By kayodot on

Hello,

I imagine this question is asked often but I haven't found decisive information. I am absolutely new to Drupal, and I have decided to take a shot at it for a website I intend to build. Whether it is the right tool for the job I wouldn't know, but I am wondering how I should approach it.

I installed Drupal 7 directly onto a basic shared hosting account, added a few pages, just to take a quick look at it. Did not have many issues other than the php global settings which I researched and fixed. Now I am seeing more and more most of the documentation and help/support for Drupal suggests the use of drush/git or some other form of command line access tool and basically to work locally, through a AMP stack. I am not experienced in web development, I have worked on somethings so there is some vague familiarity so I am trying to create the best environment in which I will encounter less obstacles and or provide myself the best chance to succeed in.

Should I go with Acquia's own DAMP stack and attempt to learn/install drush correctly and go from there or should I take the big shot and try to develop on Linux? I am not experienced with linux either, I have just played around with Ubuntu and older Debians distributions.

My goal is to create a website with some ecommerce, and users logging in as sellers and buyers, at least for the start. Whether I can accomplish it with existing modules and nodes or if it will involve developing it myself, I am taking a dive to learn. If it proves to not be feasible on Drupal then I will move on.

Thank you for any input.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

darol100’s picture

darol100 commented

All depends......

If you want to build your website understand it. My suggestion will be to learn with Unix environment. Because most of web server are Linux based. And for long-term if you have a VPS with the ability to access Drush with your computer is great. DAMP is great environment however I will recommend to be familiar with LAMP, MAMP, or LEMP so, your local environment will be similar to your server.

Working with Linux shouldn't be that difficult as long you practice everyday.

My goal is to create a website with some eCommerce, and users logging in as sellers and buyers, at least for the start

This is something very simple with Drupal. If you are looking for a straight forward eCommerce I will recommend Ubercart.

You should install Ubuntu in a VirtualMachine, get familiar with the terminal and LAMP.

I hope this information helps.
Please let me know if you have any other question or you need more explanation.

- Darryl Norris
Be Connected: Website | Twitter | LinkendIn | GitHub

rachit_gupta’s picture

rachit_gupta commented

Drupal is independent of OS, for development you use Linux, Windows or Mac. I will suggest you to go with Windows using WAMP or XAMPP tools which will make your life easy, unless your have a decent working knowledge of Linux don't go for it although its preferred environment. below are the steps to get started and select your tools

1. Install wamp server on windows, http://www.wampserver.com/en/ (or try Xampp. if you have Mac, use MAMP)
2. Browse around drupal.org a bit to understand what Drupal is, who uses it etc....
3. For development you can use IDE like sublime (preferred) or eclipse or Netbeans etc
4. Learn the basics of Drupal and terminologies
5. Get help from forums, IRC etc.