Drupal is growing on me

After spending two months with Drupal, my opinion of the CMS is rising.

Though I prefer simpler content management systems, I chose Drupal for a large project because it had a huge number of available add-ons, a couple that fit my needs perfectly. It looked better than the other top-runner in late 2007, Joomla, because my reading suggested it offers more flexibility in both design and programming. Frankly, I don't know if that is actually true, but I chose Drupal.

Getting used to Drupal is not easy. Actual installation was a snap, and took just minutes. But setup was another matter. I was setting up a publication website, and out-of-the-box, Drupal is configured as a blog. That proved to be easy to change, but learning how to configure Drupal for my own purposes was challenging. Drupal is a complex set of scripts, not something you pick up in one day.

I had other projects going full speed, so I could spend just a couple of hours a day on the Drupal website. The first few weeks were not pleasant. Every time I tried to change something, it turned out to be more complicated than it seemed. I blundered about quite a bit. I cursed Drupal many times.

But eventually, the learning curve flattened out. Now, the site is mostly operational, and is on schedule to go live in a couple of weeks. Now that I have some experience with Drupal, I respect its versatility. It is a very good CMS, and it can handle a huge amount of content.

In retrospect, there are several things I've learned that might help those of you who are new to Drupal.

First, be prepared to spend some time learning the ins and outs of the Drupal core and any of the modules you choose to add. It takes time to learn Drupal, much more time than the simpler content management systems or blogging engines.

Second, test any module before you commit to using it on your site. There are plenty of great, trouble-free modules available for Drupal. Look for a track record of other sites already using the module. Don't depend on new, untested modules. They might not work yet.

Third, setting up a new feature, module or block in Drupal is never a one-step thing. It is always a process involving several steps. Sometimes, the steps may not be instantly apparent. What I mean is, sometimes I mumbled to myself and tore out hair follicles while trying to figure out how to turn on or turn off a particular feature. In several cases, the documentation was severely lacking and I spent hours searching through the help forums to find the answer I sought.

Fourth, you have two choices when it comes to the final appearance of your Drupal site. You either find a template you like and use it as-is, or you spend a bunch of time learning how to modify a template to your liking. There are hundreds of Drupal templates available, some very nice. But if you are intent on customizing your website's appearance, you are going to spend many hours doing it.

It takes a lot of time and effort to learn Drupal. Along the way, I considered chucking it and starting over with a simpler system. But now that I've put in my time, I see why others are so enthusiastic about Drupal. It is a solid, infinitely expandable content management system. With hundreds of add-on modules and hundreds of templates, it can become almost anything you want. Now that I've climbed the mountain of learning Drupal, I can see the rest of the mountain range, and none of the peaks look too tall. I see that my hard-earned knowledge of Drupal will allow me to build any kind of site of any size relatively quickly and confidently.

But if you're just interested in building a website for yourself or your small business, you will get it done much more quickly using a script like LightNEasy, Jaws, or MuCMS.

Categories: Drupal