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By ChuckLinart on
Not sure if this is the right forum but I'm all fired up about something that happened at work today and just have to post about it. This guy, one of those snooty know-it-all object-oriented "Drupal Sucks" guy goes off about how much Drupal sucks.
Of course I remained civil and tried to defend Drupal but I was in the middle of working, you know? So I went home and wrote a blog post about it. I was sort of hoping that somebody might enjoy it, and if you like it, please give me some link love. It would be great if this blog post to float to the top of Google for the search string "Drupal sucks," especially since Mr. Know-It-All was trying to give me a lecture on SEO.
Thanks and enjoy! I freakin' love Drupal!
Comments
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The very first clue that someone doesn't know what they're talking about is when they try to assert that drupal has bad SEO, lol.
In fact, Drupal is
In fact, Drupal is SEO-friendliest CMS by default. However, if one wants to turn it to SEO-perfect platform then one should read this excellent check-list post: http://blog.amazeelabs.com/en/comment/113130
This is not true
I agree, I also don't think drupal sucks and having lack from SEO side. Yes it must be an issue of development which seo addon are working with latest version and compatibility with other addons.
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rubbish. Without just about any special optimizing at all, google any tangentially related drupal term and watch drupal.org rocket to the top of the list. In fact, I often find myself having to '-drupal' when I'm searching for something that is not actually drupal related, but does appear on drupal.org, lol.
Read Your Post
I can't believe your Drupal site looks like that! Even a one-chuckle install in WordPress looks more presentable.
"Just sayin'."
I also have to say that noting how the White House, Harvard, and Sony are on Drupal doesn't really say much. Those institutions could be on anything, and pay for the expertise to deal with whatever issues arise (or, more to the point, pay for the customization necessary to make sure no issues arise).
One could just as easily point to any number of WordPress sites to make the same positive points you did.
As a strictly non-techie person, I sympathize with the "Drupal Sucks!" crowd immensely. I tried out Drupal 6 three years ago for four months before finally having an epiphany: simple things aren't supposed to be this time-draining in the 21st Century.
Okay, so "I cannot fiddle but I can make a great state from a little city" -- Thucydides' comment can apply to Drupal.
I suppose the problem is that Drupal disappoints many who have no idea that it is actually a development platform instead of a "site-in-a-download" like WordPress.
Then these n00bz, like me, come here and wonder how the simplest things could be so round-about and get hammered for not "contributing" and so forth (which I did but got banned anyway).
Developers don't seem to say "Drupal Sucks!" It's the hoi polloi like myself who can sympathize with the sentiment.
If you are so anti-Drupal,
If you are so anti-Drupal, why do you spend your days trolling the forums. Maybe you could hang out on the Wordpress forums since your so high on it. Drupal can be a challenge at times but that is because it is a developer's CMS. Insulting other user's websites is classless and pathetic. So please, if all you are going to do is complain and spread your negativity, apply for Jersey Shore.
Not Anti-Drupal; Anti-Misinformation
I am not against Drupal at all. I had heard of WordPress way before Drupal, but still chose to get into Drupal three years ago when Version 6 had just been declared stable.
I am against misinformation, misinformation about Drupal.
I replied to this thread because I'd just come back here after a link from WP Tavern to your "Wake Up Community -- WordPress.org Should Scare You!" thread, about how d.o. can be made more appealing. I was quite amused that the good folks here still don't get it; hence my comment in that thread about how Drupal is like the proverbial guy-forever-without-a-girlfriend who's befuddled why he's dateless despite being such a self-declared "nice guy."
Now it seems to me that the "Drupal Sucks!" meme can be best explained by the clunky user experience, especially for non-technical people. And it was the height of irony that the OP should have such a bad-looking site to try to showcase Drupal! Talk about not "getting it."
But I don't blame him; Drupal is hard to work with, and he's probably in theme-hell right now with that site. I know; I banged my head against Drupal 6 for four months before complaining about it in these forums and getting banned under a different user handle (despite having contributed, mind you [since that's the very first thing d.o. loves to do, tell you to do something for the cause or shut up], to the PageEar Module's documentation).
I don't blame anyone at all, so I'm not against anyone. But the thing I am against is the misinformation that Drupal is for ordinary people, that it just takes dedication.
No; it takes interest in and aptitude for computer programming: the art of spelling out every single conceivable step in a process because machines are lifeless and dumb.
Again: I am not against Drupal. I am against misinformation on Drupal, often by Drupal (people).
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As mentioned on one of your other threads-- you weren't blocked for what you said, but they way you said it and for repeatedly insulting, mistreating, and abusing other members of the community despite repeated warnings to stop (disclosure: myself included).
We don't block users for speaking against drupal-- we block users for essentially two reasons 1) spam and 2) repeatedly violating the http://drupal.org/dcoc.
It's not what you say, it's how you say it and how you treat fellow community members, so please stop spreading fud.
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The problem with the Drupal community is that y'all are very thin-skinned. Maybe being high-priced web developers has caused you people to lose touch with everyday users, but I assure you that the only people who bother interacting with you are the ones who care.
You ought to listen.
Drupal should stop billing itself as anything other than an esoteric programmer's framework.
That's how you avoid the likes of me!
(Don't worry; I won't be here too long; just happened to see a bunch of "newbie" kind of posts in the General forum and felt I had to respond -- especially since Michelle Cox took it upon herself to suddenly close the "WordPress.org Should Scare You!" thread in customary Drupal Community fashion: i.e., shoot the messenger.)
