I want to like Drupal but...
I hope what I post is not considered bashing Drupal or the community at large, because IMO both are top notch. Just providing some feedback that I hope helps the project in the long term.
Okay, I installed and played around with Drupal a few days ago. At the same time I also installed the latest version of Joomla, as I wanted to compare and contrast the two packages. Keep in mind that while I have a technical background (programming) I had no prior experience with CMS in general. And going in I was more inclined to pick Drupal, as I read much about Drupal's cleaner code and better structure.
I was able to get Drupal installed without any trouble, and found it no more difficult to install than Joomla. In fact, I sort of got hungup on Joomla initially, so Drupal was actually faster to install. But the real difference is what came next.
With Drupal, I played around with it for hours, without really making significant progress in doing "something". The terminology was confusing, and I was not confident where to go in many cases to perform a certain function. The documentation that I read on this site was in many cases not helpful to me. There were so many documents on a variety of topics available, but I just didn't seem to be able to break through the initial fog of "getting" how the application worked. After about 4 hours of playing around, I decided to give Joomla a try.
With Joomla, I was able to be productive almost immediately. The learning curve was much shorter, and I felt like I was more in control. Of course this is an illusion, but I just got it faster. I also found that I didn't really need much documentation. When I did look for something, it was generally a module or component to extend the functionality. I also found a lot of solid templates to choose from, including those found at Rocket Themes, and the like, which were far more abundant and professional than those available with Drupal (that I found anyway). I also found Joomlancers and other sites to assist, if I decided I wanted some extra help. I didn't see this with Drupal. Of course, it is very possible that I missed those resources, and I did see some listed on the forum, so these comments are not meant to be critical. I'm just saying that I didn't see sites setup like Joomlancers catering to Drupal like I saw with Joomla.
So after about 1 day of playing with each, I am far more productive in Joomla. But I am also frustrated because I know that Drupal is the better technology, and I WANT to use it. So what would help? How can I get more productive with Drupal so I can ditch Joomla? For starters I need a step-by-step guide to building a basic corporate site. Most of the guides I looked at assumed a certain level of understanding of Drupal, causing me to become lost at some point when I couldn't "get there from here". Many times I would read something like "next, create this thing", or something like that. Where is this thing? When I get there what do I do with all the other settings on the page? It wasn't obvious to a noob.
I know that Drupal is strong and I want to use it. But as a programmer I know that if I am struggling so are many others. I cannot tell you how many posts I have read along these same lines. Sure it's easy to blame the new users but the reality is something is missing here. Here are some of my suggestions from a purely newbie perspective:
1. Change the "community plumbing" references to something that makes sense. I was about to leave this site before I realized I wasn't at RotoRooter's home page. It might make sense to link plumbing, but it didn't give me a warm fuzzy.
2. A lot of people will want to use Drupal for standard corporate sites as well as for communities. Why not have two step-by-step guides to show a brand new user how to create a basic site of each type? But it has to be step-by-step. You know, click this button, click that button, fill in this value. Type "Hello World". That sort of stuff. Something that should take 30 minutes or less to complete. If a new user can walk through a practical example they will "get it" far faster. I would make this the most prominent section of the Handbook area. I've written them in the past, and the only way to do it is sitting at the computer with the application loaded. It's just too easy to miss a step or a field when relying on memory.
3. More practical documentation on the structure of the software, and how the various levels can be used to solve real problems. Sorry but taxonomy is a nice word that most people are not going to get in the beginning. Vocabulary and terms is strange too. But the terms are not the real problem. It's explaining in simple terms how these elements can be used and how they impact the structure of a project. This should be the primary focus of the step-by-step guide. Help the new user associate the various levels in the product to real things they can accomplish.
4. If one doesn't already exist, create a Joomlancers type site where experts can bid on projects. I've read many posts and there are a lot of talented people in the forums. I don't think there would be a problem finding people on either side. If this already exists, my apologies. But if so it should be advertised here in the main parts of the site. I did see the forum sections but people are more comfortable with an Elance type of setup. People post their project details, then they get bids and at the completion of the job they rate the provider.
5. More themes! One of the biggest problems I see is the lack of professional themes to use out of the box. Again, maybe they exist but in Joomla they are being heavily promoted on their site. You cannot miss them. Many people will be happy to take a professional template/theme and modify it. The content is the issue. Drupal needs an anwer to Rocket Theme type sites.
