Hi,
Have any of you been keep coming back to Drupal. Please share your experiences.
I am not a web developer; nor my career anywhere close to publishing. But I always loved technology and wanted to share my thoughts, make friends and do some online activity of my own.
Call it my luck or fate; I got glued to Drupal in Aug 2008. Started my first website. offcourse as everyone says "learning curve", went up and down. Every time I got stuck and not moving forward, decided trying other CMS, like Joomla, Wordpress etc. Everytime I tried them I got more stuck and found myself in the middle of nowhere; eventually came back to Drupal.
What I have learnt recently is that Non-Drupal communities do not like the "bla bla bla" of Drupal because they cannot do this RIGHT "bla bla bla" that makes things work in a smooth and straight direction.
It is a known fact that all CMS around have their own pitfalls, including Drupal. But Drupal has never failed me for some reason.
The logical structuring and documentation about Drupal is just about perfect and improving. Yeah many other CMS provide you a lot of style and style and style.... yet no substance.
I love it when I do not need to go to file manager to upload any modules or themes from other CMS admin sections; but you know what I feel more confident and in better control when I do so with Drupal.
The only thing that keep bothering me is a social community features (or installation profile) non-availability in Drupal. I have been trying to do a working community site for many months and so far I could not achieve any shape from Drupal. Probably due to lack of straight documentation and themes for community sites.
Okay, may be i know a little bit too much about the websites, structure and little bit understanding of code, but yet I consider myself just like anyother person who would love the easiness and flexibility of Joomla, wordpress, etc etc. But when it comes to reliability, facts and performance etc etc... nothing close to drupal.
I installed Joomla almost a 100 times in the past year and uninstalled. And installed few Drupals and don't remember any major uninstalls except for testing.
On the occassion of New year 2010, my best wishes to Drupal community and special thanks to Dries.
Best wishes
Comments
I only tried Drupal once ....
.... hence my alias.
I worked. So I continued and a year later I have a few sites running.
I managed to solve all problems just in Drupal and by using the community of fellow Drupalers here and on related sites - a little googeling and some great help from associates around the globe.
In my case "ignorance is bliss" and since Drupal worked I have not much experience with other CMS - just a few wikis. Therefore I don't know what I am missing for the (social) networking parts of the sites I am working on. So, I might be missing the big break through thing I really need.
But I managed to solve everything from small to big here with Drupal and the available resources. This leaves me in complete control of the sites and independent. That is a great bonus and thus I have neither the time nor the desire to switch.
The early reports I read about Drupal where not so positive, but the active development environment and great support here plus starting just with D6 proved successful and there is no second try.
Good luck and all the best for 2010 .....