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To clarify, closing that thread wasn't "shooting" anyone. The thread was a 6 month old finished conversation and being bumped back up repeatedly in my tracker just to add/edit more trolling posts. It wasn't closed when it was a new discussion because we are not opposed to discussion. But we are opposed to trolling.
I suppose if I showed up in the Wordpress community, found an old finished thread critical of Wordpress, and started in adding post after post about how they need to stop deluding themselves that they are a real CMS because I tried it and couldn't make a complex site out of it and now am happily using Drupal but just needed to let them all know that they are doing the community a disservice by pretending to be more than blog software, that they would welcome me with open arms? Puh-leeze.
Look, no one in the Drupal community denies that Wordpress has a leg up on user friendliness. You don't need to come educate all of us poor fools that just can't understand what the problem is. We get it. Seriously. And we're working on it. We're not trying to be Wordpress but we are trying to make Drupal easier for the masses. And coming in and yelling (yes, all caps is yelling) at us that we must market Drupal as a developer's CMS only is ridiculous.
Is it easier to use Drupal if you are a developer? Of course. It's always going to be helpful to just go in and fix anything that isn't working quite how you want it to than be stuck with whatever you can point and click together. Is it impossible to use if you're not a developer? Heck no! There are tons of non devs happily using Drupal. There are 7K+ modules to provide you with functionality that need no programming. I used Drupal for 2 years before I finally decided to learn more than a tiny smattering of PHP. And I learned that by writing a Drupal module. I didn't come into Drupal knowing PHP. And that was back in 4.6 when you still had to install the tables for contrib modules manually. LOL!
If you're happy with Wordpress that's great. Use what you like. No one cares. Just quit trolling and then acting all wounded with the "I was only trying to help you poor deluded people" spiel when you get called on it.
Michelle
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I also come from nothing to learning everything I know from Drupal. I had one college course in HTML and I knew how to make a simple HTML site. Even that took me some time working with the CSS to get things to float properly and having to constantly Google CSS properties.
Enter Drupal after I searched forever trying to figure out how to properly describe what I wanted to do. I had no idea what the proper terms or jargon was and every search yielded nothing. Finally someone told me I need a CMS (which I had to look up in Wikipedia to find out what it meant.) From there I found Drupal and now have a fairly good grasp on php, making modules, etc.
I am not a high priced developer. I don't hang out with developers. I am a member of my local Drupal users webgroup but have yet to make a post. I have yet to attend a Drupalcon. I have never even met another person in real life who has made a website. The only thing I do is answer questions here and on Ubercart.org when I think I can help or know the answer. I also post my own questions in both places.
The only thing Wordpress has on Drupal is more visually aesthetic free themes and easier to use if the only thing you want is a blog. Since it is design as a plug and blog solution it does that task perfectly. If want even one other function Drupal can do it better and easier. The part about better free themes is debateable as to whether that is actually a benefit at all. Even with Wordpress you probably need to create your own theme since no one really wants "Designed by FreeThemeGuru" at the bottom of their site.
Again, like I told you in the other thread, because YOU don't understand it doesn't make it esoteric. There are plenty of us who easily fell in and in your case the problem is most likely user headspace.
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well said RKS-- but don't waste your time with logic on 'aminka' he's nothing but a troll (he has a long history trolling with another username) that likes to poke people in the eye until he gets a response. Logic will get you nowhere-- don't feed the trolls ;-)
Drupal should stop billing
Do elaborate in a civil manner. But I have a hunch.
Go on.....
Drupal Rules.....!
I intend to build Huge db driven portal and done intense research on how all CMS stands and work under immense load for good two months. Installed 18 CMS on my two different VPS and local machine.
In the end DRUPAL rules all the wayyyyyyyyyyy........!
I wish if i had seen many govt and big websites running on drupal, so that i wouldn't dare to challenge drupal.
Its slightly hard to understand the feel in beginning day or two. After that you will love it and fly high.
And yeah btw drupal.org support also rules all the way. Much better than Joom Joom Joomla.
Can you make that sounds much
Can you make that sounds much less like cheerleading and provide some of the details of your project?
What are you requirements? How Drupal plugs into this pictuere?
Do u use multiple DB backend? Multiple web server frontend?
Any specific concerns with the data being served and how it the implementation?
I'll be nice to hear a positive story, but point on what others did wrong.
Usability vs. User Experience and Drupal
First, this is not a hater post. Please re-read that if you forget as you read the rest of this post.
I have to say, after working with both Drupal and Wordpress for the past three years, I have to agree that Drupal is definitely geared towards developers, not the common user and is indeed more of a framework than it is a CMS.
Why?
Consider that "usability", is about if something works or not. It's about "I can use it. It may be rather abstract or ugly but no biggie". While "user experience", is about the transparency and ease of use, less cognitive load. It' translates as, "I really find it easy to use even if I don't have many skills (and its meaningful/helpful to me)"
This is a major issue with Drupal. Technical people are much better at dealing/coping with poor user experience than the common user or even very savvy web professionals. And even professional content authors and developers who are capable of dealing with it surely don't enjoy interacting with something that is not a pleasure to use.
The fact that Wordpress (for example, please don't hate on me, re-read first sentence please) only takes a few clicks to update is an example of not only a solid user experience but efficiency as well. While it might take an act of Congress to upgrade a given Drupal site from one major release to another, in a CMS like Wordpress, its only a matter of a few clicks and a few minutes. This is true even of very large enterprise sites.
I think if the user experience issue and the upgrade issues (for starters) could be fixed, Drupal would see a lot more market share than it does now.
Finally, imho, I think there is some truth to the statement about the average Drupal community member being a bit thin-skinned. I say that cautiously but please consider that just because "you" "get it" and other do not, is not a good or appropriate excuse for poor usability or forward compatibility. Conversely, surely it is great job security for you (my only one rather sarcastic remark, but I think its a bit true for some in this community).
