I gave up: Drupal wasnt for me

i agree with your posting, drupal is unnecessarily difficult to learn, especially due to the nodes/taxonomies, etc (heck, just the word "taxonomy" is enough to confuse me...)

might i suggest looking into Joomla (used to be Mambo CMS). you can install Simple Machines Forum along with the SMF/Mambo (aka Joomla) bridge to have an EXCELLENT forum linked to your site. you can make it display separately from the CMS, or have it appear the same as the CMS (displayed within the CMS).

I think you might like Joomla, it has an excellent community and better organization (plus starting docs and whatnot from scratch due to the split from Mambo). Nothing against the Drupal community or devs, they've worked hard and have earned much respect in other communities, especially Joomla, but the ease-of-use has been ignored in favor of the power of the CMS.

I'll echo what I've read in other posts on the web: "It'd be nice if Joomla and Drupal merged, that would be the ultimate CMS with functionality + ease-of-use"

Perhaps your problem isn't with drupal, but with css in general. I would suggest you visit some of the very good css sites like http://www.alistapart.com and read up on how css and ids work.

I'm not sure why you think drupal is overloaded. You don't even have to add any additional modules (or turn any one that are included) to have a fully functional base system. Modify the theme's style sheet and away you go. What is so hard about that?

I think that you two main points are:

1. Drupal has a steep learning curve. It is hard to learn.

2. Drupal's CSS has lots of classes and ids.

I will admit that Drupal is not easy to learn, but once you do, it is very rewarding. Think about learning to ride a bicycle for the first time. It is not easy to get the hang of riding a bicycle with only two wheels. You can chose to ride a tricycle, or have training wheels forever if you want. But you will always be limited. So, for growth, flexibility, and power, it is worth it.

As for CSS, yes we have lots of classes and IDs, but they all have their use, and they do not come out of nowhere. Drupal is not Worpress or a simple blog software. It has lots of modules, three (or more) column layout, and lots of components. Therefore, it is necessary to be able to theme all of these modules/components within modules.

You only asked one question, which you linked to. Normally, newbies will ask and ask and get answers (as long as the answer is not in the search, or in the handbook). Why didn't you do the same?
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Drupal development and customization: 2bits.com
Personal: Baheyeldin.com

I am also an "advanced beginner" with drupal. I know how hard it is to keep an open source project up-to-date, understandable, and accurate. One thing that would have helped me is to understand how changing a setting or CSS ID would effect the look or functioning of the site. For example, it would be nice to have documentation somewhere that would say, "if you change this then you will get this functionality" possibly in visual form.

I really like some of the discussed changes in the permissions form. I think that drupal will continue to get easier to use. I encourage you all to develop tools that can be used in all places. The JavaScript extensions are really lovely.

Also, is there a place that has the database definitions?

The modules should have more text written about what they can do. There is a lot of good work that can be missed if they aren't described appropriately.

More docs, more tutorials.

I was just wondering if you tried the default drupal install. Civicspace, while providing that great installation/configuration feature, does come with quite a few extra modules it sounds like you don't need. This was the first thing that cames to mind when I read number 5. . .

dtan
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Personal Blog Site | JC Cafe

3) I don't think you'll get any more good answers as to why there are so many classes and ID's other than those you received in your other post. All I can say is that I've been using Drupal for a while, and I was extremely excited by these additions in recent versions for it has allowed me to do the sort of customization that I want. And I much prefer it to your suggestion that there be some input field in the blocks section for creating customized ID's. I'm perfectly happy to let Drupal do it for me automatically rather than having to go into the admin interface in every site I work on and recreate those ID's.

4) As far as drupal.css, it's been the topic of much debate in the last couple of years. If you search the mailing lists, you'll find many views on the matter arguing both sides.

5) There's certainly much room for improvement in the documentation. Why isn't it better? Well, don't be offended . . . because more people complain about it then actually contribute to documentation development.

Why it is so painful to learn Drupal? I know it's not just me the only one that thinks that...