6. Inclusion of several professional templates/themes in the base install. Honestly, Drupal does not compare to Joomla in the visual department out of the box. Why is this? I saw so many clean sites using Drupal. Someone should build some Rocket Theme type templates and include them in the base install. Maybe have a corporate style as well as a community style. Not sure, but first impressions matter and Joomla and Mambo are far prettier on the eyes out of the box.
I really hope that this post is not considered Drupal bashing because I like this product far more than Joomla. But most people will simply try Drupal, give up, and then move on to Joomla, Mambo or whatever. With a few simple changes I believe this can be avoided.
I am sure I missed many valuable sources of information that would have helped make the learning curve less steep, so please let me know where I am wrong. I actually hope all of my points are wrong, as that would be the best outcome for me. But understand that every day other people report the same type issues, so if these issues have been addressed they ARE NOT being promoted at a high enough level to have an impact on a lot of new users.
I look forward to your comments.
It gets down to the work
I had the opposite experience than you did between the two systems. (Back then, it was Mambo, not Joomla.) I found Mambo to be incredibly brittle, with limited ability to make changes and many hoops to jump through to achieve goals. Drupal is much more flexible. Which leads me to....
There's been a lot of discussion on this. No replacement winner has emerged to replace it.
There is no single way to build a corporate site. Each site is different. As someone who develops them for clients, I can say that no two have been the same.
And writing a step-by-step guide takes time -- a lot of it. If it takes, say, five hours to set up and configure a simple site scenario, how much longer will it take to then write down, step-by-step, everything you do?
Taxonomy is an incredibly powerful feature in Drupal. IMHO, the difficulty in grokking it is not that the word is arcane, but rather that taxonomy gets to the very heart of your site architecture. Figuring out how you're going to organize a dynamic site for several different purposes and uses (each visitor has a different goal) is not something that comes easily.
Of course, if you don't like taxonomy, you don't need to use it. Or you can just set up one category and use it as a tagging structure, like any blog might have.
As a service provider, I'm not sure how to respond to this idea. Clients are finding us. And Drupal.org has a dedicated forum for posting RFPs and paid positions. And there is the list of the various people who provide services.
I think the barrier to entry here is cvs. Without understanding and being able to use cvs, you can contribute documentation, php snippets and help in the forums, but you cannot post your themes. (You can always do that remotely.) Most designers are not up on cvs. It's still brand new to me, and I'm still figuring it out in order to contribute some themes.
Then again, if you're going for a strong corporate impression, you don't want to be using out-of-the-box themes anyway -- go with a custom solution. But you do want a powerful CMS that can scale and grow with you. IMHO, that's Drupal.
Laura
_____ ____ ___ __ _ _
design, snap, blog
Hi Laura, thanks for the
Hi Laura, thanks for the reply. It is interesting that your experience with Drupal and Mambo were so different from mine. Maybe improvements have been made to Joomla since the split? Not sure.
Regarding your comment about no two corporate sites being the same, I agree they will never be exactly the same. But that wasn't the point. If you can walk a user through a simple site that has basic navigation options they can learn how to apply it to their needs.
I understand that a step-by-step guide takes time. A good one will take many hours. But if done right it can be leveraged by thousands of people. It is worth it from my position. I've been reading the handbooks, but honestly most of them don't work. I tried completing the hierarchical website with taxonomy hardbook and it didn't work. So that was a dead end. Then I tried the category module, thinking this would be a good way to go. My test install is now totally crashed. Can these problems be overcome? Sure. I know it is probably something very minor. It almost always is in this business. But that doesn't change the fact that I am unable to do basic things with Drupal for a variety of reasons. A step-by-step guide that actually worked would be a good start.
Regarding taxonomy, I agree with you. But it's hard to get to that issue when the basic understanding of how the pieces work is foggy. I would like to use it. Really.
I can see your point on themes and cvs. But I know a lot of companies that have taken a basic theme and done well with it. Joomla has many and it gives you a starting point. For a lot of people a decent template that can be used as a starting point is a great solution.
I will look again at the service provider section. Maybe my first impression was inaccurate. Still a Joomlancer type site would be better. JMHO
Again, I know Drupal is the right solution. It just seems to this newbie that many roadblocks are being thrown up along the way. Meanwhile I am at the content creation stage with Joomla and I am stuck on first base with Drupal.
I am going to reinstall Drupal and see if I can take another go at it.
Thanks Laura.
