why spend time learning drupal
sTimple - June 26, 2009 - 04:02
I advise any newcomer to the web development world to avoid learning drupal.
1. The drupal learning curve is super steep.
2. The documentation and handbooks are like reading some martian language.
3. The community is to "nerdish" to bother answering noob questions.
4. The modules never do what you want them to do.
instead learn how to implement php and mySQL with dreamweaver. It gives you so much more freedom and its alot easier. Drupal is seriously unfriendly to non-developers, so dont waste your time noobs.
Drupal lovers, if im wrong please slap me back to reality.
It pertains to the situation,
It pertains to the situation, I suppose. Drupal isn't always better but in many cases it'll give you a better, quicker and much easier to maintain solution that PHP / MySQL. If it's your own personal website than do as you like but if your working for a client, using a CVS gives them a much better experience and allows you to focus more on fulfilling their requirements and less on all the technical aspects.
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I'd like to see something you've done with php mysql and dreamweaver if you don't mind.
*_*
Don't waste community resources by posting such topics.
You better concentrate on Dreamweaver.
:)
Beautifulmind
Registered 1 day, 17 minutes?
Registered 1 day, 17 minutes? You should have stuck with it until 1 day, 18 min... I totally had Drupal figured out in that time ;)
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
View my Drupal lessons & guides
2 weeks of intense Drupal
2 weeks of intense Drupal learning and still no light at the end of the tunnel. Drupal is obviously for experienced web developers.
So to all starting web developers, do yourself a favour and stay away from drupal.
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starting web developers?
if you don't know HTML and CSS to begin with yes, Drupal can be a steeper learning curve. Not because it is drupal mind you, but because you have so much to learn that doesn't have anything to do with drupal itself.
Your statements are so general, it's hard to understand just where your problem lies.
What isn't working for you?
Where are you stumbling?
What modules didn't work like you wanted them to?
How else can we explain to you what to do when we don't know what the problems are?
If you are referring to this question: http://drupal.org/node/501606
What you are asking would take pages of instruction as one would have to explain how to implement the modules you want to use, and how to bend them to what you want. But hey, if you can build that exact idea you are talking about in dreamweaver, thats great. Id' love to see it when it is complete.
Now if you want to start dealing with your original question in smaller pieces I'd be glad to help, but I don't have 3 - 4 hours to type up instructions on how to build the site the way you want. Especially when I'd be regurgitating 70 - 80% of documentation that is already available.
Thats a fair call
Thats a fair call and much appreciated reply. But it seems to me with effort it takes to learn Drupal you can instead learn php/mysql and create your own cms.
Even with sufficient html and css knowledge the learning curve is ridiculously steep.
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create your own CMS?
On your own you would spend years to get where drupal or any other CMS is or it would be a pretty limited thing you are calling a CMS.
I still don't understand what your exact problem is or where you are hung up on the learning curve. Wish you would fully explain that instead of just adding adjectives that describe your frustration.
You really need to look at
You really need to look at this from a beginners perspective.
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I was a beginner once and totally understand the frustration (Nice try laying blame/guilt/or loss of perspective at my feet though). What I don't understand is your unwillingness to answer questions which typically gets you help.
but hey, I tried. You don't want a Q&A and believe that building your own CMS will be easier. Have fun with that if you are just starting out.
Arr, yes what VM said, we
Arr, yes what VM said, we were all beginners once, and I can tell you Drupal is a lot easier now that it used to be, the difference being that we stuck at it, stuck with the vision and now reap the rewards. I don't see why we should dumb it down and risk losing the power and elegance.
It was hard for me when I started, but not for long, I got that hang of it over a year or so. Thats just the way it is...
Also, five minute ago you were building your own CMS in Dreamweaver, now you are beginner with two weeks in Drupal an no light? Seems oxymoronic to me...
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
...
The concepts of "PHP and MySQL" by their nature are not for "starting web developers" either (and using/working with Drupal is a whole lot more simple than those raw concepts/technologies). If Dreamweaver can somehow assemble the full dynamic site you are envisioning by all means go ahead (though I'd bet the reality is less rosy than advertised on the box... without understanding the underlying concepts you may be building a house of cards that will tumble down around you, and for reasons you won't comprehend). There's no magic wand you can wave at an idea and have the code mystically print out in its glorious and perfect form... there's a good reason that the Drupal community (as well as other open source projects) pour in countless hours to develop these systems - it really "does" take that much work to do the job right. Many people who develop for Drupal "did" try to make their own CMS first, and eventually found Drupal and decided to work together instead of in their own bubble (according to quotes from many of these developers). While there's certainly a place for making a custom web application when appropriate, more often you will be better served using an open source CMS or an open source programming framework (which Drupal is actually both).
A "starting web developer" should begin by learning HTML and at least a good helping of CSS (and more if you intend to be more of a web designer than a web developer). Then depending on your goals you should learn how to use a good CMS or two, and probably learn at least "some" PHP and MySQL (or whichever language/database is appropriate to your needs, e.g. perhaps Django/Python or RoR). If you cannot do those tasks, then maybe you are "not" a web designer or developer, and should hire someone who is, or else be satisfied with services/tools that do a lot of the work for you (which by their nature you will not be able to fully customize to your vision). Personally I learned PHP/MySQL through coding my own modules for Drupal... the two are not mutually exclusive. You can also make spectacularly complex sites with Drupal without touching a line of code too. Learning the code simply expands the possibilities of what you can do even further and how much you can customize the system to your exact vision (through Drupal's API and hooks system, or advanced theming).
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
View my Drupal lessons & guides
Drupal is a tough cookie
Bottom line is this. Newcomers should be prepared to put in alot of time and effort to make drupal worthwhile.
I personally will continue with Drupal, but if I could travel back in time I would learn another cms.
So again to inform newbies. Drupal is one tough cookie.
=-=
newbies to internet techonogy in general, yep. Those who expect to point and click and have a vision just take shape on a screen are certainly going to be let down. Let's hope though that most newcomers don't carry such high expectation and realize that to get a lot of customization completed in a php driven dynamic website, it will certainl be more difficult than html and some css sprinkles.
Errr, but with only two weeks
Errr, but with only two weeks invested in learning Drupal, you're hardly past the point of no return!
And you keep using words like "beginner", "newbie" and "non-developer", yet you're competent enough to write your own CMS based web application in PHP/MySQL from scratch in two weeks flat. By my reckoning you're way beyond being described as a beginner!
I think most of your points
I think most of your points have been answered, but I really want to reply to your third point. I believe that this community is very willing to help 'noobs' and I think that this forum topic is just one of the thousands of threads that illustrate that.
Myself, I help out on the forum quite a lot, and in fact, I like to help starters getting up to speed with Drupal. That said, some questions are easier to reply to than others. You may want to read http://drupal.org/forum-posting for some good tips on effective forum posting.
Something else I want to mention: A huge advantgage of using a system like Drupal is the amount of time that people spend making it more secure. I guess every developer has heard about hackers, SQL injections, cross-site scripting and other threats, but how many developers know exactly how to build a secure site? I'm not saying that Drupal is perfect (100% security can never be guaranteed) but Drupal's dedicated security team, combined with a huge user base to find and report problems, provides more security than a self-built CMS would.
hm. Each to their own.
One and enough reasons that I will now always use Drupal above anything handmade is that I never want to hand-code another user management system with passwords and security and logins and sessions and moderation and roles and all that shit.
I have another hundred reasons why I smile every time I open up Drupal core code, but just the above one is easily enough for me to never do my own handmade CMS or skinning system ever again (and I've built a dozen by hand before now in at least half a dozen misc languages and usually enjoyed each one)
I prefer to hope that people who want to make good websites may be able to learn things, so I don't underestimate an unknown individuals ability to get better at it. Dumbing things down is ultimately damaging to good results.
Read, learn, absorb... you'll get there, although the road may be long, there's scenery on the way.
.dan.
I'm a total newbie too, and I
I'm a total newbie too, and I just want to tell you not to be so discouraged, keep on trying and trying, post questions and above all nevermind!!!, sooner or later someone is going to answer, or you'll find a solution, or you'll discover another way to get what you want! what I learned in one month is that this drupal is very very powerful, and it grows bigger everyday!!! why minding about "nerds"??? as a starter I feel free to ask about everything! insist!!! ;)
*_*
Lets reply to some important and interesting forum topics.
Regards.
:)
Beautifulmind
Easy reply: If this wasn't
Easy reply: If this wasn't interesting, you wouldn't be here. If this wasn't important, the original poster would not have started a topic.
Serious reply: usablility is an important topic in Drupal, and so is managing expectations. sTimple obviously wasn't getting out Drupal what he had hoped or expected and it's understandable that that caused some frustration. Was he too quick by posting this message after just one day? Possibly, but we can also ask ourselves what the Drupal community did to cause such high hopes and disappointment. Threads like these are important because it helps new Drupallers adjust their expectations and it helps the Drupal community to fine tune its communication. In fact, problems like this are already being addressed in the new drupal.org design: the download link will not be on the front page anymore, because we don't want to send out the message "if you know how to download, you know how to use Drupal".
