By nadacat on

Just getting started with drupal- and finding it impossible to design anything I want.
SO... I was thinking the easiest solution is to NOT design it much like most other rather bland (ugly!) cms sites and have a nice home page with animation in edge, some nice big background image, e.t.c.. that directs to drupal site pages with different DNS ???

I am sure that you can - in THEORY design what ever you like while using drupal. But it seems like it will take me 5 years to negotiate css, java script, html5 with drupal api. I just loathe the cms grid like designs. eeek. I tried the joomla first, and decided that at the very least, it looked like I can make more changes via code in drupal.

Any advise from designers appreciated as to how people got started. I know there's drupal gardens but I already have host so not sure if this is a solution at all. Probably I will do what I described in the first paragraph. To give little background, I have already gone through Lynda.com drupal essentials , advanced drupal, drupal theming. None offered solution how to make my site look the way I want. (specifics of how to implement jquery, image handling/backgrounds,- you know.. all the things designers want to do instead of learn cms specific stuff)

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

http://drupal.org/project/sweaver
http://drupal.org/project/skinr

if you aren't up to sharpening the required skillsets to design then you can use the tools above and similar tools. That said, the less you sharpen the skillset the more reliant you are on what is already available rather than producing what you imagine.

nadacat’s picture

nadacat commented

thanks - I am aware of them but it still doesn't do what I want.. LOL (of course) I think that it will take time to learn, and that I will eventually get there... but there must be SOME production meanwhile. (Not waiting for months and months for a website to learn php upside down and backwards) . There must be an incremental way of doing this. I'll attack it once more, but I doubt anything will be achieved unless I understand coding inside and out since I am design stickler as much as people in drupal seems to be code stickler..(both unwilling to budge on their area of perfection) ... my rudimentary knowledge isn't going to cut it. Yet again- I have spent a month on joomla (built an OK one image site with light boxes to get around the BOXY DESIGN issue) and now 1 month on drupal ( no progress what so ever on the design front!And frustrating) and so why not spend another few weeks on wordpress? they seem to have more designer friendly things there. I can also check out documentation on dreamweaver on cms and attack it from that end since cms seems too square and set for me to go anywhere with. I dread going to wordpress.... :( but OK. Eventually I will probably work with them all anyhow...

I can come back to drupal if I need to build seriously large sites- or when I can code better - and then probably, it will be content heavy, very wordy - conservative site where they won't appreciate pretty hand drawn things moving and I'd probably feel suicidal making such a monster so probably best I stay away..LOL

Ok- attacking drupal one more day.. probably will not use it for the front page anyway.

vm’s picture

vm commented

you don't need to know PHP to use CSS and regardless of which script you use to style it the way you imagine it required working with CSS.

nadacat’s picture

nadacat commented

if I could just get away with knowing css- it's fine, but they won't necessarily just work with drupal due to api.
There fore, you need to know tons more than css or html to design a nice site in drupal. I just locked myself out of my account for some reason while making changes, for instance...

I have to deal with mysql or phpadmin, e.t.c.. NOT css. people will have written about it but it takes hours to go through the documentation. ETC.. and this is only one insignificant event. Actually trying to figure out how to design is totally another issue .

I wish it were as easy as knowing html and css , javascript.. I don't think there are designers here on drupal forums as they forget that they are programmers and they probably had to do reverse)learn some html, css, et..c. so people THINK that is what is needed to design. For designers , that is not what we need to know at all.

Further, when people say "design" in drupal forums. They mean simple changes to fonts or changing background images . (css related stuff that usually only relates to simple formatting of displays) as a visual person, that is very small amount of "design" aspect.

Basically, what I need to learn is more PHP to build my own theme - just figuring out how drupal handles information. No way around the issue it seems.

nadacat’s picture

nadacat commented

just found PSD to theme tutes... very very helpful for designers. They have ... like... visual graph and stuff which is easier for me to understand in combination with documentation.

vm’s picture

vm commented

I'm not a programmer or a designer. Merely a hobbyist. I know "0" PHP beyond what I see inside the tpl.php files and reading the docs provided either on d.o. / books / or the code comments in theme files.

A DB tool like PHPmyadmin, or DB technology like MySQL are somewhat required regardless of which content management system you use, unless of course that CMS doesn't utilize a database.

image handling is built into core in drupal 7 with it's implementation of the core image.module. However, image handling can mean different things to different people, so I hesitate to go into a lengthy explanation without knowing the details.

I've built a 1/2 dozen themes, utilizing base themes like Zen and working with a subtheme. I've not had to touch the drupal api. Did I have to learn how theme functions could be overridden? yes. Did I have to learn how tpl.php interacted with the system? yes. Did I have to work through the HTML that core outputs at times, to implement ideas/imagination? yes. Did I have to learn to work with hook_form_alter in a custom module to override something on a specific form for a specific use case? yes. While those questions are answered in the affirmative, I've never had to touch PHP code unless I wanted something extra ordinary. Perhaps, I'm lucky, or perhaps I'm not as imaginative as others.

That said, it's difficult to provide at based on what you imagine without knowing what it is you imagine.

In my 12 years as a hobbyist, I've worked with every popular script including PHPBB, Joomla (mambo before it was Joomla), Wordpress, and obviously Drupal. Based on that experience I found very little difference in any of them when it came to customizing beyond what was already provided by any one specific pre-built theme.

This isn't meant to say that Drupal is better than any other CMS, or any easier. It's merely to say that when one a specific feature or a specific look that isn't already available then more elbow grease is required to get that feature/look.

I tend to be a visual learner. That said here are a few of the slideshares I've worked with which gave me a better understanding with some specifics during/after experimentation.

http://www.slideshare.net/mattfarina/intro-to-jquery-in-drupal = may aid with better understanding how to work with jquery in Drupal.

http://www.slideshare.net/darrenmothersele/jquery-ui-widgets-drag-and-dr... = may adi with better understanding how to work with jquery ui in drupal

with reference to:

have a nice home page with animation in edge, some nice big background image, e.t.c.. that directs to drupal site pages with different DNS ???

yes this can be done. You could create an index.html file, add your own HTML and use absolute urls to link to parts of drupal where you simply manage the content. Though you would still have to theme drupal to make the look/feel consistent, if consistency of look/feel is the end goal.

If you want to design your own front page within Drupal:
you could also take a page.tpl.php file in Drupal
copy it
rename it page--front.tpl.php
strip out everything between the body tags and drop in your own HTML.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz commented

There is no such thing, other than hiring someone who knows the ropes.

Its hard work and takes time, so you're either made of the right stuff, or you're not. Pretty much as simple as that.

Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
nadacat’s picture

nadacat commented

yeah- found solution but just messed up the uploading of site... have to build from scratch.But I don't think it was anything I did.. no tech nor programmer couldn't figure it out (in few hours time, that is) ... something to do with sql yaada yaada...

probably best to use cms when ABSOLUTELY necessary.

nadacat’s picture

nadacat commented

Its hard work and takes time, so you're either made of the right stuff, or you're not. Pretty much as simple as that.

LOL.. you are either a programmer or not. As simple as that. I think I can do it.. just takes time as you said.

I think I will reward myself and make a killer front page without cms and do what ever pleases me with edge.

Teehehehehehe.