You seem to miss something
You seem to miss something here. You speak as if Drupal was an entity. It's not. It is hundreds of people doing things. There is no real 'someone' should do this. That 'someone' is the person who sees the need, has the time and interest to do this.
We have many who lambest the community at large for this, then claim they are going to write somethign up and never contribute anything. Someone's got to write that step by step guide. If they ever did we could either create a tutorials section in the handbook easily enough or put it in the site-recipes section.
A simple site. I have found that my simple site and others simple sites are vastly different. I still haven't found the time to go through and edit the suggestions in the post I started last year. Check it out for some ideas.
From what little I've seen Joomla seems to really go after a corporate type market and activly go after money for itself. Maybe it's their Mambo roots, maybe I missunderstood things. Don't know. The Drupal community works significantly looser in terms of structure and direction. It's direction is that which people activily choose to work on and contribute, and work on with others until consensues, agreement or an elegant solution is arrived at. This is often a slow evolutionary process that drives some people nuts but does result in very nice capabilities.
CVS isn't really a barier, if you can learn to theme, you can learn CVS basics. Drupal's flexibility is what makes it difficult to do a 'generic' theme suitable for all the core Drupal capabilities. As it is we have a lot more themes for 4.7 launch then we did with any previous launch an dit looks like more are coming. We'd be thrilled if more came but we need people to contribute them and until someone gives you and the community something for free because they choose to, it's not something that will happen or that 'the community' can force.
As to the slogan 'Community plumbing'. It is absolutly dead on and I like it myself. Plumbing is an infrastructure component to any town or community. It is often invisible (behind walls, under buildings, streets) but is vitally important for bringing you clean water and other such things. Do not consider Drupal as your site solution, consider Drupal as the tools to build the infrastructure and design your site's solution.
Your site is not your Drupal install. Your site begins as an idea. Then somewhere a plan (lots of people skip this plan step). Then content and design. Then you install Drupal and build it. Lots of folks skip the first steps and this is where people get into trouble. Your site only barely begins when you install Drupal. In the end, Drupal is and should be invisible save that which you choose to brag about to the community.
You want a corporate site? Look at the link earlier for a diversity of ideas and why Laura said step by step wasn't as straight forward as you think. I really wish I had the time to finish summarizing them and adding them to the handbook. Most 'corporate' type sites do not stretch the capabilities of Drupal but that's all right. Those capabilities are there if the company wants to extend it's site later.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
No time like the present to start
Things like better professional looking themes and improved and new documentation are definitely a plus. I don't think anyone would argue with you that these are things that the Drupal community could use (although, there is good reason for not including too many themes in the core download). After all, everyone in the Drupal community works in their own way to improve Drupal. In this regard, it's nice to have ideas for ways to improve Drupal, but what's really needed are new people to volunteer to take on the tasks that they feel need to be accomplished. So it's better not to describe what Drupal needs for others to do. Talk about what you want to do for Drupal.
For example, I've read newbies write numerous times that a configuration guide for building such and such a site would be a big plus. Very few of those people come back to write it. Truth is, the best time to write such a guide is in the middle of building a site, and someone with the new-to-Drupal perspective can write one that is aware of the needs of new users. (hint)
Thanks for the reply. I
Thanks for the reply. I agree that a newbie could be a good person to write a guide. But in many cases, those people are going to be frustrated and move on. And I wouldn't know where to begin writing a guide because I have no idea how this software works yet. Not sure if trying to write it now would be beneficial or not. And as I have seen so far, there are many ways to get tripped up. It's hard to focus on documentation at this point.
take notes as you go
The idea would be to take notes as you go and then refine those notes into a document once you have completed the project. Should be doable.
Give it a bit longer ...
I admit that Drupal has quite a bit longer / steeper learning curve. As a newcomer, I didn't really start understanding how the software & community works until I spent a good whole month thinking and experimenting with site architecture, different modules, etc.
Also, useful modules are hard to find for beginners (ie the new Category module, which is a godsend) because in the module list, every module sounds like every other one. There are many taxonomy modules, yet all seem to do similar things, just slightly different. In choosing a Rich Text editor, I spent a few days because the "New" way of attaching images (via img_assist) only works with TinyMCE, and not any other editors, etc ... issues like this caused me to spend quite a lot of time crosschecking postings, cvs messages, etc.
Perhaps a rating system for modules / usefullness is in order? I've seen bloggers post up their "Most vital & useful modules" list, and I might have had a easier time if there was something like that in the drupal docs ...