So, Beautifulmind, if you don't find this interesting, I totally respect that. But if you say this isn't important, I respectfully disagree.
*_*
We can provide a direction to a person who doesn't know about it, but its up to the person to walk on the path and achieve the goal.
But instead of spending some times with Drupal, as we all did, just blaming is not a great way to learn.
What I strongly believe in is: 'Actions Speak louder than words'
Nothing is easy if we seldom try and nothing is difficult once we try.
Agree?
:)
Beautifulmind
Although the problem
Although the problem statement here in the OP is basically negative, it's a valid point. It's truthful.
Unlike many similar posts, this one didn't strike me as deliberately ranty or whiney. Just an opinion, delivered honestly (and open to discussion!)
Drupal is not great for absolute beginners. And you know what? That doesn't bug me.
There are different products for different needs.
If someone wants to grow a herb garden they don't need to learn to drive a tractor. No matter how "user friendly" that tractor can be made.
I can be an evangelist and a defender of the faith when it counts, but I can also happily tell someone that "Drupal is not right for your needs, or your level of technical expertise".
I can say that without criticizing Drupal.
There are plenty of newbies wanting to be spoon-fed, or unwilling to grasp some groundwork. Maybe Drupal won't fit. Let them try some other system with less things to learn.
There are others who just want a solution. Even if they could learn the terminology or admin interface, it's not a good use of their time for what they want. There are other choices.
It may be slightly elitist, but I don't want Drupal to be watered down to a Geocities or AOL. If there is a bit of a hurdle to entry (actually learning how to build a website before you build it), so be it. Cutting the inappropriate 'users' off at the first step will save both us and them headaches in the long run.
This is not saying that we can't make many things within Drupal easier to use and learn. It's mostly just recognizing that in order to get good results we need to cater to people who can and want to learn those things.
I don't know how to fix a car. I don't want to know. That means that a decent mechanic would advise me not to get a high performance race car for everyday use - no matter how great that mechanic thinks that make of automobile is!
That guy can log on to an engineering forum and say "The Sigitsu X86-GT is not very good for people who have never driven a car before". He'd be right, and he doesn't need to be negative about the cool car.
sorry if I ramble, I'm a few vodkas down
.dan.
I agree with both
I agree with both beatuifulmind and dman. Drupal is not meant for absolute beginners (and it doesn't need to be); just like the tractor, or the Sigitsu X86-GT for that matter. Most drupal users know that, but it should also be clear in our communcation that Drupal is in fact a Sigitsu X86-GT with the power of a tractor. In other words, if you've never driven a vehicle before, you can't just get in and drive off.
That's interesting - I
That's interesting - I learned how to drive on my dad's old Ford tractor. Much better learning platform than a car...
--
Chris Barnes
"Cutting the inappropriate
"Cutting the inappropriate 'users' off at the first step will save both us and them headaches in the long run." Dman hits the nail on the head.
Don't invite a 2yo. to ride a 1200cc motorcycle. They will fail.
With postings like "learn Drupal easily" and "Drupal for non-technical users", ordinary users end up wasting their time and braincells . It needs to be made more clear the high level of commitment involved in learning Drupal. For the benefit of everyone.
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... and one must consider the source of those sweeping and general statements.
You keep sticking this on Drupal. Have you tried other CMS's and do you have examples of those ?
For some the 1200cc motorcycle could be anything other than using a browser to pull up an internet site ; )
Its nice to progressively see
Its nice to progressively see results when learning something new (joomla). With Drupal you need to learn a whole bunch before seeing any results whatsoever.
I took a two week holiday to learn a CMS. I chose Drupal because it is powerful and apparently easy to use. My two week holiday might now turn into a two month holiday because Drupal.org, lullubots etc. mislead me into believing this. People don't want to be stuffed around.
"Drupal is a flexible and powerful Content Management System / Content Management Framework that allows a number of people of varying levels to build websites."
Thats straight from the sticky and hardly true.
How many people have downloaded Drupal and never published a website using it? Alot.
Im definitely not hating on Drupal. Its obviously a very powerful CMS and im looking forward to mastering it. Just the communication is wrong.
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Could you please further explain what comparisons you are making here? It certainly wouldn't hurt the usability studies that are occuring and the usabiility tests being taken and the like. Specifics would help a great deal in understanding your plight.
I don't read the sticky statement as misleading. You can build a website with Drupal straight out of the box, you get a CMS. I don't read it as expressing any level of "ease" or "difficulty for that matter, @ any of the varying levels.
Out of curiosity and since your statements are alluding to an idea that you are in a position to know; How many is Alot? What is the percentage of people that have deployed and chosen not to deploy drupal? ; )
I dont have a exact number
I dont have a exact number for you. But after a bit of googling you will find there are plenty of others with the same disappointment.
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over the span of how many years?
Not very good research to judge with as any person can use google and produce a similar search for every CMS/Script out there both commercial and FOSS.
Many of those who've come to Drupal (I guess you'd call it the dark side) came from other CMS's and some still deploy other CMS's depending on the needs/desires of a site.
This probably doesn't count
This probably doesn't count in your book, but I also know very techy people who have skipped Drupal altogether because of the learning curve. What more evidence do you need.
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It's already been stated that it isn't for everyone. No one script will ever be everything to every one.
What doesn't count in my book is simply throwing statements around without actually offering up and real comparisions. It's just rhetoric and negative buzzwords from where I sit.
What part of the learning curve are you having trouble with? Could you please, please give some specifics?
I don't tend to speak for others, or throw stick people in debates. If they aren't here to speak for themselves it's just hear-sey and hate to break it to you hear-sey isn't evidence. But if they can offer up more logic and show comparisons without just making sweeping comments, they can surely join the discussion.
I've asked you questions along the way that you have chosen to ignore that I would like to hear their responses. As again, one must consider the source.
Im not here to prove
Im not here to prove anything. Just to let other newcomers know Drupal is a tough sucker and be prepared to put in the time and effort to make it worthwhile. MissUnderstood. please stop trying to test my intelligence.
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test your intelligence? I'm doing no such thing. And you must be here to prove something, you keep making the same generalized statements.
I'd like the newcomers you seem to think you are talking to, understand the specifics of your statements. Obviously you can't produce any specifics at all. ; ) Which is a shame, as I'd like to help you up this learning curve and understand where the difficulty is for you.
...
"Techy" can be many things, foreach techy person you know that moved on, I know 5 that stayed and fell in love. The problem here is you don't know how to code, despite what you claim, if you did, you would look under the hood and would be posting constructive developer centric issue and patches, rather than dissent.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
...
Its to you do your due diligence. Easy is subjective, its easy for me, easy for dman, and easy for many other users as well. It also depends on what you are doing. Mate, my 63 year old mother-in-law surprised the crap out of me by building her own Drupal site last year, I only knew when she asked me build her a theme.
So if my 63 year mother-in-law can do it over one month last summer, in her evenings in front of Midsummer Murder on the box, so can you.
From my 3 years experience here I can tell you that is often blows me away what complete newbies come up given a few months of hacking away after school or work. Drupal makes their dreams come true, and with nothing more than a bit of elbow grease.
Then there's the developers, well for a PHP coder I think they take one step inside Drupal core and strike gold. There's not 4000 modules in the repo by mistake, they are there because thousands of developers reaped the nirvana.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
Drupal fails noobs in many
Drupal fails noobs in many respects - but it knows it and is trying to remedy it. The fact that it's going to be version SEVEN before somebody suggested that, possibly, it was a good idea to put image functionality into core is beyond ridiculous...but we all have our pet complaints such as this.
To me drupal is a foreign language. Whatever those berlitz tapes promise you, you won't learn it in 10 8-minute sessions while sitting in the bath. Prepare to put a lot of work in. If you do, what you'll get out of it will impress you.
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That's actually not a fact. It was mentioned multiple times over the years however, it needed people to work on it. Sometimes it's difficult to understand, I suppose, but drupal doesn't at all lack ideas. What any FOSS project can lack are people actually interested and able to help bring things into core or open core up and help core support features that users want rather than just bitching that something should be in core. Getting image handling into core was no easy peasy effort from my vantage point. Hopefully when Drupal 7.x is released and beyond users are wow'd by the feature set and can appreciate the hard work that goes into such an undertaking. Wouldn't hurt if some of the work also inpires people to roll up their sleeves and get into core to figure out how it can continually perform better in all aspects.
Some pros and cons
I do not want to get drawn into debate but I think Drupal has different meaning for different people.
The very starting page of Drupal says
Whether there is a download button or not, it does not say about the difficulty level or the struggle one has to do with simple, common stuffs. At the same breath I must add that it does make certain hard tasks very simple like views etc. Even then when common tasks become unaccomplished frustration follows.
It is true that "common" tasks is a relative term but then there is probably a lowest common denominator.
In my short stay I have found that issues like out-of-the-box image capability, text editors etc are much sought after things. Whether they will be added in the seventh version may not help an user TODAY as that D7, with all the modules that one may need, will take another one and half years or more to stabilize.
