that what we have done is follow the instructions and gotten a response that we must be the ones that are wrong because it works for so many others.
I run my own server, have for several years. I host several sites now, over time I've run many different flavors of PHP CMS, blog, wiki, ecommerce even a few that are static. I've installed a long list of software and been able to make it all work when the sotware itself wasn't broken. But I've had some problems with Drupal so far that have been automatically assumed to be that my server is improperly configured or I was doing something wrong. It ain't, and if I am then show me the way, tell me what I'm doing wrong.
It doesn't do any good to say that Drupal is compatible with Linux and Windows if you don't support the Windows installations just say so. If this or that isn't supported or tested for this or that environment then just say so.
This software appears to be the best choice feature wise for what one of my customers wants to do, for the most part I think that this is a very neat system with a lot of potential and many possibilities. But if it won't run in my existing environment alongside the other sites that are running for other customers then I'll use something else and try this again in a while.
I haven't given up yet, I'm still trying, but I'm beginning to feel that this may not be the best choice after all.
Examples:
http://drupal.org/node/view/4438
http://drupal.org/node/view/4453
Simular problems with no resolution:
http://drupal.org/node/view/4325
http://drupal.org/node/view/4143
http://drupal.org/node/view/3978
There appear to be some other problems with this same module.
IMHO, My problem should not be a problem. The image.module I'm frustrated with should be a core function garenteed to work with every release as images are a bottom line base requirement for virtually any CMS system today.
Sorry for the rant, but this is the same sort of frustration that kennysto is expressing. BTW, I feel fortunate that I've gotten a bit further than he has.
image.module
image.module is sure a little bit different than most other modules because it interacts with external programs. It is next to impossible for a developer to hunt down a possible installation bug with external software on somebody else's server running a operating system he doesn't use. OTOH, there are people using image.module with ImageMagick on Windows and so I really think there is something wrong on your end of the line. I unfortunately already gave you my best guesses.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services
Thanks
I honestly tested and examinied every suggestion and guess that I've been given.
I even went to the trouble of getting two other folks that have more experience than I do over to review my configuration. They couldn't find anything wrong at "my end of the line".
I also see that there are other folks having exactly the same problem and we all are in the same boat without a resolution. If it was just me, I'd be a lot more inclined to believe it was something I had setup wrong.
Maybe, just maybe, there is something else that isn't being concidered.
Like I said before frustrating. Very.
Al
I understand your frustration
I understand your frustration as the admin of your site, but please consider that it is also frustrating for the authors and maintainers of free software to find cases where they cannot help anymore.
I am very well aware that some people did not get image.module to work. But there are lots of others who did get it to work. So I simply have to assume that something on your local setup os different.
--
Drupal services
My Drupal services
Dries and Paying
I would like to pay some one to help me -- I cannot find anyone yet. Any suggestions?
----Martin----
ax
send me a mail: axel(at)kollmorgen[dot]net
BTW, this is the error that I
BTW, this is the error that I get when I log in.
user error: Unknown column 'path' in 'where clause'
query: SELECT nid FROM node WHERE path = 'user/login' in D:\hshome\mlwhall\valuesplanet.com\drupal\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 90.
warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at D:\hshome\mlwhall\valuesplanet.com\drupal\includes\common.inc:58) in D:\hshome\mlwhall\valuesplanet.com\drupal\modules\user.module on line 667.
warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at D:\hshome\mlwhall\valuesplanet.com\drupal\includes\common.inc:58) in D:\hshome\mlwhall\valuesplanet.com\drupal\includes\common.inc on line 467.
----Martin----
update.php
you don't seem to have run update.php (the updates starting at (last at) update_58() - 2003-06-08: first update since Drupal 4.2.0 release"). what drupal version are you using, which did you upgrade from, and what updates did you apply? try setting the variable "update_start" in the "variable" table to the date you of your last update, and run update.php again.
update.hph
The problem is that I have run update.php....I am going to upload everything again.
----Martin----