In terms of themes, I think the current theming system is quite awesome. As soon as you realise that you can extend any themable function, and get it to look the way you want it to look, you're eyes will be opened. Drupal doesn't really have "themes" ... it has a paper-doll dressup system for every body part. The hard part is realising how exactly that works.
It is funny you mention the
It is funny you mention the category module. I crashed my test system on that one. Installed it, enabled it and that was it. I actually cannot even get back in to the admin section anymore. Tilt! But I hear you. It takes time. I am sticking with it for a while longer.
Thanks.
An evaluation system for modules?
:P That's like my honours project.
However, as all modules can are of sufficient quality, I'm not too sure....
If you mean what bunch of modules are necessary for what kind of site, then the site recipes (http://drupal.org/handbook/site-recipes) + this bunch (http://drupal.org/node/26622) might produce a good page.
+1 for a page called "Most vital & useful modules for X website" where X can be blogging, media, art gallery, CRM, etc...
--
Cheers,
Tip: http://drupal.org/forum-posting
Website: http://www.edoodle.co.nz
What would be the most help? Probably slowing down
I don't think that anyone would argue with you that there's a little steeper learning curve for Drupal than for Joomla. For exactly the reasons you point out in your post - it's bigger, it's more flexible, it's more versatile.
I do development for people on both, and I guess when I started out at it I felt a little like you do. Until I found the time to just sit down and work with Drupal for about 2 weeks straight. At the end of that time suddenly the lightbulbs went off, and I have to tell you that I do just about everything I can to talk people out of Joomla! now.
Drupal is a framework. Joomla! is a CMS. And they both have their places in the world. But my interests are in building sites that are really full of features and can be customized easily for my customers. I think Drupal is SO much better in the long run that I can't seem to think a lot about using Joomla! now - in fact, I'm converting over my own sites one at a time.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that learning Drupal really is an adventure, but it's very much worth it. I learn new stuff every day, and I'm sure that's going to keep going on - which to me is exciting.
On the other hand, I can't argue with the notion that if you want to just build some web sites with CMS functionality, you can get going much faster with Joomla!.
I also understand what you're saying about themes. But I think that the theming in Drupal is really much superior - you can actually create standards compliant sites in Drupal, which is REALLY hard in Joomla!. And it's amazing how much customization you can make in a site's look by just taking one of the more straightforward themes like Box_grey and just modifying it's CSS.
Lastly - if you want to get going a little faster on things, I'd recommend starting out with the CivicSpace distribution rather than the raw Drupal distribution. CivicSpace installs a lot faster out of the box, and has a lot more features rolled in, which is what it's there for. I'm using Drupal now because I really want to have the 4.7 features on my sites, and am really looking forward to the 4.7 official release.
I think this really depends on whether you want something that is faster to implement and understand, or on learning skills that will carry you through to a much more powerful set of tools. It takes a while - a few days isn't going to work. I'd say that if you are interested in Drupal you may have to do what usually happens - hack at it for 2 or 3 months and I think you'll feel much differently about it.
Steve Hanson
Principal Consultant Cruiskeen Consulting LLC
http://www.cruiskeenconsulting.com
Hi Steve, You make a lot of
Hi Steve,
You make a lot of good points. It really does matter what my intentions are. Personally, I am past the stage of enjoying playing around with a piece of software for days on end just for the enjoyment of it. I run a small business and really don't have time for this stuff. What I need is a platform that I can build my website around, so I can drive more visitors to my site. I want to be able to expand as I roll out more features. Of course, coming from the programming world, I can appreciate well written code, which is why I am here. But time is money, and I have to make some decisions here. I just don't have 2-3 months. I can build a straight HTML site in a week.
I guess my choice is either move to Joomla or hire someone to get my project going.
In any case thanks for the feedback.
It doesn't take too long to
It doesn't take too long to get the hang of Drupal, and once you do you will be so much more happy that you went with Drupal and not Joomla. You won't be able to go out and immediately build the best site ever. You will have to slowly pick up more and more tips. Start posting your questions on the forums and searching for any questions you have. It really isn't that bad. Once you pick up a few core elements and get a grasp over the PHPTemplate engine it all starts to come together. Just go for it.
Joomla is straight up sloppy compared to Drupal and does not offer complete control. You are limited from day one. I encourage you fully to learn Drupal inside it and out. I am a web developer and it took me about a week to build my first Drupal site. About 6 sites later I now understand Drupal very well and would never use anything else.
Good luck whichever path you choose!