On my behalf I have not found why it is not super easy to hide my online status or put on-off rss links to my blog or have a rss feed to book content ( when the same is there for blog ). Similarly when it comes to image it is difficult to to do templating, for example, in acidfree gallery, the only complete gallery in drupal without having to load another set of modules, there is no way to put the image below the text. It is not a core module true but almost all people are using something EXTRA to the core.
The questions on forum goes unanswered in plenty and the common logic I have found is that users do not help. I wonder whether someone has wondered why people do not help - what or why is the environment so here that is stopping them? Comparing to joomla or wordpress may attract scorn but worth pondering!
CMS will need learning true but at the same time it should be easy and intuitive. By intuitive I mean not interface but features should be there, just as I when I use Orkut or Facebook or Wordpress sufficient features are there to HELP me easily.
By features I mean ( see how Gmail makes easy to manage content )
- mark or star whatever post I need
- see comments I made and comments I got
- see contents I wrote
- autosave/draft
- Hide my online status, delete any activity, block any user I like, switch off or have rss as I like
- etc
I know many are in the issue lists BUT they are not there now, not even easy tweaks unless one pours through several modules or post pages. I mean these should be there very easily and inbuilt - it is there in my mail service, in my blog service, in the social network I use - everywhere.
It may be good to learn and not get spoonfed but that is "their" view - majority of us are looking to easy way of putting up a site and spend more time in CONTENT creation and generation and drawing crowd to our sites. Time is limited in a twentyfour hour day - a CMS should makes things easy as Drupal claims in its starting page, not "steep" learning curves.
The future may be different but I need my food today to survive :)
Sorry for the rant, if anyone have any solution please hit my tracker and help with the 0 reply posts.
Peace!
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much of what you are discussing is customization. Every feature every person could ever want could be in Drupal provided we had 100,000 developers working on it FULL TIME, unfortunately that isn't the case. I believe most underestimate the effort that already goes into Drupal because they are blinded by the features that aren't already at their fingertips.
Not customization
Thanks VM for this reply and the kind helpful posts that you have made in my 0 reply threads. I appreciate the help and still look for some solutions.
However I was not discussing customization or "bells-and-whistles" but essential features that I use in my day to day all other apps and services. For example, take the feature of auto-draft.It is inbuilt in my gmail, in my wordpress blog, almost any other app me or visitors to my site use everyday.
When I use drupal.org or any member use my drupal site they lack it. I lost what I typed due to power failure twice. There are modules but not complete ones and its an extra burden to climb the learning curve, to install them, check for any incompatibility with other modules, update them separately every time etc etc .
Do you see ?
This is not customization - its like you start an email service and when an user wants inbox you say "Hey, thats extra! Thats a custom thing you want! We have not so many coders" :)
=-=
At this point many of those questions that you want involve customization because they aren't part of core.
Some of the reason your questions mnay not have been getting answered could be because of the modules you've chosen to deploy and whether or not they are widely used. When you've chosen modules that have dead ends. (Acidfree), don't get me wrong it was/is a great module and alot of work went into it, however it is not the way forward based on where drupal has been headng for the past 2 releases going into Drupal 7 and you are confined by the structure of those modules. You want to get with fields, imagefields and the like. Hardcoded content type, type modules aren't going to serve you well at this stage of the game. They started losing ground with D5 and will lose even more with D7.
*_*
In terms of modularity and usability, I rate Drupal higher than one of the CMS --Joomla!.
I spent a week to understand the workflow of the Joomla! and for the same time, I was developing custom modules in Drupal.
Neither I'm biased to Drupal nor I'm blaming Joomla!. The point is that one should stick and look forward for the ways that makes things easy.
For the time being, I'm trying my hands on Joomla! too and very soon I find that its lacking some of the great features offered by Drupal.
Still, I didn't think its not a very good CMS, it is certainly!
I used to discuss pros and cons of Drupal with my fellow developers. And I find the way Drupal handles the permissions over the contents is great.
One should also not forget that modules and themes developed use the Drupal functions and not the core PHP functions.
The most amazing thing with Drupal is, it doesn't provide a 'admin' directory. Also, I wanna now if other CMS can handle multi site -- A single code base with multiple site support with some shared tables having ability to publish-unpublish certain contents to some specific site by respecting permissions assigned to a role in a multi site set up!!!
I guess, I missed some of the features of Drupal to mention here.
Regards.
:)
Beautifulmind
...
The only inaccuracy I see in that is that it should be "Hundreds of thousands of users...".
It is easy to publish, manage and organise content - create content (page, story, book, blog, forum, aggregated items or poll), menus & taxonomy and content list, publishing options and blocks. All in Drupal core.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
...
1. The drupal learning curve is super steep.
Yes it is, I think you'll find this is said often in the forums, by everyone, old and new alike. Thats not news, in fact you picked up that vernacular in these forums...
2. The documentation and handbooks are like reading some martian language.
Web development is another language, that's not news either. You need to learn martian if you want to speak martian. However, not speaking martian won't preclude you from building a site with Drupal.
3. The community is to "nerdish" to bother answering noob questions.
Bullshit. What else can I say, been here 3 years, answer simple newbie questions on a daily basis, as do many others. Big problem is we get tired of answering the same questions over and over, for which the answers already exists in the forums or handbooks 50 times over.
4. The modules never do what you want them to do.
Why would they? This is FOSS, itch your own scratch and all that. If it doesnt do what you want, build your own or pay someone to build it, that's what we do. There are 4000 modules in Drupal contrib, frankly thats a hell of a lot of code!
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
=-=
sometimes the next thread down in any one forum : )
May be
It is worth thinking why people are not finding?
# All most all the webhosting companies I have used ( or sites like digg ) force to see a list
of autogenarated solution titles similar to the stuff that is being typed.
# No easy way to mark the solutions I found or the threads that I found helpful like "star" of gmail or "flag" of yahoo.
Maybe these are in the issue lists but till they are actually here people need more and more sympathy
and caring hands.
...
Agree with you 1 million %, I proposed many ideas here, but it needs support from many ;) http://drupal.org/node/479558
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
3. The community is to
3. The community is to "nerdish" to bother answering noob questions.
Bullshit. What else can I say, been here 3 years, answer simple newbie questions on a daily basis, as do many others. Big problem is we get tired of answering the same questions over and over, for which the answers already exists in the forums or handbooks 50 times over.
This is SO true and I think it's one of the major issues with d.o
I've been here two years and there are some questions I've seen literally hundreds of times. (e.g. I've locked myself out of my site...how do I get back in?) and if people just spent 2-3 mins searching the forums, a lot of the excess fat on the forums and issue queues would go away. I have to be honest, if I see a question posted I haven't seen before, I'll try and answer, if I see one that I've seen again and again and know it's been answered to death, I think RTFM just a little.
Solution: Perhaps some help text could be put at the top of every "create forum post" page, like you get with many of the issue pages. Also the d.o search is not the best: I haven't used d.o search for over a year...always use google toolbar to do a "site:drupal.org XX" search.
It is not user friendly and search function is useless
From what I experience, the main reason the same question is being asked over and over again is because the organisation of the forum system is not user friendly. And the search function is really useless, as I have never found what I am looking for if I used that straight away on Drupal. We can not search for something within a category. For instance, searching for problem within forum. Or searching for explanation within documentation. I always use Google to do that as Esllou suggested. So I don't think expecting the newbies on using them for searching the solution is appropriate.
Search
Actually, I find the new solr based search to be pretty damn good. No, you can't search in a particular forum, but you can limit the results to just forum posts. And you really wouldn't want to search just one forum, to be honest, because so many people post in the wrong forum. We don't have enough moderators to keep up with moving everything where it belongs.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
Is solr a php solution?
Is solr a php solution? I am not sure if I want a hybrid solution like php+java for something routine like search. This has also serious hosting issues as most php hosts either do not have java or are poor java hosts. Using hosted solr by Acquia makes operations complex, and probably one will tend to look forward to single-language platform solution.
Search is an integral part of a CMS, if its poor it makes the CMS poor.
Solr has also problem with "natural language" questions that is, questions in the form of natural statements.
Proven Google is better, much better than solr, so why not integrate it instead if one has to do integration ? Google lets me to sort the search results, delete those I do not want or move to top what I want. It even stores results for my future use. It is not that Drupal cannot do these - there seems to plenty of modules which can achieve this. But getting those implemented here seems to be long drawn complex process which may not interest all the visitors to this forum.
However, I am not a Google fan and by saying this I mean some professional search engines like http://www.ixquick.com/
No idea
I don't know how solr works. I wasn't suggesting it for other people. I was countering the claim that search on drupal.org is bad as it has been quite good since the switch.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
Do a search using d.o search
Do a search using d.o search for the following terms, not including the quotation marks. All are names of popular modules:
"og module" (project page not in the first ten pages of results!)