Just some food for thought and imho.
DC
Sigh
Seriously, do you think this is news? I'm trying very hard not to be completely nasty in my response because I'm sure you mean well just like the other bazillion people who had to post to let us know we'd be so much better off if only we realized Drupal needs to be more user friendly. But, well, I really do wish people would take the time to peruse the core queue and get a clue about things that are being worked on and discussions that have been had before stating the obvious.
Michelle
It is not news, but in the
It is not news, but in the right context it bears repeating. New users are being encouraged over from Wordpress without it being fully explained that if they incorporate some important contrib modules, debugging and major upgrades on their website could be a real headache. Maybe the MVP project will rectify this. Yes, Drupal developers are aware of the pros and cons and needs of Drupal, it is not being well explained to the wider world. I see Drupal sites directly (as well as seeing it in the forums) where the user faces bugginess, hosting problems, and / or upgrade problems which they had not foreseen when starting with Drupal.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
I had to agree with the OP
I'm sorry that this will be my first post here. I share the sentiment of the OP.
I begin to use Drupal because our Univ advocate using it, and it fluidly installs on a shared server.
We opted to use a CMS in order for our staff to be able to easily maintain their own part of the department's homepage. Then I had to realize that building a simple, very static website is a hassle with Drupal. I need to include more and more modules just to have very basic functionality - like a WYSIWYG editor. I had to read a lot just to get a few things done.
I'm using Drupal 6. That might be a problem, but many years back I had a few hours experience with Plone. It was transparent from the very beginning. I was able to find - from within the system! - the css I needed to change (for example, as a developer of a site this is a minimum one needs to be able to do) in seconds.
I hoped for a system in which I do not need to touch the php code.
No you don't
The OP was using "Drupal Sucks" as a title to try and get a Drupal-positive post to come up for that term. The OP was a nice post. Many of the comments that follow clearly show that the author didn't read the OP.
If you're building "building a simple, very static website" and aren't doing it simply because you know Drupal well and it would be a hassle to use a different tool for your simple sites than you do for your complex sites, then you're using the wrong tool for the job. Drupal can do simple, static sites but it's overkill and, as you've found out, takes more work to get there than using a tool that is right for the job. You can get a screw in with a hammer but you're much better off using a screwdriver.
I think it's interesting that
I think it's interesting that you went back to Plone, when I found Plone staggered for many years,
Like like Zope when it can out as it was more free-formed. Plone has pre-baked a default layout and it wasn't all that easy to chnage it, And with all its community CMS features it all seems to provide very little.
I do love the Zope core, ZODB, ZTML,TAL, etc. all of which are very straight forward and conpleted object-oriented. And wrting small script with Python is a joy.
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No, it really doesn't need to be repeated over, and over, and over again. We get it. Seriously. There is a UX team dedicated to making Drupal easier. It's not deliberately made difficult for "job security" and, frankly, that's insulting. It's difficult because it's powerful and flexible. Having powerful and flexible also be easy is extremely difficult. Wordpress is easy but they are going as slowly towards powerful and flexible as we are towards easy. It's always a tradeoff. If someone picks up Drupal without doing any research at all and seeing what it will take to build a site, well, that's really nothing we can help with. People need to do their own research and weigh the pros and cons before choosing a CMS. To start using Drupal without doing that and then complaining that we're not Wordpress is hardly fair.
See my last paragraph of my previous post
I didn't mean to sound insulting, but indeed you seem to get insulted easily. There's no need to be defensive, as I'm also all for improving Drupal. Like it or not, Drupal is used widely and we as web professionals are better off learning it and leveraging it... I just hope to do that without any more headaches. So, if there is a Drupal usability group, rather than nasty words back at us, how about please posting a link if its available or more information at least?
Thanks,
DC
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Uh, you consider me saying it would be nice if people searched before bitching to be "nasty" and think I get insulted easily? LOL!
But, to be nice, I'll go ahead and type "usability" into the search box for you. Here you go: http://groups.drupal.org/usability
There are two aspects to
There are two aspects to usability. There is UX for the content creator, at which Drupal 7 does OK IMHO. The community is addressing this. Then there is usability for the site builder. I am not sure this is really being addressed adequately. Some module maintainers have served their users well, including Advanced Forum, for which respect is due.
But the average user, having enjoyed building a multi-user site employing social and commerce elements, using only mainstream modules such as Ubercart Marketplace, Acquia Slate 3 (requires Skinr), OG, Drupal for Facebook, Nodewords, and VBO, may find the upgrade to Drupal 7 gives them a relatively poor user experience. Let us hope that for usability, such major modules have a more usable upgrade path to D8, when D7 is EOL, than has been the case for Drupal 7.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
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Contrib and core are vastly different worlds. There is very little quality control on contrib beyond some security checks.
That said, the upgrade process is something being looked at and this would apply to contrib as well: http://drupal.org/node/1052692
Wow, I'm glad I'm good at
Wow, I'm glad I'm good at ducking spit wads because your temper and attitude just lobbed an arsenal at me. I wasn't nor have I been trying to start or continue an agression or argument for the sake of arguing.
Temper?
What are you going on about? Annoyed at people who make no effort to see what's already being done before telling us what we should do, sure. But temper? Attitude? Spit wads? Seriously, dude, chill. You're way over reacting here.
Your first stop as a newcomer
Your first stop as a newcomer to Drupal is to check for Install profiles which are close enough for your use case, and search the web for the Top XX modules you should have on your Drupal site. It will be easier then, not so easy but it will be a better start?
