I’ve Just given up with drupal, I’ve been coming back here and having a go on and off for weeks with no success.
I thought I would give you my experience from a total drupal newb point of view. This is wholly to help not to slate Drupal which is clearly a great cms, because I imagine lots of people like me come along and go away saying nothing.
First off Everyone who has answered my questions on forum posts have been more than helpful you’ve been brilliant and really tried to help thank you.
Drupal mixes up administration and user stuff in a very confusing manner.
Drupal itself gets mixed in with my site so half the time I don’t know if its my site the drupal site or and administration page.
There doesn’t seem to be a differentiation between User and administrator it’s like some strange mutation of a forum where everyone who visits gets to comment on every tiny little thing.
I think the people here are so accustomed and comfortable with Drupal there is a large gap of knowledge between me and the people trying to help.
This is the simple thing I’ve given up on:
I’ve written a little website to help webmaster find relevant links
They enter the url of each page they want to exchange links with.
php functions then retrieve and store information from the url such as the title description and ip address.
The webmaster can then obviously add more pages and delete existing page entries.
Members can search by keyword or phrase to find relevant links and when they do they can click on the members name and contact them .
That’s it. a simple thing.
What I didn’t want to do is develop login and registration etc. and I thought it would be nice to have a CMS at the back of this tool for forums and news etc.
All I would need to do is get a hold of the used ID from the cms to store their data against. Check if they’re logged in etc.
What I’ve created is a mess!
Menu items that link to examples I’ve tried to do and failed
It shouldn’t be this difficult I’m not the best programmer in the world but I’ve developed many websites using html php css and javascript.
This is the mess I’ve created http://3keylinks.playname.com
It won’t be there for long I’ll just have to go and write a login script or something. Or find another cms or forum that allows me to integrate my tool with.
I hope this helps give an idea what its like when you know nothing of drupal, I’ve read so much stuff about drupal the help the examples the api reference but none tell you how to do anything they’re just references for when you already know how to do stuff and just need a reference. I’ve just spent another half a day screwing around with this.
Comments
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I couldn't quite follow your post but it sounds like you're saying you tried to make Drupal just be the user handling part of an existing website? I don't think Drupal is very well suited for that. Drupal really works best when it is your website and other things are added to it.
"Drupal mixes up administration and user stuff in a very confusing manner."
Drupal doesn't have a seperate admin backend, which is something I and many others consider a benefit. You don't have to keep switching back and forth to see your changes; it's all right there. If you don't want users to "comment on every tiny little thing" then you disable comments.
I know Drupal can have a high learning curve but a lot of that is due to the fact that it is so powerful and flexible. If I'm understanding your site correctly, I think it could be done with CCK rather than custom PHP, but that, of course, is entirely up to you.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.
Michelle
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My site: http://shellmultimedia.com
Using drupal as a system for
Using drupal as a system for user authentication that you then wrap around preexisting php is bound to be difficult. There are no shortage of posts from new users of drupal with similar levels of frustration and desperation as yourself. This is an unfortunate thing, there are a tremendous number of people and resources to try to help you over that initial hump. What is interesting is when those people post back after a few months working through the problems they have encountered. They have realised the logic and power of the drupal framework/cms and absolutely revel in it. There is no doubting that Drupal is complex and that this complexity is frustrating and hard to work through. But once you have put in the effort you are rewarded.
You are probably trying to run before you can walk in drupal - the project you are suggesting would be simple for you when you have created a module or two, but in the early stages you are probably better off attempting a more standard project and customising some of the modules to your liking through settings and themeing. There are some modules that work with links.
Good luck with your project, and I hope you stick with Drupal - if not for this one then the next one. Some users leave Drupal, toy around with other CMS's, and return when they are ready. Usually this is at a time when they reach a limitation in their alternative CMS. Perhaps you will follow this path?
I too have had similar experiences
I left Drupal some time ago and have recently come back.
I agree that there is such a large difference between the newbie and other Drupal users that our questions seem trivial at times but this a hard bugger to get your mind around.
I am still working away.
I just find site recipes and things I like and continue playing and my knowledge grows daily.
I guess I find it more of a challenge now.