The Drupal Experience

Hello All,
I started the Drupal path some months ago after working my way through several Content Mangement Systems. Like most folks, I grabbed as many modules as I could work with. I decide to shoot for the 4.7 release (instead of working with a stable release), and have had to spend many tedious hours trying to make things work. Yes, it has caused a lot of grief to work with a buggy system and eagerly check the CVS repository several times a day to see if anyone had fixed these bugs yet. At the same time, I have learned LOTS about how Drupal works as I have tried to debug some of this stuff myself.

Sometime over the last month light bulbs began to pop up. I discovered the power of Taxonomy. Then I discovered how easy it is to define innumerable regions in my theme so I could make the pages look the way I wanted them and merge several nodes together on the same page. The next thing you know, I was dropping modules like hot potatoes. I didn't need most of them and they were slowing my site down. The only add-on modules I have found to be "must haves" are Event and Flexinode. I also use the Audio module and the Acid-Free module (along with Filemanager) on some sites but have dispensed with the rest.

Drupal is not easy. There is a huge amount to learn and it takes awhile to really understand how it works. I know there is a lot of functionality yet to be assimilated but... once it starts to make sense, WOW. It really is an incredible system. The community here is incredible also. Everything I have gleaned has come from the discussions here and the handbooks. Thank you all very, very much.

So, here's my showcase - www.anderice.com . It's not a huge or complex site but it does some really cool things that will, hopefully, help me get more work. The challenge was to create an input form so that a realtor could input her own information and upload a photo and have the result displayed in a neat little property description table. A further challenge was to have the property descriptions packaged into a nice looking RSS feed. Enter Drupal. I had to add some programming to the theme template and some new CSS but did not have to hack any core files nor install any helper modules other than Flexinode.

I know some of you have already been there for some time but, for me, this is a giant leap. Thanks again to this community. BTW, this makes 5 sites now, for me, running on Drupal.
John Judish