Is that your site in the
Is that your site in the signature? Interesting site. Why use short link redirects?
Profiles are a great help. Untill you have to do an update. They are not always updated, and AFAIK you cannot update a profile core with drush? So long term they can create more trouble then help in my experience.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
short link redirects and profiles
Short Links
Forum software including drupal.org limits the amount of text in the profile settings. Having long domain names and seo friendly links results in links which are too long to fit. Check out the full links and see how many characters they take.
Drupal Sucks?
In my view the average Drupal user should forget about upgrading and stick with one version. Upgrading takes time and money and only well funded organisations or skilled Drupal users can do that. Check a few of the the leading Drupallers blogs and you will see a few still on Drupal 5 (apocryphal). IMHO there is little advice to newcomers on what profiles to use.
You know what - Drupal Sucks (for the casual user and for developer as well). For the developer you need Eclipse or Netbeans, ssh, xhprof. xdebug and you are not even started. Then you need Theme Developer to help you track which CSS file you need to change. Then you need Firebug to help you test the CSS file live. Then you have to copy and paste the Firebug CSS into your editor, make sure CSS optimization is turned off (you already checked that didn't you?), then you save it, then you refresh it.
If you update Drupal your theme settings will get messed up. So you should have done a diff of your theme and css to create a patch and saved it somewhere, and reapply it after the update. (You are using git aren't you, and all these issues are covered in your workflow?!?)
You know what, perhaps you should be using CSS injector instead.
How are about templating the output of your CCK, your views, your tpl.php files and all that. Been there, done that, and forgotten most of it and I'm not so pleased at having learn/remember it all over again. Then I have to do it for Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 which have different architectures because Drupal 6 will stop getting security updates, no more updates for Drupal 5 now. (My favorite website is on Drupal 5)
It is so hard to get a birds eye of view of what and where you need to change stuff. The CMS is badly in need of an integrated IDE that allows you to chain all these together. All the necessary tpl.php, css files should be accessible right from the Drupal Admin, yes that means Drupal needs a fully browser integrated IDE, designed from scratch, as a Firefox or Chrome extension. Any takers?
The desire of Drupal developers to scratch their developer perspective itches means that the benefits from contrib/modules are not being consolidated over the long term and that is where all the power of Drupal comes from. Should there be a Drupal 6 fork called Drupal 6 EVO or Drupal 6 LTE or Drupal 6 Forever (my favourite) or should that be reserved for Drupal 7/8? Drupal 6 is where Drupal started to come together, not perfect (no part of Web development is perfect) but good enough to stick with, lots of very good contrib modules. But all the designers could see were the flaws which needed to be fixed in Drupal 7 whose shortcomings are being fixed Drupal 8 when right now it is still a toss up on whether to go for Drupal 6 or Drupal 7 if you depend on a number of contrib modules.
You can learn more about my love/hate relationship with Drupal here. 3 years old but still pertinent - http://devblog.brahmancreations.com/content/do-php-and-drupal-have-a-bri...
PS. I do enjoy a good rant every now and then!!
Here here
Here here
Derp the link to this article does not work
Does not say much for your drupal sucks argument . I have to agree with a crap load of site developers .. if you have a standard blog site wordpress is the way to go and its because their themes are awesome , drupal .. even now still does suck in that regard ( and i have been watching this debate on themes for a while - im talking about plug and play themes .. not themeing standards or structure .. drupal is fine in that regard )
If i wanted a larger site with a heavy community based approach then it is a no contest drupal has the views module and that pretty much kills anything wordpress can do or any other CMS i have come across.
As for it not being object orientated .. i do find that kinda strange
as for you drupal monks tuning that oke was a troll .. shame on you. He made some valid points about the whole thing and all you is attack his person . To be quite honest you should look at yourself and ask who they troll is. He was arguing about the topic and you all where attacking the person .. i think its all of you that are the trolls .. get some skin and realize drupal it not the all and all for everything, it has some serious weak points and if you just treat others with disrespect like that you are doing you will get no closer to solving the problem.
Please address his actual points on the technology instead of just pointing fingers, it just makes you look like little children
It is true Drupal people can
It is true Drupal people can get over-emotional. (So can some Wordpress people.) That passion for Drupal probably does more good than harm on balance in making Drupal better. On most discussion boards provocative language (words like 'your [enter: baby / favourite project / passion / life's work] sucks') are good at getting attention, but usually end up generating more heat than light, even when not intended to offend.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
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So responding to a positive post with nastiness is ok but calling out a person for their nastiness makes you childish? Interesting worldview you have there...
It's a shame that the original poster's efforts were in vain due to the commenters on here that seem to have nothing better to do than attack. This isn't a technical argument; it's a feel good post meant to help Drupal that people like you and earlier commenters have turned into hate. Sad.
As for the link not working: It's been 7 months. Link rot is a part of life on the web.
"but calling out a person for
"but calling out a person for their nastiness makes you childish" how was he nasty? he was making points as an onlooker to this framework
it's a feel good post meant to help Drupal that people like you and earlier commenters have turned into hate" -this is just not so ..
These posts and various like it point to a very sad weakness in drupal. You all know what it is. And it is a serious problem if drupal intends it open its platform to a blogger type audience. The current themes and the themes for sale are bad .. buggy and just not at any sort of decent standard. take a look at the two top developers Merlin and chx .. amazing developers, top class yet their actual sites in terms of any sort of style is , well lacking completely .. and this has to do with finding content just has much as it has to do with the awesome content that is on their sites. Even your own site Michelle ( and please take this as constructive criticism ) is not an easy site .. i mean could you not have added tags to your post? surely you have used taxonomy. You go to a site similiar to that on wordpress and they are kitted with jquery madness and easy to navigate content that makes users want to browse the site even if the content is lame. And its like 1 click and site kitted. check out themeforest.com to see what i am talking about.