"hierarchical select" (project page 7th)
"flag" (project page 8th)
"flag module" (project page not even in first 10)
"rules" (project page 9th)
"rules module" (project page 10th)
Using site:drupal.org on Google
"og module" (project page 1st)
"hierarchical select" (project page 1st)
"flag" (project page 1st)
"flag module" (project page 1st)
"rules" (project page 1st)
"rules module" (project page 1st)
the difference is and always has been marked. This little test was the first time I've used d.o search in a year and I see nothing to convince me to start using it again, only confirmation of why I stopped using it in the first place. Of course d.o can't throw billions at a search algo like G can. That's a whole nother issue :-)
_
Using the facet blocks that appear on the search results page increases success markedly. I too have been searching, both with the old search, google, and the new solr based search for well over a year and there's just no comparison.
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
I'll take your word for it
I'll take your word for it WF. As someone else said on here, we all have to scratch our own itch and I prefer to use a G site:d.o search. What is patently true is that the solutions to 80%+ of the questions that newbs ask on here are already present.
That is how search should be
@esllou Your examples are true. I tried with key word "og module". The solr search fails miserably even after applying filter or facets. Google instantly gives the first result as the Og project page. That is how search should be, without having to do extra clicks or effort.
To stress again I am not Google fan nowadays but the fact that one tends to forget is that Google was just coding brilliance, not a billion dollar corporation, when they started. They were basically "out of garage" type if I remember correctly and they shook everyone on the first appearance, probably some time during 98 when we were using yahoo, lycos etc.
Drupal search needs more love, and using someone's else's search like solr may not be speaking well of its own capabilities, imho. It may be worth to note why there is not so much complaint about search in other php projects like phpbb, vbb etc.
Search results that I cannot store or delete for future use may also become pretty useless.
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Yeah, because of course Google is still a garage project where everything is free and they rely entirely on free support and free development where everything is free. Give me a break, google have BILLIONS of dollars and did not get as good as they are on FOSS.
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Sorry, jmb
I am sorry if this sarcasm or outburst was meant for me :)
Google started from a scratch http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/234825/google_inc_how_did_googl... and had no source of external income of billion dollars on its first appearance. It was initially their code and code ( the search alogarithm) only which made them "billion" dollars over the years. What I mean to say billion dollars do not necessarily produce good code, for example, that is why linux is better than windows.
Anyway I am no fan of Google and echo with you : long live FOSS
Going too off topic, I am really sorry. The issue was Drupal's own search and how it can help in the forum. You can try esllou's example and say what you found or what your opinion is.
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Please, spare me the history lesson, I lived through all that and to be frank, Google was not that much better when they first started. What they successfully fooled the whole world with was this ethos of cool, when in fact all they wanted was your money, and they got it.
Seriously, looking at some other utterly mind blowing vertical search engines, Google is almost a dinosaur.
Google talk a lot of crap, the search results are not that great, try searching for a location and get 27 travel related sites and 3 wikipedia pages in 3 languages, great...
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I agree Google should be rejected in totality
I agree Google should be rejected in totality. I am using Ixquick. It at least respects my privacy and do not sell my data. http://www.ixquick.com/
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yea, I should have said "they want your data, then your money", right about that one... if anyone else did it, it would be identity theft and piracy, but google somehow escape those labels...
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Can't confirm
OG, yeah, I'll give you that because there are an insane amount of modules with "OG" in the name. But hierarchical select comes up #1:
http://drupal.org/search/apachesolr_search/hierarchical%20select?filters...
Flag is just a little ways down under other modules that have "flag" in the name. Same with Rules.
Much improved over the old way.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
...
I agree, solr is great compared to what it used to be like, I mean, I actually use d.o search and less and less Google.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
_
Sorry but since the d.org upgrade to solr based searches this is patently untrue. period.
I answer scores of questions in a day and 99 of 100 times the supposedly 'unanswerable' questions are the first or second link in a search typed into the search box above with the poster's own words. Very often I will reply with a link to the search that proves it.
As much as there are legitimate posts from newbies with real issues and questions there's that much more cruft from those that can't be bothered to spend even 60 seconds attempting to help themselves before posting-- which makes it that much more difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
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I totally agree but I am still using Drupal
1. The drupal learning curve is super steep.
This is true as I experience that myself. After more than a year using Drupal, I am still struggling to do a lot of simple things. Luckily, website development is just my hobby so I don't get any pressure from anybody.
2. The documentation and handbooks are like reading some martian language.
This is also true. Because even we understand the syntax of PHP, it is not quite straight forward to understand what is explained in the documentations. We need to understand all Drupal concepts.
The most difficult thing is that the concepts, i.e. the API, keeps changing from version to version. I can understand the additional items, but I can not really understand the need of changing function name or variable. That is really unnecessary because that will only introduce unnecessary efforts in converting the module. One example from http://drupal.org/node/224333 is the change of "_comment_load()" into "comment_load()".
3. The community is to "nerdish" to bother answering noob questions.
This is also true. Especially the developers, most of them can not accept negative feedbacks. They always receive that as offensive attacks. That makes me feel reluctant to report any issues as they don't seems to understand different opinions or needs from anybody outside their group.
4. The modules never do what you want them to do.
This is also true. But I don't think we can blame anybody on this. Because all the modules were developed based on the requirement of the developers themselves or the requirement of a group of developers. So that definitely could never satisfy everybody, because everybody has different need. I have modified all the modules that I use and also I even modified a lot of things in the core, to have them do what I really want.
Even I totally agree, up to now I am still using Drupal. One of the main reasons is that it is using PHP, which I found it easier to understand. I had no experience at all in developing anything with PHP until a year ago when I started to use Drupal. If Ruby would be easier, I would use Ruby on Rails instead of Drupal.
*_*
Ahh.... much said about cares, bikes, search, google but, hey, what about Drupal itself?
Lets give answers to the questions that have initiated this Hawt! discussion.
1) Learning curve:
I totally disagree. What one should learn in Drupal is the workflow, the way drupal works and few terms --node, taxonomy, hook etc.
When I was a newbie, I was confused with hook, but I'm not for always.
2) Documentation and Handbooks.
I do read Drupal documetations regularly, even when I was a newbie, and I was feeling at home even though its not written in my native language.
3) Community:
At some point, I felt the same. But then I realized that, this is because some times the topic description is vague and requires more information to make a suggestion. Users used to post a topic with a line or two and expect an immediate response, without searching d.o for a solutions by themselves.
4) Modules
Let me know what are the modules that don't work at your side? CCK? views? gallery modules?
Regards.
:)
Beautifulmind
One simple example
I give one simple example of an issue that I have been trying to solve, but finally I gave up. And lets just talk about the Drupal core.
There is no simple way to disable session cookies for anonymous users in Drupal.
1. The drupal learning curve is super steep --> True
If not, could you please tell me that we can do that without understanding Drupal inside out, to be able to write a patch?
If you said this is customisation issue, please just have a look how many people asking that for years.
2. The documentation and handbooks are like reading some martian language --> True
If not, could you please tell me if there is documentation explaining how to do that in simple way?
There are indeed information in pieces about session cookies including in api.drupal.org.
3. The community is to "nerdish" to bother answering noob questions --> True even for non noob question
If not, could you please tell me that we get support on this?
Somebody even requested this 1.5 years ago on http://drupal.org/node/201122, but that was just get close and goes to the trash.
4. The modules never do what you want them to do --> True and this is on core
If not, could you please tell me why people asking the question if it is doing what people want?
I can give you a lot of other examples if you thought the example above is not appropriate.
Simple?
You don't need to understand Drupal inside and out to write a patch. But you do need to be able to code. 99% of Drupal users aren't going to need to write a patch.
That issue was not thrown in the trash. He closed it because he felt the direction it had taken was bad and said he'd open a new issue to study it further.
That issue was certainly not a "noob" issue. So, yeah, it was a bad example. Don't bother going and digging up more, though, because it's silly. Drupal is a vast community with hundreds of thousands of lines of code and thousands of modules. I'm sure you can find examples of just about anything. They don't prove anything. Even a saint has off days. Over all, Drupal is difficult but not impossible and the community friendly with occasional grumpy bits. Picking it apart by pointing to one thing and saying "See, you suck" really does nothing useful.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
This is another example that I don't understand
I have never meant to say "See, you suck". Why did you think that I am attacking Drupal?
I am just emphasizing the 4 points the OP brought up here based on my experience. Mainly because every time I am stuck on using Drupal it is really hard to find the solution. I usually search every where on the documentation and forum for at least a week, before I ask the question in the forum. When I ask the question or raise issue report, I don't usually get any solution. I even once tried to help the development by trying to port a patch, but no support as well. So what can you suggest me to do?
Giving no support at all is maybe better, than replying the question with bad words and sacarstic sentences without understanding how frustrated the people who asked the questions.
.
It wasn't a direct quote; just a distillation of the attitude that is all to prevelant around here:
Newbie: "Drupal is too hard and no one wants to help me."
Oldie: "Drupal has a learning curve but we're here to help if you put in the effort as well"
Newbie: "But look at this issue that's been sitting here unanswered for a year. You don't care about newbs. You suck."
Round and round we go, over and over, post after post. Is it any wonder the folks that have been here for some time get cranky about it?
Here's the facts:
* Drupal is not perfect. We all know that and no one is claiming it is.
* Drupal does have a high learning curve. So does Photoshop. Yet far too many folks come here thinking they can click a few links and have Facebook / NY Times / etc when they wouldn't expect to get the Mona Lisa out of Photoshop the first day they open it up.