Why is Rachmaninoff so hard to learn? Why is it so difficult to become a good painter? Why does writing take so much practice? Why is English so hard to master?

My questions might be cheap and rhetorical, but they have a point: most things worth knowing, and worth learning require time, patience, and persistance. If you expected to learn drupal inside and out within the course of a few weeks, than -- my friend -- you should learn to set more reasonable goals.

Drupal is difficult because it is powerful. It took me 8 months to really "get" it. And relatively speaking, I'm a very fast learner (didn't know html a year ago... I'm now a professional drupal developer).

Why there are so many classes and IDs? I have started that topic. Really, I cant get the whole point about that. I think that is a barrier, at least, it was for me. And I dont think it makes Drupal more customizable.

Because you often will want to style very specific regions (i.e. #block-comments-0), or just general styles (i.e. .block). Drupal is -- by far -- the best CMS to work with from the design/css perspective. However, if you want to say "screw it" to the blocks, you can always just create a new block.tpl.php template.

Why is Drupal so overloaded of tools and options, and modules and configuration screens? It makes Drupal more difficult to learn. If I were a developer, I would start my own "Drupal Lite" distro, and the default will only have few options, few modules pre-installed, and of course, just few classes/ids in the CSS, and without a drupal.css file. I have no-doubt it will be a success, as nearly any "Lite" version of practically any script is :) .

Drupal is a community generated set of tools which hook into a powerful core -- and though some people expect it to be an out of the box package, it has been developed to be something much different -- and powerful -- from day one. Why don't you just disable the modules you aren't using? Moreover, if you just need a blog, than drupal is an overkill. Drupal for bloggers might be something to look into for you.

Why the documentation at Drupal site is so messy? Really, the documentation seems to be out of control. New version things messed with old version thing. Why just dont delete ALL the documentation and start from scratch? Please, I dont want to offend nobody, but it was very hard for me trying to trust the documentation in Drupal site. I didnt know if what I was reading was new, old, was written by and expert, or by a newbie like me. I trusted more in Bryght documentation. Bryght documentation was infinite more clearly to me.

The people who manage the documentation work very hard to make a better resource for people like yourself. Believe it or not, they are listening. I actually heard about this posting on their list :-)

Please, however, try to put this into perspective: there are about 10-15 active volunteers managing the documentation as far as I can tell. Drupal.org has 34000 nodes of information. And -- as we have no corporate sponser, or centralized leadership structure -- we just do the best we can.

Why do users need to mess with (simple) PHP lines to achieve results? I didnt like that from the start. I know everybody says: "it's just simple PHP, you dont have to read all PHP.net to understand it". But I really dont like the idea. And I must admit I would like to learn PHP some day, but I dont think that an average user that would like to develop a nice site with Drupal should mess with php lines and variables and stuff like that.

Maybe you should learn PHP and contribute a module so that others won't have to learn PHP. In the meantime, a serious professional working with drupal needs to know PHP. This is because 1)Your clients are diverse -- and their needs tend to be even more so. 2)We ain't got the mind-reading module up yet. 3)Just count your blessings drupal wasn't written in python or perl. PHP is BY FAR the easiest scripting language to grasp. It also happens to be very powerful.

Maniqui, I hope you'll come back. From personal experience I can tell you that drupal crushes other open source CMS's on all fronts. I've worked with most of the main ones, Mambo is byzantine, Wordpress is for sissy websites (echm... I meant "websites with simple requirements"), and the rest just aren't comprehensive. At this point, I develop static HTML sites using drupal -- its just faster! I know it sounds weird, but its the truth. You just have to give it more than a few weeks before you give up. Tell me, what can you learn in a few weeks that clients will pay you significant amounts of money to develop and execute?! The only thing I can think of is drug trafficing. But Drupal comes close -- it only takes 8 months. And sure is cheaper the college!