Another example of where drupal has gone in such a bad direction is the Dashboard module.. now lets compare the wordpress module of the same name. It is a one stop section to the site, everything can be done from the dashboard .. in drupals standard install its just a blank nothing and i would really like to know how many users from drupal 6 even bother with it if they have administration module turned on. The dashboard should be the starting point for drupal. it should be an interactive section with all the basic configuration waiting to be tweeked.
The overlay is not a welcome either in my opinion .. it delayed the release of drupal 7 and made so many other modules delayed .. for what .. a modal
I understand there is a UX team but if i was them i would seriously .. at least for now just look at what wordpress does well and copy it exactly. Or dont bother trying to get bloggers using drupal and concentrate on integration with node.js an other emerging technologies in the web.
There is a learning curve and it is steep and really not worth it for basic functional websites. I dont use wordpress but i have seen my 10 year nephew spew out sites better then i have put together for basic functionality
anyways .. im not even in the web game anymore because of wordpress flooding the market to anyone wanting a website. It was also really sad to see development seed leave the drupal community I know they are still kinda involved but , that move i think said a lot about drupals attempt to try and please too many people. ..
and seriously lets please do everyone a favor and get the poll module out of core
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Let's see... Person A posts a feel-good post to promote Drupal. Person B tells Person A his site sucks, his examples don't count, and that he's wrong and Drupal does, in fact suck. 7 months later, you call us all trolls because we didn't think that was an appropriate response. This is helpful how?
As for my site: I've never held it up to be a showcase. It's a dumping ground for posts when I have something to say. I don't have time to work on my own site. Too busy helping other people with theirs. For the record, though, I do use Taxonomy. That's what that "Tags" on the posts refers to.
As for the rest... The arguments have been done to death. Those who care enough to do something about it are. Those who just want to whine, well, not much can be done there. There will always be people who think whining is productive and can't comprehend why the rest of us are tired of hearing it.
Yes i am whining / drupal is
Yes i am whining / drupal is actually amazing and i dont believe they should change anything .. what was i thinking.
i dont believe they
or
Although Dries's own company is very influential there is no strong central direction, as there is with some open source software. A street party is created by anyone who lives in the street and wants to make cakes or bring bring drinks or put up tables or comment on the above. We all live on the street. Anyone who sees problems with the software design aspects of Drupal can go to the end of the street where the software developers live and chat to them about what they could be doing better. Most of them don't often come down here to the forums, but they can be found in the issue queues, as well as elsewhere.
Sometimes I wonder whether Drupal would be better it if did have a benign dictator, but in fact Dries who could have taken that role seems to have an open democratic style, to a great extent we as members can get on and make Drupal what we want, though like any community it is not always easy to get attention unless one has a lot of time to contribute.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
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That's easy: you're thinking, "I'm not going to bother actually reading what anyone is writing. I'm just going to throw out some sarcasm."
I understand there is a UX
That's a bit harsh isn't it? I haven't seen the D7 Dashboard much , I recall it does model from WP a great deal.
I'm usually Total Control dashboard on D6, a much more conprehensive dashboard module will views integration. I'm loving it right now.
As for themes, I think they are any nice looking themes for D6/D7. It's seay enough to customized them. Maybe it'll take an afternoon to get them to about 80% of the pretty WP themes, but that a pretty close target.
I just made another rant
I just made another rant about why Drupal sucks. Care to comment?
http://drupal.org/node/1603830
Bring on the hate. LOL
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No, not really. You've been here nearly as long as me. If you don't know how things work, yet, nothing I say is going to educate you.
_
please don't feed the trolls, lol.
To paraphrase-- there are two kinds of community members: those that choose to contribute and those that choose to whine about those that contribute. I've yet to see the latter converted to the former so it's a complete waste of time to try.
Love how you all go on about
Love how you all go on about trolls ... instead of actually answering the issue you just side line to name saying. everyone who as posted on the post WANTS drupal to be better then it is , we want our clients to ask for drupal instead of wordpress but that is not happening. So you can carry on redirecting the issue but you are just digging your own grave .. and with wordpress becoming stronger with each release there will be a time when there will be little reason to have to have debate with clients or even ourselves as to why we shouldnt move over.
_
no... people who actually DO WANT drupal to be better than it is spend time doing just that-- making it better. people who prefer to waste time whining on useless forum threads rather than actually contributing something useful do not. It's really that simple-- and no amount of argument or syllogisms will change that fact.
as far as i know there is one
as far as i know there is one a handful of people who can push commits to core .. and with regards to the discussion at hand, that of UX those decisions can only be made through discussions. but please correct me if i am wrong.
Yes I am sure one would need
Yes I am sure one would need to involve oneself in discussions in the issue queues, or maybe at DrupalCon, in order to put across UX ideas. Though there is repeatedly expressed hunger for input with the aim of improving UX from the core developers, so I guess they might listen :-)
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
"Stop whining and contribute."
"Stop whining and contribute." All over the web says that's what you guys always say in respond to any criticism. And like I said before, I want to shoot myself if I have to hear "Why Drupal can't be more like WordPress?" one more time from my users, and I'm sure you're just as tired of hearing that and many other typical criticisms.
Yet they're just keep repeating over and over again. "Why Drupal can't be more like WordPress?" "Stop whining and contribute." "Why Drupal can't be more like WordPress?" "Stop whining and contribute." Clearly something has to change.