* There are a whole bunch of folks working on making Drupal better. They could use a whole lot more folks helping out. You don't need to code; there's docs to write, mockups to create, testing to do.
* The forums are huge and filled with way too many unanswered questions. That doesn't mean we don't care. It means the few folks that are helping out can't keep up with the exponentially increasing flow of new folks. Add to that the number of folks who don't search first and it's getting to be like emptying an ocean with a tea cup.
* There are things that can be done to make finding the answer easier for those willing to look and they are being worked on. If you want to help, join up with the drupal.org redesign people.
* Folks who come in with proclamations about Drupal is to hard, Drupal sucks, Drupal doesn't hold my hand through everything, Drupal doesn't wash my dishes are just going to rile up the folks that were already tired of it 50 rants ago.
Bottom line: If you want to make Drupal better, stop talking about what's wrong with it and pitch in and help make it better.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
_
awesome-- thanks for expressing this in a calm and factual manner. You hit the nail on the head perfectly!
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Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
If those are the facts then tell everybody about that
If those are the facts (I am sure there are more of them), why don't you put that on http://drupal.org/about? That will make every new Drupal users know exactly what they should expect. Or at least, we can tell them to read that page and stop complaining.
The bottom line is, Drupal is not user friendly even for people having programming experiences. At is hard to find information in the forum and documentation due to search function and how they are being organised. I don't think I can help a lot in these matters. Or do you have any suggestions?
=-=
Do you not realize how much work in going into the areas you are complaining about?
Specifically, Documentation and the d.o. redesign? comments like this suggest that no one is doing anything about the issues at hand and that would be a falsehood.
GET INVOLVED in the redesign, comment over there. Look at the mockups, understand what others are trying to do and bring to life in their free time.
I am really aware of that
I am aware that would need massive amount of work. But that is not a valid excuse. Because for instance when they decided to implement the forum at the beginning, they should have thought that the users should be able to search information easily. They were not just a bunch of high school students, were they?
About the Drupal redesign, are you referring to this: http://groups.drupal.org/drupalorg-redesign-plan-drupal-association or http://www.drupal-web-developers.com/drupal-redesign or something else?
Are you also participating? What kind of contribution do you offer?
=--=
Actually they were college students. so no, not highschoolers.
Noone is making excuses, they are part of the reality. Drupal needs interested and in some cases more (as in quanity) skilled man power. Which is continues to grow with each new version of drupal released. The gist of my previous comment, that you seem to have taken negatively, is that there is a ton of work ALREADY going into the things you are bitching about. Thats was my point. If these kind people aren't moving fast enough for you, feel free to get involved. The more people involved the more ideas that get brought to life the faster things move. The essence of any macro-economy is that resources are limited and what to do with those resources. That said, time is the most limited resource "everyone" has. Whether developer/user or other.
When the forum was first implemented there weren't 10's of thousands of nodes to search through. There wasn't alot of documentation that needed to span across multiple versions of core.
There weren't as many contributors as there are now whether devoloping or asking questions or submitting documentation pages. There weren't 4000 modules. Drupal.org uses drupal 6. I'd imagine that developers learn quite a bit from this site with regards to performance and more. As such many things were much easier to find than they are now.
Not sure what my contributions have to do with this but I'll bite, my contributions are in supporting the forum. feel free to check my tracker. Divide the total # of solved threads by the length of time I've been involved in drupal. This would be a direct indicator of how much time I spend supporting the forums. I contribute time just as others do although in most instances my contributions don't come by way of code mainly because I'm not confident in my knowledge. Like you, and many others, this is a hobby for me. A hobby many in my real life complain I spend too much time playing with mind you.
I, like many others,
have a family to tend to
A job to tend to (not computer or internet related)
other hobbies to tend to (like yourself, I have guitars on my wall that call my name on occasion)
there are 24 hours in a day for everyone regardless of whether they can code or not. As much as we all wish for more hours in a day there are only so many.
As far as the redesign is concerned, I'm not involved directly. Mainly because I don't have any complaints. I locate threads for users in the support forums fairly quickly for one reason or another. Not sure what calling my contributions does for you, but I hope I explained my positions clearly enough.
Yes. Thanks a lot for your honesty
I don't think I need to check your tracker, because I know you answered quite a lot of newbies' questions, even those questions have been asked so many times. And most importantly, you don't complain in doing that.
About Drupal redesign, I was just wondering what do you contribute on that, so maybe I can follow that. I don't know much about it. Could you please point me the link to that?
Do you think we could somehow change the way this forum is organised?
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http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=drupal.org+redesign&aq=0&oq=drupal....
the above should guide you the rest of the way. The redesign issue queue an UX7 issue queue is informative as well.
Keep in mind that most every one knows drupal and drupal.org can do things better. There are many people working to make better, more user friendly, more new user freindly. There has always been a group of people trying to make drupal and drupal.org better.
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Your problems are easy to solve, pay someone. You are wanting to makes changes that you do not understand and you are blaming the community for not coming to your rescue. The fact of the matter is you are in over your head, if you don't understand it, then you either have to learn it, or pay someone. The answers are in the code, if you can read code, you can understand what needs to be done. Simple as that. Its no ones job to dumb down the code or documentation to satisfy every single edge case.
Go back to university, get a degree in computer science, learn how to program, or take the shorter route, pay a professional like everyone else does.
Think of how many hours you have wasted on your problems and are now wasting even more bickering about them, when a hard core Drupal programmer will have it sorted in a snap.
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I saw this so many times and you make me laugh
This is a very common response from Drupal developers that I have seen so many times like: If you want something get solve, raise a bounty. Is this how Drupal developers live?
I have a degree, but in Computer Engineering. Do you think you are superior because you can do programming with PHP?
The last thing that really makes me laugh: hard core Drupal programmer will have it sorted in a snap. How long is the period of a snap in Drupal? 1 year? 2 years? or even 10 years?
The example I gave was closed with no solution after 1.5 years. And this one which is very much simpler: http://drupal.org/node/103793, has been around for 2.5 years. I don't want to offend everybody else, but that is the fact in Drupal. I am quite sad if you don't accept this as a fact. I do accept that and I can live with that.
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I have a degree in music, and I'm a designer not a developer... yet by applying my will to learn, I figured out PHP (I never thought I could do it... then I just tried and what do you know? I learned it, and pretty fast too. I'm not a PHP expert and I don't particularly want to become one, but I now know enough to do what I want to do, and I have a good framework of understanding to build on... and anything beyond that I will gladly pay someone more experienced than myself to do).
You missed the point of what jmburnz said. Yes, a hard core Drupal programmer will have it sorted in a snap... "when paid to do so". When it is just a side issue on a person's spare time, yes, it may sit around for months or years. If you have a site with enough traffic to warrant the changes you're referring to, you can certainly afford to hire an expert to do what needs to be done for your business. Another element that can come in to play with long delays in getting an issue sorted out is that some modules affect thousands upon thousands of websites (and Drupal core even more so), and changes cannot be made without fully considering the consequences, and attempting to avoid going down wrong paths that would negatively affect the module in the future. Usually this is all done in people's free time... though doubtless in many cases the presence of a paid developer focusing fully on the issue would speed things up quite a bit. If the issue is that patches are being ignored by the module maintainer (and perhaps the maintainer has disappeared) then you are free to apply to the drupal.org webmasters to become a co-maintainer or full maintainer of the project and get the patches applied.
I don't know if it solves your specific issue, however for high performance with anonymous users, consider Boost module.
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
View my Drupal lessons & guides
Well.. I didn't see him saying that
I didn't see him saying something related to "when paid to do so". But if he would say that, then it will match with my question: Is this how the Drupal developers live? That said, by ignoring the question and wait for bounty?
I have only a very simple site so I don't have high traffic. But I want to have an efficient site because at some point I want to have it running on my WLAN router.
And FYI, website development is just my hobby. I do that when I am bored doing something else like when I am bored playing guitar.
I tried Boost module and it just made my site crawls: http://drupal.org/node/188183#comment-1651128.
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The whole essence of his post revolves around paying a developer to do what you are unable to do... right from the first words, and reiterated over and over "Your problems are easy to solve, pay someone."
No one is ignoring anyone's questions. Most here contribute their time and effort for free, and when you work for free you do what "you" want to do, you solve the issues that affect you or interest you personally, or on issues the community agrees are important to the majority of Drupal sites. But when you get paid to work on something, you work on what you're paid to work on. If you wait for someone to do something for you for free (especially something esoteric)... you may wait forever. If your business hinges on it getting done (which clearly yours does not) then it's a no-brainer.
The issue you've pointed out for your case is something that only affects extremely high traffic sites, which is a fraction of the user base of Drupal (and mind you those high traffic sites aren't desperate over this issue or else it would be solved quite rapidly by Sony or other groups, which might tell you something). And from what you just said you "don't" actually need it yet... therefore it will likely be done by the time you do need it in the extreme distant future, or if not, then as has been said, pay for it to be done. As an aside... if you mean to host your site from your own server at home, that is highly inadvisable. Regarding Boost I've heard plenty of people using it successfully, so the most likely issue is with your server or some other conflict. From the comment you linked to it appears you actually prefer "anonymous theme switching" over performance.
