I'm an experienced Windows and Mac user. I was once a Lotus Notes developer and administrator. I think I'm a pretty good student. I am not very experienced in UNIX so I rely on Cpanel and a good FTP client to manage my server. I know nothing about PHP or SQL.
I am trying to learn Drupal on a basic, shared hosting account. (A Small Orange). I initially installed it in a subdirectory and in two days, had a nice theme installed, some basic modules and had quite a bit of content written. I was having fun and was feeling quite proud. Then I decided to move the Drupal files to a different directory and I couldn't get my site to work.
I've decided to backup the database and start all over again.
But now I'm wondering if I'm in over my head.
I run six sites, all of them very small, most of them as favours for friends (small businesses and a church). I've developed the sites using RapidWeaver or iWeb. Eventually, I'd like to move all of them to Drupal so my friends can manage the content themselves.
But I think I will struggle if and when I hit technical problems. I am wondering:
- Is there a pay per incident Drupal support organization that is reasonably inexpensive? I charge some of my friends nothing. Others, I charge $500/year.
- Is there a hosting service that is Drupal friendly and patient with newbie adminstrators? I think a lot of my problems are hosting related.
- Is it possible to run a multi-site Drupal installation on a shared hosting account? I don't think I can configure vhosts for example.
Your feedback is welcome.
Comments
I don't think you are in over
I don't think you are in over your head. You just hit a sticky problem.
I use www.hotdrupal.com. It is a "boutique" hosting shop for Drupal sites. So far, they have been excellent. I used www.dreamhost.com before and was happy with them also, but their hosting was sloooow.
Generally, you shouldn't use multi-site installations unless you really need it. If you are doing a project with hundreds of identical sites, you should be using multi-site. If you are doing half a dozen different sites for your friends, you will have more flexibility just running separate sites.
If you are doing this as a business, you should pick up some php and possibly sql.
You're basically at the same
You're basically at the same stage I am. In the last year I've been working on a school site (for my employer), a personal site and a business site (for a friend). About 1500 hours in total for very little financial compensation; I viewed these as 'vehicles for learning' more than anything else.
Only the business site is still anywhere near ready to go live. I find drupal absolutely exasperating - I like it better than the other CMS I've tried, but I really hate it too. The only real answer to that is to spend a year or more learning enough about php/css/javascript/jquery and themeing to be able to take control and fix the tasks that drupal sucks at (and a lot of the time it really, really sucks). Having said that, the D6 modules are only now maturing - many of my problems in the past year stemmed from module limitations.
Anyway, I stopped trying to run Drupal on a shared account. I wouldn't even try to run a basic drupal site (core plus half a dozen modules) with less than 96mb of memory and a 'protected' SQL server. I got a 'managed VPS' recently (386mb ram, WHM/cPanel, and good tech support) for 216€ per year. Although there is a learning curve that you don't experience with a shared account, at least you don't have to worry about resources all the time, and there is much more flexibility in how you set it all up. You'd probably be able to run your handful of sites on one VPS if they are small enough.
I've felt that the forums have been very good for simple tech support over the last year. However, whilst it might be my imagination, it also seems to me that they are being somewhat 'drowned' with questions these days - too many posts for the handful of regulars to cope with thoroughly. In this respect Drupal might be becoming a victim of its own success.
At our level of skill, probably the best thing is to be totally flexible with your websites. The ones I've built so far are NOTHING like I initially planned. If an idea doesn't work, instead of banging your head against a wall with inadequate workarounds for dozens of hours, I have learned that it is usually better to drop the idea altogether and go a totally different direction, or change the idea conceptually to fit whatever you've been provided with by a module.
anti: I agree totally with
anti:
I agree totally with your last point. For instance, I was trying to get a theme to work exactly the way I wanted. I wrote up a spec sheet and drew up a wireframe for the layout and tried to manipulate the css to get the theme to conform. I nearly went bonkers trying to figure it out. After 3 days of this, I decided to just go with the theme. I changed my requirements to fit the theme. No more trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. I feel much better about my overall design even though I compromised somewhat.
The shared account I am using is actually pretty fast. I have no complaints about speed. It's just the problems and questions I have about the interaction between Drupal admin, the .htaccess file, httpd.conf, SQL, permissions, etc. It's all inter-related and a Drupal problem can be rooted in any of those areas. If I found a host that was experienced in Drupal, knew about the frequent newbie problems, it would make my life easier. A Small Orange has been extremely patient with my dumb questions but I almost feel guilty about all the support tickets. I'd like to find a Drupal specialist hosting service if my problems continue.
One of my big frustrations with Drupal is simply finding my way around - where do I change this, where do I change that? There are so many menu options. Compared to Joomla or Wordpress it is extremely complex. Some of that is going away with all of the work I am doing. I guess I am getting used to it. But, I can imagine what would happen if my site was stable and I didn't really touch it for 6 months. I would have forgotten all the admin options and I'd be going nuts again.
A couple of things would really help.
1) A cheat sheet - show a typical Drupal page and with arrows and boxes, show where I go to change that block/node/menu.
2) A newbie forum. This would be self-help group. So we don't clutter the main forums with basic questions. Newbies are going to be more patient with other newbies.
3) Better search on the forums. Is it just me or is there no advanced search. I click on the advanced search link and all I see is a single search field.
Thanks for listening.
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1) there is the drupal cookbook (linked to by a commentor below) which was written by a new user for new users.
2) Highly doubt that will happen. There really is no good reason for another degree of separation with regards to new user questions. My expereince on d.o shows that new users rarely tend to answer questions and this would wind up being another forum that d.o volunteers would have to watch and handle. Nothing stops new users from answering questions they can answer in the forum we've already been given.
3) advanced search is gone on d.o becauser apache solr is now handling the search. Personally, I use google to search drupal.org. There is also a great deal of drupal specialized tutorial sites out there with video tutorials that help new users and intermediate users along with the aid of walking them through set up of a specific feature or module or mashup of modules.
TOTALLY with you
Guys I am totally with you on this. Getting good at using Drupal is hard. I've been at it for almost a year. Let me share some resources that I have found helpful.
Here is almost a whole course in Drupal on video. There are a few old ones, a few clunkers, but many gems:
http://www.drupalove.com/article/50-drupal-6-videos-help-you-climb-drupa...
Also, this page isn't bad for a beginner, which you guys are way past:
http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/tutorials/beginners-cookbook
Here are some good Drupal resources:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/24/drupal-developers-toolbox/
Here is a theme developer cheat sheet you could laminate and keep handy:
www.minezone.org/blog/wp.../02/drupal-theming-cheat-sheet.pdf
Furthermore I would highly recommend buying a copy of 'Using Drupal' by O'Reilly. It walks you through some real-world practical example. Whether you actually do them, or read along, it can be useful.
And the single resource that has been the greatest help to me has been the drupal-support channel on IRC. I have gotten many quick tips that led to breakthroughs on problems I faced. I also found people with more knowledge than me and I could hire them for some extra help. And I found that I was able to hang out there and actually help others on occasion. It's much more immediate than this forum.
Hope this helps somewhat.
A list of some of the Drupal sites I have designed and/or developed can be viewed at motioncity.com
Thanks for all the links.
Thanks for all the links. Will check them out. And I downloaded an IRC client so will check there too.
Already own the OReilly book. I'm only a few chapters into it though.