@Aminka has a pretty good point. He said that Drupal is a developer's CMS framework, we all agree that. I think he's saying that even under that description, Drupal didn't meet his assumptions, and he didn't say its Drupal technical failing, but rather, Drupal can try better to communicate what it does. And I do feel the same way in that regard.
I came in thought I clearly understood what Drupal means as a CMS framework, and for the most part there's very little surprises. The few things I found frustrating and my assumptions were wrong was in a few specific things like WYSIWYG editor and photo slideshow, and for different reasons.
WYSIWYG editor: Too many choices, nothing stands out.
Photo slideshow: Once again too many choices, and few ever worked. In the end I just stopped looking for a Drupal module and integrate a Javascript library directly.
I really would much rather see these things included in core and these are very basic things by today's standard and my users expect them and they expect them to be well integrated and works reliably. I think that's what Aminka was talking about in terms of assumptions and expectations. I think it's the same thing with any "Why Drupal can't be more like WordPress" complaint. WordPress has set many expectations on what a web CMS can do easily and in a visually appealing way, and other CMSes has already caught up but Drupal lags quite far behind in those regards. I don't think it's reasonable to expect Drupal to match WordPress in those regards, but yet I think what's being expressed by Aminka and makes it clear to people who might be new to Drupal.
I knew Drupal didn't have a built-in WYSIWYG editor, I thought I was prepared for it, I wasn't. Is it my fault? Maybe. But I think it's in Drupal's interest to be upfront with people so it doesn't fall too short of their expectations.
My experience in photo slideshow is even worse. I wasted so much time trying dozens of modules and none of them worked at all, the few ones that I got to work were so far behind today's expectations that I just ended up integrating a Javascript library directly into a node that took me all of 1/2 an hr.
Please don't take offense that I say sometimes a whole class of modules just plain sucked. And if I'm expected to contribute to help make any one of them better, please understand that I wasted a huge amount of time testing and configuring modules just to find out which one works and which one doesn't. Of the few patches I submitted are of modules I used and found bugs that eventually fixed myself. I can't imagine I'm the only one who's frustrated by module roulette. I know modules are in contrib and core team is not responsible, I know how I can contribute to provide better documentation to help the next guy. But for something so common and basically expected out of any modern CMS and that Drupal still can't do it well or that the comparison pages didn't point me to the right direction despite countless other people before me trying to do the same thing, something clearly still needs improving.
I'd rather if these commonly expected features be rolled in core and I'm probably not alone. If the core team doesn't think it's a good idea, at least consider these other options:
I also came into Drupal expecting that given there are so many modules to do similar things, there's gotta be something that fit my needs. The reality varies a lot, sometimes I find one that fits me perfectly, sometimes I have to workaround some limitations, sometimes nothing worked at all. Drupal doesn't try to meet any common use cases at all. Despite having the forums, groups.drupal.org, case studies, and now Distributions, sometimes it seems that it's still an uphill battle to do something relatively common. Maybe Drupal try to be too many things and there'll always be something else "commonly expected" by a given use case.
I think the fallacy here is the sales-pitch: "there's always a module in contrib that meets someone needs adequately", when it fails to meet even the minimum expectations for some relatively common feature it becomes very frustrating for the user. Distributions can possibly provide some much needed best practice examples or well-supported use cases, but right now distributions are in the same shape as contrib modules: too many to choose form yet no obvious way to judge their quality, features and long term viability.
So I think it might be helpful to pick 10-20 featured distributions from any number of well-known Drupal shops which will be able to set a wide enough common use cases for the new user to choose to fit their needs. Instead of coming in with their very specific use case and trying to get Drupal + contrib modules to fit with in it, they'll now shown a small, but diverse group of profiles that provides a variety of use cases. They can pretty easy gauge what they can do, see how their use case fit in those profiles, and adjust their expectations very early, which will avoid most unmet expectations early on. And if each preferred profile has a support forum, it'll be easy for them to find help they need that's specific to their particular use case. Use case specific support forums are not something that we'll try before I think. It's worth a shot.
I'm not saying we can possibly meet everyone's needs either. Just make it easier for people to have more realistic expectations about their specific needs by comparing their use case with Distribution use case, and help facilitate contrib developers to provide commonly expected features.
Hope you guys don't view it too negatively, I do want to help but these things I can't do on my own. If there's any existing documentation effort I can join I'll gladly make myself viable. I think I can possibly make myself useful to the distribution team if there's anything there I can help.
dupe
dupe
My personal view is that it
My personal view is that it is a mistake to promote Drupal to the blogger market, when WP does the job so well and Drupal has problems. OTH it is good for WP to have a high calibre rival! The promoting Drupal to the blogger market is not really a sales pitch because Drupal is a gift not a sale, and few Drupal shops are making money from building blogs.
Actually I have mixed feelings about distros, because they can strengthen the impression a Drupal site with some major contrib moudles is easy to use out of the box, when it is not.
There is a degree of use-case specific support in Drupal Groups. Probably we will have to wait for a larger support community before extending that. Already people constantly post in the wrong forums...
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Well was Drupal marketed to
When was Drupal marketed to WP circles? That could've beena ggod idea in 2005.
I haven't looked into Distro yet. I think it's too fragmented right now. Ideally I'd like to see some high-profile drupal shop actively maintain about 10-20 or so Distros that covers a varies use cases. Like I said elsewhere in the thread, these prebaked use case changes the new users dynamic. Instead of them coming in with all these expectations about what they what to do with they specific uses case and expect somewhere there's a module that does what they want because that's what the Drupal world keeps telling them, these distros theoretically enforce common, best-practices use cases for these newcomers to choose and adapt their use case (and expectation) to what's available. It saves them from testing 100s of modules down to a handful of distros, without all the installation and configuation overhead with the module testing route.