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
View my Drupal lessons & guides
=-=
It's always been strange to me that some are quick to mention the posts or issues that don't get answered, seemingly ignoring the mountains of issues and forum threads that do get answered.
Between the issue queues, forum threads and IRC a hell of a lot of questions do indeed get answers and results.
I can accept that if I am the only one
It does not matter how is the setup of my server or the traffic on my site. And I can accept what you said if I am the only one. But there are some other users complaining about that. For sure, they thought the same as I do and I am sure most of them don't have site with "extremely high traffic". By the way, do you know how many people running their site on VPS? The specification and setup of their server is not much different than mine, which you said "highly inadvisable".
angry
Well I read your comments and when you use phrases like "sorry I cant give any more information" and "when I'm bored I'll try it" - how do you think a developer with extremely limited time will react to that?
How much time do you think I have - endless free time to fix your issues? Endless free time to fix an issue you are bored with and not even prepared to help troubleshoot???
Give us a break for gods sake, NO we're far too busy working our fingers to bone making it through one the toughest recessions in history, paying our mortgages and putting food on the table for our families!
Go play the guitar... you really have no clue at all. We've been kind to you so far, gently explaining things, keeping our cool, but enough is enough!
Moderator, please delete this thread or +1 to banning this shit stirrer, in my book this qualifies as off topic, controversial and counter productive, not to mention bordering on slanderous of all the hard working Drupal devs.
[edit] cut out copious foul language...
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I don't think you are that busy
If you are really busy, I don't think you have time to reply and read this kind of thread. Because this kind of thread will only make you angry.
About my comment on Boost issue, how hard is it for you to accept the facts? The fact is I don't use it, so how do you expect me to give more information? And I am still using and still like Switch Theme, so what is wrong in saying that I will try the new Boost version when I am bored with Switch Theme?
And what kind of issues that I have that you fixed? The only reply from you that I remember, about the issue I raise is here: http://drupal.org/node/478732. Can you please point that out?
...
Yawn, boring... heard it all before...
dev/null
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You've chosen a tiny,
You've chosen a tiny, minority issue that probabaly effects less than 0.1% of users. The real issue for you is that it effects 100% of YOU, so therefore you consider it a major issue. I've trawled the boards here for two years and have never seen that issue raised. If it affects you, do something about it. Sponsor a developer to code a solution for you if you don't know how to do it yourself. The great thing about drupal is that the solution DOES exist, it just hasn't been coded yet.
I would love drupal to allow users to move blocks around my front page and then press click to save their positions...rather like the BBC website front page. It would be a great thing to have but I know if I really want it, I either have to write it myself (more chance of Jessica Alba making me breakfast in bed tomorrow morning, helped in the toast-buttering department by Scarlett Johansson) or put up the green stuff for someone else to step in.
If you don't understand that, you don't understand not only drupal core but drupal core principles. In which case, your time here is going to be painfully frustrating.
_
This is the true crux of the problem-- they don't want to do something about it, they want someone else to do something about it-- exactly what they want, right now, when they want it, with no effort on their part, and for free. And the reason always given is "sorry, i'm not a coder" -- as if that's the only way to contribute.
And of course when it doesn't happen that way, it must mean that "drupal sux". It's getting quite old. :-(
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Please keep this in your mind
@WorldFallz
I have never asked someone else in Drupal to do something for me. I always ask for hint or clue. Please just have a look on the questions or issues I have raised. Have a look how many of them got answers and how many that I solved myself without any help.
And what do you expect me to do if trying to help the development was also ignored?
There's no such thing as
There's no such thing as trying to help, you either do or you don't. So what if it was ignored, big deal, I submit patches all the time, sometimes the developer uses them, sometimes not, sometimes they sit for months with no replies and then suddenly someone comes along and does something with it. Thats just how it works around here.
The notion that many newbies want it now/for free etc was not directed at you, but in general this is very true.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
_
That wasn't directed at you specifically -- I should have made the clearer. It was in response to the attitude and title of the op. The comment by Michelle sums it up much better than I.
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Do you think I have made it up?
@esllou
I clearly wrote there that the issue was raised here: http://drupal.org/node/201122
No wonder you have not seen that issue before even you said you have been here for 2 years, because you don't see something in front of you.
yes, but what I said was that
yes, but what I said was that I haven't seen that issue EVER on the forums here in two years. Not to say it doesn't exist, but that it exists as an issue for SO FEW people that the 1-2 posts about it have never been seen by me here. Another issue...core image functionality. This doesn't exist yet in core, but I've seen possibly 500 forum posts about it, because it's an issue that effects many people.
Your issue effects you and very very few others. As I wrote before, from your perspective, it's a huge issue because it effects YOU. It's easy to get a distorted perspective on how important something is, because to you, it's vital! Come on this forum tomorrow morning and offer a realistic bounty for that problem and you'll have it on your site by the weekend. Come on, what's stopping you?
because you want the solution spoon fed to you by someone else.
Are you referring the word "you" as me or yourself?
@esllou
Do you really know what you were talking about? Did you even try to search for "disable anonymous session" on Drupal, before you say that? Or are you really ignorance?
OK. Let me spare my time while I am waiting for my Asterisk PBX finish compiling.
A lot of people including me, think that the request on http://drupal.org/node/201122 is quite important. I guess even Dries is interested on it, as indicated by the Issue tags of "Favorite-of-Dries". FYI, I have never met him or talked to him about that so that is why I said "I guess". But I have to agree that, it is not just because of Dries invented Drupal or all of us want that feature, it has to be implemented. And I have to agree that we are just a few percent of the entire Drupal users, so the importance of the feature is insignificant comparing to other important features requiring resources.
And here is what I did in regards to that, chronologically:
1. I asked the question about backport to Drupal 6.11 here: http://drupal.org/user/263026
2. I opened the new topic on the forum here: http://drupal.org/node/456694
3. Instead of waiting for the backport, I tried to undertand the available patches for Drupal 7
4. Before I even started to write the patch the feature request got closed
5. Considering the changes affect a lot of parts in the core, which is impossible to do via module (just my thought as nobody confirm point 2), so I dropped it
FYI, 99% of the time I spent reading Drupal 7 and Drupal 6 documentations in order to understand how to port the patch into Drupal 6.
I could possibly raise a bounty to get "quick and dirty" solution. I said "quick and dirty" because of all the troubles afterward having massive changes in the core, which are not in Drupal mainstream. And I will not learn anything if I would do that. So what good would that be, especially for me?
How dare you said that after being spoon fed so many times like:
1. http://drupal.org/node/468342
2. http://drupal.org/node/498558
Should I go on?
And trying to be spoon fed here: http://drupal.org/node/491422, which makes everybody angry?
By your tone and the words you chose and after more than 2 years of using Drupal, you should be able to fix those problems by yourself. Who are you trying to impress actually in saying that?
you most certainly are NOT a
you most certainly are NOT a few percent of drupal users, you are a few tenths of a percentage of drupal users. The links you posted were perfectly ordinary feature requests in a module issue queue...requests is the important word here, not whinging or complaining or moaning or bitching when things don't go your way and nobody comes forward with a "large site" feature that even huge sites such as the onion and sony haven't bothered with.
as others have told you on this thread, it's time you put up or shut up.
I chose to put up
Unlike what you did, i.e. raising simple issues every time you found it, I fix all the problems myself instead of raising the simple issues and waste everybody else time. I do indeed occasionally raise the issues when I am stuck, but not trying to be spoon fed. I always ask for hints.
aryanto, you've been told
aryanto, you've been told what to do. Code it yourself (it sounds as if you've made some good efforts to do that so bravo on that) or pay for somebody to do it. It may be many hours coding so we may be looking at $500 or more for a proper solution to be produced.
If neither of those solutions appeals to you - you need to move on, because to absolutely frank with you, the feature that you're pursuing so doggedly is in no way a "deal breaker".
you seem to be hoping for a third solution: that you'll convince enough others to do this coding work for free, either by starting it off yourself (possible) or moaning a lot about it (won't happen).
that's my last word on this matter.
No, I don't pursue further on backporting the patch
@esllou
As I said, I dropped the idea of backporting the patch. Mainly because I still like Switch Theme, which requires anonymous session.
I have been trying to work around that for static files on my Lighttpd and Varnish by using Drupal patch explained here: http://2bits.com/articles/increasing-drupals-speed-squid-caching-reverse.... It is still not working properly up to now, but I am sure I eventually get it working.
So please bear in mind that I am not moaning due to the feature is not yet implemented, and just sit around waiting. I just gave one example which I thought explaining all 4 points which the OP brought up.
_
Asking if the ever popular 'someone' is going to backport something is hardly putting up. We're not talking about whatever other problems you've solved yourself. You sited a specific example and are whining and complaining about a particular issue to which you've contributed absolutely nothing.
It's really very simple, if you want something done about it get involved. If not forget about it. But please, whichever option you choose, stop whining about it.