You mention you had difficulties, so I looked at your posting history to see if there were any unanswered forums posts you started, but only found one and there was a decent amount of discussion there. If you don't mind me asking, would you be willing to share what specifically you were trying to do that it didn't do out of the box for you? (Keeping in mind that there are many basic functions that do work out of the box, probably the bulk majority that you wouldn't use, however, to extend and refine a particular function or module to behave exactly as you want it to would require work.)

Why it is so painful to learn Drupal?

Why you do not join the documentation team to ease the effort?

I also read in forums lot of users, like me, saying "I expend the last weeks trying to understand Drupal" or similar.

Drupal.org have more than 35000 users now. I bet you can find any kind among them.

Why drupal.css? More than one complain about that file. It makes difficult to start themes from scratch.

There is a handbook page with two different solutions about not including drupal.css . I know this because I actively participated in creating it...

Why is Drupal so overloaded of tools and options, and modules and configuration screens?

Because that makes Drupal great...?

It makes Drupal more difficult to learn. If I were a developer, I would start my own "Drupal Lite" distro, and the default will only have few options, few modules pre-installed, and of course, just few classes/ids in the CSS, and without a drupal.css file. I have no-doubt it will be a success, as nearly any "Lite" version of practically any script is :) .

Thanks for volunteering as a Drupal Lite maintainer! There were and are both successful and abandoned distributions. Step up and do it. Just leaving out most modules and changing database.*.sql so that other modules are switched on is not too difficult.

Why the documentation at Drupal site is so messy?

Because the documentation was written in a span of four years and currectly only very few people manage it. Want to join?

Why do users need to mess with (simple) PHP lines to achieve results?

Why I need to use shell scripts on my Linux? Why did I need to edit the registry on my Windows back when I used that?

--
Read my developer blog on Drupal4hu.

I agree that there is a learning curve. It took me a couple of months before I started to feel comfortable with Drupal, and even now (roughly a year since I started), I'm still in the process of learning how to use things like hooks and themeable functions.

Fortunately, I've had some help. I've found that both the Civicspace and Drupal websites are good resources, not just for documentation but for advice through the forums. Usually when I've run a problem, I've been able to post a query and get a helpful answer within a few hours or a day at most. I'm also glad the someone suggested I read the following article when I was just getting started, because it helped me understand the basic Drupal framework:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/build-online-community-drupal

The upside to Drupal is that there is enormous flexibility and power once you get past the initial learning curve. I can set up a website using Drupal in less than an hour, and I can train someone in how to use it for content management in just a few hours. I've created a half dozen websites for friends and family this way, and after the initial setup and training, I rarely need to do anything further other than answer an occasional question.

Drupal is even more appealing if you have some interest in learning to use PHP (which I do). I had done some scripting in Perl before I started with Drupal, but I had just barely started to learn PHP. Even with my limited knowledge, I was able to start modifying some of the code in existing modules and then to start writing my own modules.

I can certainly understand why maniqui might feel frustrated, but for me it's been great.

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Sheldon Rampton
Research director, Center for Media and Democracy
http://www.prwatch.org

You didn't convince me. I'll continue with Drupal. Sorry. :)

Mambo is byzantine

(Use of words like this is what makes the documentation difficult to understand. Rather the "thinking" behind the use of such words. Who uses this kind of language? If I was not European I would not have a hint about what this means. That word goes in my list of english words to use at diplomatic fests.)

Drupal is difficult to understand because there is a lack of documentation within the development cycle. There are no strict rules or sticking to the rule that when you write code you have to explain what it does. Not doing so makes it difficult for any documentation team to write because they themselves do not understand. Non coders should be able to go and learn from the comments in the code. But it is not there or only there for the easy to explain items. Learning a bit of PHP is necessary. But what do you do after you have learned PHP? You reach a wall because there is no explaination of how things work in the code. I have seen issues where a module is rejected for lack of code standards but never is one rejected because of a lack of documentation.

