By M.J on
Hi,
I'm fairly new to Drupal and to web design in general and am finding developing a website in Drupal very difficult.
The help available is not very good and most posts that I have made on the Post Installation forum seem to be ignored.
What are basic questions for me and may only require a simple answer from experts seem to be overlooked?
Is this just my bad experience or is Drupal just not designed for complete 'newbies'?
Just to add, what makes it more difficult is not knowing PHP :(
Comments
After looking through your posts
Most seem to involve secondary menu functionality that I don't think is in Drupal 4.6 - in 4.6 the secondary menu wasn't related to the primary and was just a standalone list of links. The reason you probably weren't getting many replies is probably because noone knew the answer.
Drupal 4.7 will do that 'better' though. The primary and secondary menus will use standard Drupal menus and you will be able to use a single menu hierarchy for both menus.
As for not designed for complete newbies - that really depends on what you want it to do, and what you mean by newbie. You don't need to know any PHP to create and run a Drupal site, but you generally will if you want to customise it. Some of the things you wanted to do probably would be classified as customisations.
Part of learning to use any complex tool is learning how to work with it rather than against it. It pays to explore what the tool can do and how it does things before deciding how you want it to operate. There are bound to be both limitations as well as unexpected bonus features that you will find, and if you can't customise the tool you should either adapt your requirements or go looking for another tool. Nobody here claims Drupal is perfect for everybody - if you find a system that suits you better by all means use it.
I personally thought Drupal was easy to learn, but my opinion would probably be different if during that process I had to learn HTML, CSS, configuring webservers, databases etc from scratch. To be blunt though it isn't the Drupal community's responsibility to teach it's users all the different background skills they might need - that would take valuable resources away from documenting Drupal itself. There are better more specialised places to learn those other skills.
It might be that you would prefer a CMS that wasn't as flexible/powerful and that held you hand a bit more. I don't know what other systemns you've tried though. Joomla / Mambo seems to have a good reputation amongst users wanting that experience.
If you want to stick with Drupal don't be afraid to ask specific questions with good relevant subject lines. And if you find any documentation that isn't clear, you should raise an issue with the documentation project to explain what you found confusing about it.
--
Anton
New to Drupal? Please read this
Also: Forum posting tips
Forums
Styro,
Initially I thought that perhaps it was the way I was asking the questions on the forum however, my most recent post about Newsletter and Database modules cannot be explained any simpler?
Surely, many must know the answer to such a basic question?
Is there a way for me to check the Drupal version number as I did not install Drupal on the server?
Handbook in the About Drupal
Handbook in the About Drupal section
Drupal version numbers or which version you should use Short answer, look for the changelog.txt at the root of your install.
Other answer, there are only so many peopl escanning forums and answering questions. It does happen that they get missed or overlooked. I wish we had more people but we only have the volunteers that work what schedules they can.
I have been using Drupal for a while now and I still need to learn php. Now, not knowing php does limit what I can do with Drupal.
I don't use spreadfirefox, so if you mean a sub menu in a block on the left then you can play with menu and block paths
(http://drupal.org/node/26384#comment-45860)
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Drupal version
Thanks for your help guys. I just checked the server and it seems that drupal versions 4.6.2, 4.6.4 and 4.6.5 are installed.
In the drupal-4.6.5 directory, the CHANGELOG.txt file shows the following:
Drupal 4.6.5, 2005-12-12
So I guess I need 4.7.0 to have sub-menus when the primary-link tabs are clicked?
I'm sure I have seen many other sites created using Drupal before 4.7.0 was released that have sub-menus. How would they have been created?
Since 4.7.0 is a Beta version, should I wait until the stable version is released?
ur um, I'm not sure. You
ur um, I'm not sure. You can have blocks that will show on specific paths in 4.6. Context sensitive sub menu's shoule be posible in 4.6 but not through the Secondary Links menu. You'd have to play with the theme a lot. Probably the same with 4.7 but less hard.
Are you talking about something like what this site does? If so, my best guess is in this post. If you want the change to occur in the header of your site, it is doable but more complicated themeing.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
http://www.aadl.org
Hi Steven,
That is exactly what I mean however, the author of the site does not seem to indicate how he has created those sub-menus?
There are others suggesting how he may have created them.
I am just wondering why something so fundamental to a website is so difficult to implement in Drupal?
Well, I've never need to do
Well, I've never need to do this so as far as I can tell it's not fundamentally needed now is it? Granted, I've only built 20 Drupal sites but hasn't been a requirement so far. Your needs are not my needs and your environment is not mine so you cannot assume that your markets wants and desired are as common as everyone elses' :). From your inital description it was not clear what specifically you were after. It's more clear now.
As to the line item directly under the Top navigation, that's the breadcrumb.
The menu block on the left side that changes per primarly link is in fact done with a combination of path module and setting block propeties. Each menu you create generates it's own block, you can in admin / block's set the path on which the block displays. If you set aliases with path module, you can more easily set this up. Drupal.org uses this feature/capability as well and has for some years.
You can do this in the header as well, but it gets more involved with 4.6 and theming the blocks. 4.7 has regions for blocks so the themeing is much easier.
So the final result seems to be that Drupal does have this fundamental capability. :) Hope that helps you get it setup.
You can tell a lot from a sites 'view source' an familierity with Drupal.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Asking about stuff
After looking at that question, I don't think it was a matter of making the question 'simpler', it was that it was a bit vague. I'm sure if you added some more details about exactly what you want to achieve and what you've tried already, you'll get some better answers.
Don't worry - I realise that when new to something it can be hard to find the right way of explaining yourself in a new 'language'. But you also have to keep in mind that the people answering questions are skimming large lists of posts to choose a few to answer in their limited time. Everything you do to help them give you an answer will increase the chances of getting good info back.
Steven has probably answered that question as good as anyone can without more details to go on. I'll see if I can add anything to that thread...
That's the thing. You can't automatically assume any question is basic - most of the time the answer is "it depends". The more info you add the more that long list of "it depends on" conditions reduces and the easier it is to start giving concrete answers.
One way is to look for a CHANGELOG.txt file on your server. The most recent version mentioned in there should be your version. If that file isn't there you'd really need to ask whoever installed it for you.
--
Anton
New to Drupal? Please read this
Also: Forum posting tips
You're not being ignored...
I've had posts go unanswered as well... don't take it personally, it just seems to be that there are a LOT of people asking questions, and not quite as many people who have gained enough expertise to be able to answer everyone's question.
It's also the case that there's a major upgrading process going on as 4.6 is being updated to 4.7. This means that core developers are busy debugging, and module developers are busy porting.
Have you had a look at the handbooks? They are reasonably useful, although not as complete or as well laid out for non-programmers and newbies as they could be. I also found "Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress" (available through Amazon or directly from the publisher at apress.com) a useful supplement to the handbooks. I got the ebook version as it was cheaper than the paper version.