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Read my previous post
@WorldFallz
And stop talking in general. Be specific and use facts. If you can not do that, just don't say anything.
Just if you don't know this, contribution does not necessarily be in the form of codes. Giving information to other users is also one of the contributions. Unless you are insisting otherwise.
_
I saw your other post-- what more facts do you need?
There is nothing magical about a 'closed' feature (unless perhaps Dries is the one that closed it, and even then I've seen issues reopened).
You've said nothing that changes the "facts":
1) important to you != important to the project at large
2) if any of the big shops or developers felt it was critically important, it probably would have been addressed already. The very fact that the issue remains unaddressed, taking into account the names that appear in it, speaks to it's non-criticality.
3) if it is still important to you reopen with a submitted patch or find and followup with the issue mentioned in, or the author of, the last comment.
4) Whining here accomplishes nothing with regard to the issue (though it definitely will have some undesirable side effects with regard to other things).
The amount of time you've wasted here complaining without actually accomplishing anything could have probably gone a long way if spent working on the issue.
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Ohh... you are insisting that
What is the point on saying that?
I have already said this in case you miss it due how the messages is organised in this forum:
"But I have to agree that, it is not just because of Dries invented Drupal or all of us want that feature, it has to be implemented. And I have to agree that we are just a few percent of the entire Drupal users, so the importance of the feature is insignificant comparing to other important features requiring resources."
So you are really insisting me to write the patch. Who are you? My boss? So do you think my contributions is nothing? How about all others who also don't write the codes?
Read again what I have done to achieve what I want about handling anonymous user
_
lol, and who are you to insist others code your issues for you? I'm not the one whining and complaining about something I need not being done by others. you are.
If you want a feature that no one else appears interested in (which is what a closed or inactive thread indicates), then yes, YOU provide the patch. That's what a do-ocracy is all about-- if you don't get that by now, you might as well forget about drupal and most open source for that matter.
And please leave out the sophisms-- I did not say your contributions are nothing. I said that what you've contributed to that one thread is not 'putting up' as you've tried to indicate that you have.
I don't need to read anything in this thread again. Your sophistry and ad hominems only serve to prove that you've run out of legitimate logic.
And once again, you are left with the inevitable options: either work on the issue yourself or move on and forget it. As another poster has already mentioned, and you've proven here, whining and complaining will not motivate others to work on your issues for you.
_
Don't be a Help Vampire - read and abide the forum guidelines.
If you find my assistance useful, please pay it forward to your fellow drupalers.
Can you think a bit outside your box?
If you think a bit outside your box, you will understand the logic of everyone else a part from just everything around you.
What kind of logic is that? It just explains that you don't understand open source at all. Open source provides millions options to solve the exact same problems. I chose to take some of the options instead of writing a patch. Because there is high probability that the patch will go around for ages and end up no where. Mainly due to it is only affecting just a tiny fraction of Drupal users, instead of the majority.
Good if you said that you don't want to read anything in this thread again. You should do that from the beginning. So I advice you to avoid jumping on the discussion containing negative feedbacks about Drupal. Because you will never understand that and you can never accept the feedbacks. You will not be able to see the exact problem so you can not help overcome that. This is not the first time I see you saying the same thing when somebody throwing negative feedbacks on Drupal. Basically, what you always say is "the problem is you!"
Stop editing
The last 4 times I've checked my tracker this same comment has been marked new. Quickly fixing a minor typo is fine but editing over and over to continually bump it up really gets annoying. I'm trying to ignore this insane thread and that's not helping.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
Why are you complaining?
Is it not easier if you ignore this thread?
Or maybe better to write a patch to be able to permanently ignore a thread.
.
I'm complaining because you are editing your comment over and over and causing it to be marked new over and over in my (and everyone else's) tracker. I thought that was rather obvious and am not sure how to say it any more simply for you.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
So you still don't understand?
I complained about the way this forum is organised. You just experienced yourself one of the problems and yet you still don't understand.
PS:
Especially for Michelle, I am sorry. I don't deliberately do this edit to annoy you. I just want to correct my bad English.
.
I understand. I also understand that it doesn't need "a patch". The site is in the middle of a huge re-design. Until that time, we need to deal with things the way they are and have some respect for other peoples time by not doing annoying things like re-editing the same comment over and over.
Since there is, currently, no way to jump off a train wreck thread once you're on it, let's stop wasting everyone's time and just end this now. This thread has run its course. There is nothing productive coming from it anymore.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
PS
Another bad part about editing comments. They make the thread confusing when someone is already replying to what you originally wrote. The time to correct your English is before hitting submit or at least within a couple minutes after.
Anyway, enough.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
Dashboard
OT but wanted to address your wish... http://drupal.org/project/dashboard . Not ready, yet, but that would be the place to put the effort if you want to help out. It's aimed at a user dashboard rather than the front page of a site, but improvements to Panels that come from there would translate to general uses.
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
thanks, I'll keep my eye on
thanks, I'll keep my eye on that project.
What Eaton said
BY EATON - the full post is here http://drupal.org/node/34421
OK. So Ive been reading
OK. So Ive been reading "Using Drupal" and it is god-sent. All these foreign Drupal terms and the general workflow is slowly but surely starting to make sense. Im currently working through the case studies which are really practical and helping alot. So thanks again to the person who recommended that book. All newcomers should defiantly give it a read.
I need to clear some things up:
"noobs, newbies, noobish, beginners, newcomers" by this i mean - none to intermediate html, css, php knowledge and are new to Drupal. For those people that don't get it.
@jmburnz - using words like "vernacular" proves your nerdishness and your posts proves your inability to relate. We didn't all go to college and most of us just want to learn what is necessary to get the job done as quickly as possible..
3. The community is to "nerdish" to bother answering noob questions.
I regret jumping the gun here and apologize for any offence. The community does indeed want to guide the noob, and so i amend point 3 to:
3. The community is to "nerdish" to relate to noobs.
Funny thing is, the most helpful advise I have received has been from fellow newbies. They can relate to my struggles.
So the original point of the topic is to:
give a heads up to newcomers intending to build a business website, webshop or do general ecommerce to avoid using Drupal. - "Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website." - This is true but can be misleading.
Its easy only after weeks, possibly months of learning a bunch of terminology and Drupals general workflow. So be prepared to put in alot of time learning Drupal before you can accomplish your tasks.
Ps. in comparison I found learning fluent HTML, CSS and php syntax combined, easier than learning Drupal.
Read that back.
You realize how that sounds, right?
u clever-type edumacated guys keep usin' long words that make mah poor lil' brain hurt. Ifn u do that it prooves ur not as clever a u thunk.*
No. Professionals (working experts) use terminology (special words) to be more accurate (right) and precise (right). There are a lot of powerful (strong) words in the English language (words) with useful meanings. It actually damages (hurts) the language, and peoples understanding of the language, to use incorrect, vague, short words when better ones exist. It's bigotry. *Insulting even.
If you don't understand what the word "vernacular" or any new genuine word means, then it's your job to look it up, not the job of the expert to talk down to your level.
... Look, I know this post is provocative, and this thread doesn't need any more of that. I'm sorry to everyone for that.
But I'm reacting emotionally because I am emotionally offended that someone would actually say that using good words correctly is a bad thing. Ignorance I can forgive. Willful ignorance irritates the hell out of me. Especially in a support forum. I will not dumb my own thought processes down to the lowest common denominator. Telling me to do so makes you a ******
.dan.
Maybe it was not meant to be said as bad thing
Until today, I have never seen or heard the word "vernacular" as English is not my mother tongue language. I am sure I have chosen wrong words or wrongly express myself in every sentences I wrote because of that.
The word "vernacular" is maybe far from nerdish. But how about respecting everybody else whose mother tongue is not English? By using, simple common words for instance?
Sorry.
OK. Sorry for sounding like an ass. :-}
Like I said, it's an emotional reaction at deliberate dumbing down.
I understand and agree that we should keep an appropriate, simpler vocabulary where appropriate in the documentation itself. Especially for non-native-english speakers. Sure.
Less of a valid point in forums discussions though?
I've personally curated the Drupal Glossary and its spin-off Terminology page to try to help out there. But I still have to draw the line somewhere and argue that it's not our job to provide a dictionary for words that are used with their normal, dictionary meanings.
At some point the docs or the discussions progress to a point where you do need to invest a little work in learning the extra words. This is not specific to Drupal. When I started learning about advanced taxonomy and semantic web I had to learn (or at least review) what words like "Ontology", "Predicate", "Transitive", "Cardinality" precisely meant. I didn't use that as a reason to complain that "this sucks, it should be easier" - It meant that "I need to do some more reading".
If only some more doc-haters would realize that sometimes learning is useful.
Documentation can always be improved. That's why we have these discussions. But the point of documentation is to tell people things they don't already know. That sometimes means introducing new concepts!
.dan.
Thank you
Thanks for spending your time explaining your point in better way.
And I understand that simple vocabularies can not always be applied in the forums discussion. Especially when people write the sentences in short period, I understand that they will choose the words that just pop-up in their mind, and mostly the ones that they are comfortable with.
