New users impressions of Drupal

Before i start i would like it noted this is not a flame or meant as an attack to the drupal commuity but just my observations after 1 week of drupal.

I've tried out many CMS systems and ran quite a few in post production sites for many years. I did indeed check out drupal many moons ago and was, quite frankly, less than impressed. I'm happy to say that this view has changed considerably.

I love the interface and in 4.7 RCx the ease of use of installing modules. I also like the flexibility the system brings with it and so far, all in all, the experiance has been quite rewarding.

One thing i must note however is the terms and acronymns used that are very confusing to new members, Nodes, taxonomy (still no idea what that means) and even head are extremely confusing. More confusing is the reliance on linux patches when im not running linux or have a dedicated server.

Granted CVS is normal for linux users but not so for windows savvy website developers. This sometimes causes inevitable frustration.

To give you an example.

I was running 4.6.6 but had actually tested the platform out on an online demo that was obviously running 4.7 RCx. After sometime in development of my site it was obvious some of the modules i needed had better capabilities in 4.7 and so i upgraded.

Obviously due to these being Pre production builds inevitable errors became apparant and of i went to find resolves. This is when i suddenly realised i was in a very different world, this aint cansas toto.

So looking through modules i had issues with sometimes revealed solutions but i had no idea how to implement them. A patch in linux is easy to apply it would seem but windows it becomes a nightmare. I tried following many of the documentations in drupal (which i may add are plentaful if a little difficult to find specifics) and fell short again and again.

I just today upgraded to 4.7 RC 4 as hotmail was not receiving emails from my 4.7 RC3 site, which cured that problem and then presented one where navigating to a forum and selecting "create new forum post," the forum container is autoselected from the drop-down menu instead instead of the forum itself. So i looked in the bugs section and found it had been reported (after i had tried searching on the forums, and then posting about it incase it was a new setting i had missed).

I was delighted to see it had been resolved and then frustrated once more that the response was :-

Status: active » fixed

fixed in HEAD more than a day ago.

So off i went again and searched HEAD. Some frustration later i find that HEAD is the term used for the development version of drupal but i have absolutely no idea where or how i get this version or some fix for the issue above.

As you can see from a non technical point of view drupal for a first week member can, in retrospect, be both a rewarding and incredible frustrating experiance. I seem to fix one, drop two at the moment but the site is developing along.

What i would suggest however is that the usuage of these terms either simplified or at least explained in an easier form for new members to find. Maybe a popup glossary link when a term is in the body of a message with a brief explaination and a link to the main page that explains it more.

For now i'll soldier on as i truly do love drupal at this stage. But i know that frustration lies around the next corner when i again face a bug with a solution i cannot understand.

I hope people understand why i posted this and i hope its seen more as support than critiscm.