(There should be both a documentation and help file template. If these are not filled out properly then the contribution should be rejected.)

the power and flexibility of Drupal

This is true of many of the open source cms projects Especially Typo3! I don't think Drupal wants to get a reputation for being as difficult to learn as Typo3 which is also very powerful and highly flexible.

First let me say, that as an "advanced beginner" I found Drupal very easy to install and use. I am struggling somewhat with how best to write/tweak the themes and modules...but hey I'm just at the start of the learning curve. Overall, I found Drupal is for me. So what's my complaint?

I have read a number of posts over the past weeks and noticed a common thread. It seems to me that whenever someone points out what Drupal is lacking...the response from many in the Drupal community is not very open to the criticism. Whenever a user discusses the need for better features there is almost at least one developer or Drupal evangelist responding with, "Maybe, Drupal isn't for you". That type of response just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Yea, we know Drupal may not be the answer to all our problems, but hey let's at least try to address the user's concerns.

As I said, I like Drupal. I just wish this board was more open to suggestions for improvements from the non-developers. Maybe once I get to know the community better my first impressions will improve. I hope so...

I'd rather say that Drupal can be inmensely complex, which doesnt neccesarily mean difficult. Complex, but easy that is.

Drupal is a very powerful tool when it comes to handling, specially organizing lot's of information.

Drupal is simply one of the few very good things that can be found nowadays.

Drupal actually has, I believe, a future. Just wait a couple of years from now on, and you'll see what I mean. Drupal is allready now slowly beeing discovered/noticed...

Drupal is free for all, so when you don't pay don't expect others to make things easier for you.

Contribute to make the development go faster.

To see what a great CMS Drupal really is the best thing would be to try and make a CMS yourself.

The solution would be to get used to Drupal first, and it takes a long time before you've discovered each "hidden golden corner".
But once you've familiarized yourself, you'll depend on it.

I'd define Drupal like this:
- "Discovering the simplicity of complexity"
- "Organizing the information overload"

Please just give Drupal another try...

I noticed when I logged on it's been 2 years and 2 weeks since I joined the Drupal site... so I'm probably an *un*advanced beginner.

Recently I've taken a break from active Drupal installations and adaptations. I went over to the 'dark side' and did a number of Mambo sites which for awhile was a breath of fresh air, and in some ways still is. With the political upheaval with the split I'm not sure what's next over there. I've also been working with the open source version of SugarCRM which offered a more focused tool for some clients and situations. I also work with high-priced commercial CMS systems on an almost daily basis -- and they certainly have their issues too.

I've seen Drupal improve dramatically in two years. I have also been frustrated beyond my limits with the user and admin interface, the documentation, and some areas of robust non-development like ACL's. But there is a 'solidity' about Drupal that is as 'comforting' as the logo is disconcerting ;-).

A few things nice about Mambo were/are:

* the component and module package installer,
* the menu interface (the last time I used the Drupal menu interface that word byzantine was exactly correct),
* integration with simple machines forum (drupal forums just don't cut it for most sites that want forums and have experienced anything prior to Drupal),
* themes easier to hack but that's probably just me
* modules seems more mature in terms of their functionality and interface - I'm thinking here of Drupal's Image add-on's which seem to frustrate everyone including developers ;-).
* the content/page creation interface pages presented a more complete picture of what was available
* the default, built-in media library was a phenomenal (at the time) improvement over Drupal's media interface(s)
* in general, less developer 'tude in the forums and communciation, a little less (perhaps for good reason) sense of superiority in dealing with the advanced, and neophyte newbies.
*As cartoony as it is opening up the administrator's interface in Mambo was like someone taking their fingernails **off** the chalkboard.

So don't merge with Joomla, but learn from what works with these other systems. Make it easier for what I have always called administrator types (as opposed to developer types) to help with finding a way to help with the Drupal project. From my 2 year perspective, it is this organizational and technical Administrator 'realm' that could help form a better bridge to the end-user realms. In the overall scheme of things if there are not enough happy end-users nothing else really matters.

