Looking For a New CMS

Yes, the handbooks and the forum are the first two places to look for help by searching for your issue in the existing documentation (handbooks) or previously asked and answered questions (forum).

With that said, rest assured that unless you are one of the very few, Drupal will be a challenge at first. Don't knock your head against a wall if you run into something that should work, but doesn't. The reason is that some documentation (the handbooks) is a bit out of date and many comments become stale once a modification to the underlying code is implemented. So feel free to post.

Knowing when not to post is the difficult part. But when in doubt, post.

You might want to glance through the handbooks first, to get a feel for the overall documentation that is available before beginning.

I found that, at first, my posts did not get much response, but once you learn more about the forums and post in the right spot with a straightforward question, people are willing to help out.

I started out with some php knowledge and a little nervous of the code, but within a couple months, I was creating my own modules. The handbook was very helpful with this.

Also, it might be helpful to describe what you are planning to do with drupal and the community can let you know if that is easily do-able and with which modules.

I was in the same boat as you, sort of searching for a CMS that would fit the specific set of requirements I had. The fact of the matter is that none of the open source CMSes I located would do that. The plan had to be to find one that had a lot of what I wanted, and enough support in the forums to get the other things done somehow.

Drupal seemed to fit that bill for me. Is it perfect? Heck no! Is it better than most? Well, most that I've studied.

Someone said the first place to look for help should be the Handbooks. Honestly, I have rarely found them to be useful. The most useful place to look for information about Drupal: The Drupal Forums. Most problems (but by no means all) I have run into have been ran into and discussed by someone else. Next, Step by Step Tutorials (if you can find them, and that's rare). Finally, there are two books on Drupal that will at least get you started step by step: "Building Online Commuities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress" by Robert T. Douglass and "Building Websites with Drupal" by David Mercer. I've used them both.

I know your biggest issue: When you run into modules that don't work and other wierd stuff, will folks in this forum answer your questions since that will probably be the only way you will ever resolve it. The honest answer: Sometimes. Sometimes people have answered my questions (thank you!), and other times not. I don't think it's a matter of folks ignoring you, but just happening to locate your question and having an answer for it at the time you need it. How often have you participated in Forums NOT just to ask questions but to actually try and answer some? Many times I've had to dig, and dig and dig... And, sometimes I've found resolutions, and sometimes not.

All that said, I've been able to develop for the most part the sites I've been looking for. There is still much to do, and I am still working on getting resolutions to issues that will get me there.

So, to answer your question, from my perspective, compared to the others I've looked at, Drupal isn't a bad choice. No hype, just the facts as I see them.

-ron

p.s. If you want more help from the Forums, you'll need to particpate not just as a question-asker, but solution-provider also. Even if it's just providing the solution to your own question for the next poor slob. It just *seems* that the more helpful I've been to others, the more helpful others have been to me.