Parentsown.co.uk - Proof anyone can get a site running on Drupal

I thought I'd post our site www.parentsown.co.uk

We set up the site because we have children with health problems and at times have felt very unsupported by the medical professionals, after one too many appointments where we came away feeling like failures as parents we decided we had to do something... Our plan was to set up a website for parents with children with medical problems (primarily gastro problems) to come to look for information, support and advice.

That was how the idea for Parentsown came about, the next problem was how do we do it.... And really this is my reason for posting here because I chose Drupal to do it and I'm so glad I did.

As you will see if you view the site, Parentsown is a very long way from some of the awesome, glitzy and star studded spangly sites in this showcase... I can only long to one day have the knowledge to do a lot of what I see here... But that said I still wanted to post it in case out there there are more people like me.

You see I am no techie I am far far from that, I am also no graphic designer, so basically I didn't know how to build websites nor did I know how to make them look pretty!! When I started out I knew literally nothing, but I bought a book by David Mercer and set off in to the unknown, safe in the knowledge that I was blissfully unaware of what I didn't know and therefore couldn't get scared...

Well in fact I wouldn't have needed to be scared because Drupal is fantastic... Not just the system but the support here on Drupal.org.

The community here have been amazing, willing to help and always always patient even when I was posting what must have been to them the most mundane of questions!

So, honestly if you are a novice with an idea for a site, take the plunge with Drupal... I'm positive you won't be disappointed.

A big thank you goes out to all the developers out there who have built and supported the modules I used, I've used numerous modules but the nuts and bolts of the site are as follows:

Theme: Simple_Web (a few minor tweaks made so far)

Main modules:
CCK
Views
Panels
Faceted Search
Advanced forum
And of course Mollom (to stop that pesky spam)

I hope that any novice out there will see Parentsown and see that you can build something passable on Drupal even if you know nothing, and let me tell you, you really do learn things as you go especially as many people on drupal.org take the time to explain what they are suggesting so you understand things in context!!

Please do let me have your comments good or bad (I'm big and tough and can take the rough with the smooth).

The site is still in it's infancy (though I had an earlier version running for a while) so there's still lots to do.

High on the list are:

Modifying the theme a little more to alter colours to be more in keeping with logo
Do something nicer with user profiles
Make use of Organic Groups module
Make use of images in content much more
And of course build up a community that is actually of use to parents out there!!

That's my piece. Thanks for taking the time to take a look.