My previous post is actually referring to the documentation. As for instance, up to now I still don't understand how CCK and View work and how they should be applied. I have read the documentation and tried over and over again for months, but I still don't get the main idea of how to utilise them. So all of the time, instead of using CCK or View which a lot of people say that the functionalities can easily be done using them, I usually just add them in the modules that I use. Or in the modules which have similar functionalities that I thought would be easier to modify. As that is the easiest and quickest way for me. The only trouble that I have is that, I have to apply those modifications every time I upgrade Drupal or the modules.
But don't worry. I am not expecting you to spend your time explaining that here. If everybody could understand how they actually work by reading the documentation, I should be able too (eventually). I possibly need to look at them from many different angles.
why learn drupal
"why learn drupal"
I have been following this thread for the last 24 hours: but in themeanwhile I have not gone through it for the last 10 hours.
When I googled "why learn drupal, I got all inappropriate answers in the first page. Evidently, googfle has not indexed this thread yet. Good enough for Google. But when I put the same phrase in d.o search box I get the right link at the 5th or 6th position!!
Evidently, we need to improve our search algorithm at drupal.org.
Having said that, I have another point,
The same questions are being asked repeatedly on the forum.
Why don't wemake an FAQ thing, so that people first go through that (also, we can suggest appriate Books which they have to go through and ask for help.
We at Drupal have to wake up to issues and problems.
I have seen, people answering the same questions again and again and again not many people take part in answering the quistions on the forum.
Any thoughts on creating an FAQ sections?
All kinds of answers and critism are accepted!
Thanks!!
JK
PS:
Please excuse me for any typos, as I am not keyboard friendly.
There is already one
http://drupal.org/node/202799
But that possibly needs to be improved.
*_*
I would like to suggest a 'FAQ' or 'Why use drupal' link that links to current FAQ page in the orange area of front page of d.o.
Is it worth?
Regards.
:)
Beautifulmind
"You're really not going to like it"
Now, y'see, this itself is a buggy complaint (if it is actually a complaint, I can't tell). It doesn't matter, I don't mind.
This search works exactly as I'd want : a single 100% hit (as of right now) from solr search on the phrase "why learn drupal".
What did you want?
I wish that folk who complain that search is broken would take a few minutes to learn how to search. It would benefit them immensely! Save them hours of frustration for the rest of their life! Don't they teach this in kindergarten nowadays?
Most good search engines follow the same rules. Just knowing that those rules exist makes you a useful 21st century citizen. And happier!
.dan.
*_*
Agree googole % !
:)
Beautifulmind
...
Might help some users but mostly a waste of time, why? Because newbs don't read documentation by and large, they just jump to the forum and ask. My feeling is this is because they really don't know where to start (to overwhelmed) and that is a failing of the structure of the documentation - which btw is being addressed right now by the docs team.
A better tool would be an "Is this a duplicate of..." like Digg, so users are directed to previous threads or book pages before confirming their post.
Professional Drupal Design and Theme Services
I agree with sTimple. Drupal Is not for beginners.
Saying this I don't think it would be better to write your own CMS because you would just never pull it off in the time it would take to learn Drupal, BUT! I am a web developer with over 10 years experience who knows c/perl/php/html/js/css blah blah and even for me, Drupal has been a bastard.
My reason for using Drupal initially was so that I dont have to mess about with code and get a site done (well so I thought). Oh no, not if you want it to look how your client does. Thats just not going to happen.
Out of the box, Drupal takes tonnes of configuration to even get a site looking how you want it to look, regardless of themes. The learning curve is very steep yes; where you might aswell take a few months out to learn it. Where personally I would of never chosen Drupal if I knew the learning curve was that big. Because I dont have to write a fully fledged CMS, but i could write a basic CMS that had the functionality i specifically needed quicker than learning Drupal.
Take for example ubercart. How many people get it looking how they want out the box in a good amount of time. I've used many shopping cart systems, installed, modified and even written my own. But ubercart out of the box is a bigger pain in the ass than a relief from a weeks worth of constipation! There is no step-by-step - do this and it works. The documentation is crap, you end up in user forums. It doesn't even come with all the modules needed to bring it up to par with other shopping carts (im sad to say it, but even oscommerce works better than ubercart out of the box).
But don't get me wrong, once understood, it is a very flexible powerful system (if your not using a shared host lol - drupal EATS MEMORY like cannibis does your brain).
Either way, experienced developer or not, drupal is not the way forward if your a first time user who needs to get something done quickly and efficiently, if you have the time then yes.
As a perl developer (which i have most experience of), learning PHP was piss easy, it took a couple weeks even all the OO stuff. It actually took me longer to learn drupal itself simply because the idea was not to mess about with code. That if you ask me? says it all.
.
You know what's kind of funny. The first exposure I had to Drupal and the way that I started learning was that I needed mailing list functionality (daily digest of forum comments and topics). So I studied the database in Drupal 4.6, and then wrote a Perl script fired off from cron. I found it easier to do that rather than doing things the "correct way".
@dman, You can be a little
@dman,
You can be a little less sarcastic.
Thanks anyway for the prompt response.
I like you and the other folks who are always there on the forums, willing to help others.
true
Yep, I'm guilty of that. :-B
Making soft fun of strangers on the internet is my one reward for the helpdesking I do. I won't let FAQ questioners off without a small burn. I'd rather teach folk to try thinking for themselves than teach them to expect answers on a plate.
(I actually resent forum folk that give detailed responses to dumb questions rather than fix up and point at the docs - IMO that breeds a culture of unhealthy dependance)
I do always throw in genuine answers after I've teased them a bit though ;-)
What do you mean "google it" isn't a genuine answer?!
.dan.
.dan.
Drupal is not bad at all..
Hi,
Im a joomla user, pretty new to using drupal. Ive been using Joomla for quite a while now.. but circumstances have made me look at other alternatives like Drupal. Between the two i would say both have their good and bad points, but at the end of the day, both still requires hardwork and dedication if you really want a CLEAN, NICELY done site.
At the end of the day, as long as it does what the client wants, its done its job.
I've now appreciated some aspects of drupal compared to Joomla, after a few days of toying around with it. A few points stick out pretty obvious.
Good Points:
1) (Clean URLS) I love the way the urls come out for each page compared to Joomla, which blurts out very complicated urls unless u install a module to clean it up.
2) Installations: Pretty easy to install modules and themes.
3) Community: (Private messaging between users, access users). Between this and joomla, joomla has a very complicated component that isnt very easy to install and has bugs. I found installing modules for users and to have a private messaging function with some inbox, along with grouping users together much much easier than if i were to do it in Joomla. I think the code for this is much cleaner and easier to work with.
Besides these three points, I found that the hardest part for me is learning how to create a new template; but that's about the same amount of work as a Joomla template. Designing a site from scratch is never easy, no matter what kind of CMS u are using.
That' sane talk,I agree with
That's sane talk,
I agree with you as i migrated to Drupal after trying Wordpress and Joomla.
Drupal can build any kind of site in the world that anybody wants.
@dman,I didn't mean to say
@dman,
I didn't mean to say something that would hurt you!
Hey, you are a agreat help on the drupal forums!!
Hats offto you folks who take time off to help others!!!
JK
You really should learn to
You really should learn to use the reply function below a post that you actually want to reply to. It's pretty confusing to read a post attached to an unrelated thread.
Also, there's always the contact method for each user for contacting someone privately.
I'm a professional developer,
I'm a professional developer, so it's difficult for me to come at this from a novice perspective. Still, I think Drupal has drastically simplified the approach to Web development, making it a wonderful tool for newbies.
Having said that, I do agree that the documentation is decidedly NOT aimed at newcomers. But not just new Web developers -- Drupal is simply not well documented at all. Again, I'm a professional with ten years experience, and there are some things I can't figure out how to do in Drupal. (I have my own forum question I recently posted.)
So I do understand the OP's frustration. But it is not Drupal itself that is so difficult to learn. Certainly not as difficult as learning PHP/CSS/SQL from scratch with Dreamweaver!
Docs
Drupal has tons of docs. If anything, it has too many and a severe organizational problem. That said, detailed, well organized documentation can be had for less than the cost of an hour of a developer's time: http://drupal.org/books
Michelle
---
I'm looking for folks to help me out by posting in my Coulee Region forums. You don't need to live in the area; there's plenty of general forums. But please, no Drupal support questions. :)
I've read the books. They
I've read the books. They aren't particularly helpful for those coming at it with no knowledge of CMS programs (unless you just want a clone of the Drupal site). And as for organization, from what I've seen the problem is that they are overorganized, forcing you to decipher the groupings to figure out how to get started. I have a quick question -- is it in the basics section, or the more advanced, or what?
I just want a book that starts with downloading the program and progresses through different phases of the development process in well explained chapters. Maybe that exists, but all the stuff I've found on this site takes the tutorial/steps approach. I don't want to be limited to what I've been told how to do; I want to understand so I can adapt Drupal to meet my needs. (A perfect example is the Professional Joomla! book Dan Rahmel wrote.)
I applaud those who have written the documentation for Drupal...but it doesn't fit my style of learning.