Is SourceForge anathema to Drupal? Maybe this has changed? It just seems like there is an 'apartness' that may not really be necessary.

I'm about to dive back into a new round of Drupal to see what has improved during the last six months or so, consider what is involved with the always risky updating process.

One more thing... how can anyone complain about Taxonomy/categories? (in the other comments) With all the frustrations I've experienced with Drupal the reason that I've used it longer than any other, and am willing to pay the 'steep learning curve' is based on the taxonomy/category backbone which is missing in most if not all other systems.

GZ

I have tried multiple CMSs. Many people try to sing the praises of Mambo or Joomla (Mambo with a twist). I love the guy who said "Its so easy!" Have your heard the one about the priest, the atheist and the rabbi? Oh, you weren't joking.

I have tried Mambo and found it just didn't make sense. I don't know maybe it was the way my brain works, but it wasn't very intuitive--is a section in a category or a category in a section? Taxonomy makes more sense to me, after all Taxonomy in High School science is categories--Animal kingdom and Plant Kingdom and on down, and in basic linguistics a Vocabulary is made up of terms, not the other way around--"I have a big vocabulary" means "I know alot of term." I remember that it took me hours of scouring documentation and trial and error to get my site to simply accept and display my content in Mambo.

Now I looked for something else. I tried Typo3 (talk about a learning curve--more like a cliff, followed by a head first into the wall). Tried several others. They were either bare of features or totally unsuited for what I wanted.

When I installed Drupal it took no time to have simple menus and the WYSIWYG editor installed. Quickly content was in and I could find it. I do find nodes a pain in the a** but what am I going to do? Create my own CMS so it matches all my own twisted mind? I want to empower groups to share their content not spend my time pouring over code. So I have to deal with some odd bits.

I do have my own problems with Drupal, besides the Node thing:

I still can't get the multisite set-up to work the way the forums say it should but I've found my own answer. I know someone out there is screaming RTFM (the usual Linux forum response) and I'll respond, I have and followed it to a tee. Oh, you mean RTFM and then follow the myriads of threads until someone accidentally points out that the manual was never meant for someone who didn't have a dedicated server sitting in their living room on a dedicated T-1.

Which brings me to the doumentation. It is confusing for the most part. However, I find it similar to when I learned Linux--most things had to be read three times to begin to get the gist and eventually the little guy in my head would wake up and turn on the light. The funniest answer I've heard to a persons compaint about the documentation is, (my paraphrase) "While your new, you should improve the docs while you know what doesn't make sense to a newbie." That's like saying you haven't grown legs yet, lets teach you to walk so you'll be ready to use 'em when they come in."

Doesn't matter though, I've determined to use Drupal and to learn its depths--well maybe its mediums. To those who created it I say, good job. Now hopefully I will get to the point that someday I will be able to help fix what I think is broken or clear up what seems confusing. Tha is the spirit of OpenSource.

The biggest problem with Drupal is the useless search function that doesn't accept Boolean. One simple search and i get hundreds of unsorted (sic!) pages as result.
I work since two years with osCommerce, if i have a question i search the forum and get the answer within seconds. If i have a question about Drupal it take me hours to find the right answer.

I am trying to do a nutrition / fitness log. In this sense, I do not want to manage static pages but to make a site with functionality. However, I would like some sort of ready engine to build on with authentication and also static content management. Especially I want security and simple user management. As a newbie to PHP and coding, I am possibly looking in all the wrong pages...

Long story short, for me the intimidating factor in Drupal were the concept of nodes and different node types. I think it is because I am non-english the word node is so unfamiliar. I still have no idea what a node is.

Also, the documentation in Drupal seemed a little "abstract". I think that I would have also benefited from Drupal Lite to take some of the edge off the learning curve.

However, from what I have heard Drupal totally rocks for some tasks. No need for one system to be something for everybody. I am sure I will find a system that will match my needs (and am extremely grateful for all good ideas on where to look).