I'm under the impression that the Distros provide out of the box functionality. Even if they don't, they can provide examples of best practices, raise certainly module to higher, more actively supported status, and when several modules need to tie together to go something, a live example will go a long way. Same with Views + plugins and Panels. A lists of 200+ distros with no ranking or QC seems a bit chaotic (like the module directory).
Let's wait and see though. It's the right direction and helps Drupal up and down the chain in many ways that can't be done any other way. I'm hopeful at this point.
Well, shutting down
Well, shutting down conversation at the first sign of any criticism, aren't we?
Do I feel I contribute enough? No I don't, and I should try harder to contribute? I did submit a few patches, not that it's all that significant but it's something I guess.
It's pretty unfair to assume that I'm a troll or a whiner who contributes nothing, or someone who doesn't care about Drupal and just want it to be like WordPress, or someone who just jump into the forum and demand support and then insult developers who work for free for not helping them, Lord knows how many of those guys you have to deal with. I had my share of fun trying to help people in the #ubuntu channel. And trust me if I had to hear "why Drupal isn't like WordPress" one more time from my users I'm gonna shoot myself.
If you don't care what I have to say, that's cool. I respect that. You don't have to read it, simple enough. I don't expect you or anyone else to. But you to not only assume that I'm a troll and flat out calling me stupid seems pretty uncalled for.
I just wanted to vent some of the frustrations I encountered routinely in Drupal. Did I use the word "suck" to get attention? Probably. I apologize if that offends you and put you on the defensive. But do you really have to call me names? I know you hear this "Drupal sucks" crap all the time, maybe nobody is bringing up anything new, all you have to do is post a link to a sticky that explains "yes we know, this is what we're doing now" and call it a day and ignore the rest of the conversation.
If you need to vent your frustrations with the whiners and how you're tired of their demands or whatever, let's talk about that if that makes you feel better. I don't think anyone who posted in this thread so far really falls into the typical "Drupal should be more like WordPress" type of people.
.
I didn't shut down the conversation. I didn't do a thing to your thread and it still looks open to me. I'm just choosing not to participate.
Glad to hear. Take a seat and
Glad to hear. Take a seat and kick back and enjoy the fun.
Whiner will whine, hater will hate, Drupal apologist will defend. Don't worry, it'll all settle in due course.
You have my word that it'll never rise to any nasty levels against your team or Drupal. :)
Anyway when Microsoft follow
Anyway when Microsoft follow Drupal's lead, and make their software free, and provide a free site where people can say 'Microsoft sucks' without having their posts deleted, I will raise a glass of champagne to the progress of humanity since the dark days of Windows 3, Windows 95, and worst of all Windows Millenium Edition.
I suppose if I were to dislike Microsoft (or Drupal), I should have walked away and let them die quietly...
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
http://social.microsoft.com/F
http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/categories
free is not always better , and be to quite honest i think this is making drupal a stagnant platform .. I think core should be free but there should also be a financial reward system like in any free market in the production of this product. Otherwise this is more idealistic communism.
The strength of Drupal and my 2 cents on big issues
The strength of Drupal is the open source. Paying makes it less open.
Right now there are 2 things that i perceive as errors in last Drupal releases:
JQuery dependancy for Drupal 6 (and soon for Drupal 7 if it will be too difficult to update to the latest library).
High memory requirements for Drupal 7.
They are major problems from my point of view.
The first one is obvious: Jquery is growing faster than Drupal, so Drupal should at least, have the chance to work without jQuery.
This way one can use the latest jQuery version without worrying about breaking the backend. Don't know if it's possible, or if it's the best course of action but it seems a solution.
(I am aware that with some coding you can remove the old jQuery from the non-admin page and replace it with a later version but i consider it only a partial solution). Given some directions I would gladly help on this task too.
High memory requirements. It seems obvious to me that it's important: while considering Drupal i have to warn my (potential) client that extra features may require extra money not only for the work but also for the hosting. A VPS may cost 10 times a shared hosting and it's often a factor while choosing the platform of the website.
About the other complaints, i'm not sure, i love everything else about Drupal and i think the community is one of the best.
I also believe that the steep learning curve of Drupal is not a bad thing. It forces you to learn a couple of important things and keeps away people that wouldn't get much from Drupal anyway
Well, actually... Clearly the
Well, actually...
Clearly the comparison is unfair, but even then, MS do have tons of free-as-in-beer software from IE (barf!) to free editions of Visual Studio. They also make contributions to many open source projects, IronPython, IronRuby, Mono, Kerberos.... And they opened up and open source lab last month.
Many other big commercial software players release or participate in even bigger open source projects: Apple with WebKit, Sun with Java, IBM and Oracle with J2EE stuff and Apache....
And all of them do provide free forums, and permit open criticisms and don't try to defend themselves at all most of the time. If their employees delete them or react badly, those people will just make a bigger deal elsewhere and generate bad PR. They just sit back and not commenting on anything at all, however unfair and unfounded the criticisms they might be. Other people will defend them naturally and people will be their own judge. E.g. On MSDN or Technet usually MVPs will be the countering voices, who are not MS employees.
Pretty common sense, really.
And there *are* plenty of big open source projects that are quite infamous for being defensive and dismissive and rude in the face of criticisms, Debian for one. And those projects still thrive regardless. The truth is rude developers and rude users both exists and I think most of us have or will have to deal with both of those people.
You can rarely stop rude/unfair users and devs, they all think they're right and justified in doing so. All I can say is, don't just react, take a deep breath and step back and just be nice out of courtesy, cuz we've all been there on both sides. :)
But obviously we're getting more and more off-topic.
"Drupal for WordPress users" section
Like I said before most of us users know how frustrated it can be for Drupal devs to hear criticisms and demands from people who expect Drupal to be like WP. And like I said @Aminka's comments have some really good points.
What about a "Drupal for WordPress users" section? WordPress people who come here can get what they really need to know and have realistic expectations of what they can do with Drupal, there can be a forum for them so Drupal users with WP background can help them and fit their needs better. We can ask existing Drupal users with WP background for help to write material for this section. There's got to be some interests out there in that circle. Maybe there's even stuff on this site already that we can collect together.
Best part:
Whenever a WP user ask Drupal devs "Help me" or "Can you make XYZ more like WordPress?", they can just send those users straight to the Drupal for WP user forum and find people who want to help them, and devs won't feel so frustrated all the time and give more chance for the rest of us with other suggestions. Everyone's happy.
I think a good idea. Not sure
I think a good idea. Not sure who would do it -- not me, I need the opposite (Wordpress for Drupal users documentation!), but it is open to members of this site who do have the knowledge to head over to Documentation and use the 'Add Child page' to start something and test the waters to see whether it is found useful and acceptable.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Documentation isn't the problem
Documentation isn't the problem for new users, it's the design. Drupal looks like it was designed for one specific person, not an entire community. Some stuff overlaps while other things don't; you can access the same preferences and configurations from different locations; you have tabs in the most unintuitive sections; simple functions are given weird names and the strangest nuances, etc. New users have a hard time getting used to this weirdness while experienced users have either gotten used to it or learned to ignore Drupal's eccentricities.
I played around with Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress and I can say that all three can be MAJORLY improved. Joomla might get you a nice looking site the quickest but it will be designed like a castle made of wooden toy blocks - a slight impact can have it crumbling down. Wordpress might be the easiest to learn but it's not made for complex websites. You have to spend more time learning to make it more complex than actually learning it. Drupal is the best of the three, if you don't mind shadowboxing around whatever its designer were thinking when they created it. Whenever I use Drupal I always imagine it was somebody's quirky personal CMS that leaked to the public. It's like using someone's bedroom; you can get used to it, but it doesn't mean it's optimally setup.
So i decided to try out
So i decided to try out wordpress .. i had before but very briefly .
wordpress does not have drush or views and to be quite honest i would have those two modules over bad ( trying ) UX any day in any dimension. Wordpress might look good but drupal is much more fun to use
Totally agreed, drush and
Totally agreed, drush and views are both awesome. However, I find that clients who are not techie, who want a simple site, and who need to keep costs down, WP matches their needs better. I might change my mind if the D7>8 upgrade path turns out to be easier to do cheaply for clients than D6>7.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors
Its the simple things. that
Its the simple things. that are too difficult. Even for experienced users. Links, Styling, media, galleries, forms, wysiwig etc.
There are too may different ways to do things, which also makes things too difficult. Picking the right modules alone can be daunting.
Its the 80% that people need, that needs to be made simple. Its these things that makes WP so successful. The advanced 20% is where drupal excels, and that is and always should be, for power users.
bredi
ALl CMS suffer ...
... from similar issues. It is much easier to code a site from scratch than use Drupal, Joomla, or Wordpress; they are designed for people without knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL.
Not at all. I'm a coder - I
Not at all. I'm a coder - I use Drupal primarily for its APIs, not for the contributed modules. For example, I've been working on my main project with my client for over a year now, and we are only using about 20 contributed modules (if that, I haven't counted). The site makes extensive use of the Drupal APIs, creating a full AJAX experience with a heavy layer of security, and leveraging Drupal for an extremely powerful experience.
Had I done it from scratch, it would have been double the time at least, and likely not as secure.
Other users who aren't coders (or are not full-on coders like myself) will find Drupal's contributed modules and themes beneficial.
Your comment has tried to pigeonhole all users into a single type, and does so incorrectly.
I find Drupal very
I find Drupal very frustrating to put up websites in a fairly rapid fashion and also have options of many different templates and integrated modules. You absolutely need developers, not just hacks for drupal. I think that it is more extensible and from an architectural standpoint, it is far superior to Wordpress. You can create a good membership site with Drupal and it is just not happening with Wordpress. Wordpress is better in almost every other way for rapid development and module availability.
Joomla is a total mess. They still don't seem to have SEO nailed down and every new extension, mambot or whatever they choose to call their modules and components has its own way of doing things. I think Joomla is great for putting up quick business websites for clients without most of the additional bells and whistles.
I mostly use Wordpress although I'd like to use Drupal. One issue is forums. I can't find anything easily that allows for an enjoyable forum integrated with Drupal. The built in forum module is not conducive to fun conversations IMHO. All the commercial options don't seem to have any visible reliable bridge that allows for either uni or bilateral registration and database sync. Either one would work but I have as of yet to find good reliable solutions although I know some exist.
Drupal comes pre-hobbled
No .htaccess anywhere to be found. Can't really go further using the install instructions when the archive doesn't come with what is advertised.
Support thread?
It's probably worthwhile to open a new forum topic for this and include some system information as well.
The .htaccess is present in the Drupal 7.22 zip and tar.gz archives, but your OS may be configured to hide dotfiles or just display them weirdly. In case of Unix, try ls -a to see and take special care when copying to a target directory . In case of the built-in ZIP explorer in Windows, it is the "nameless" file marked as type ".htaccess file".