Author Topic: Drupal is f*cked (Read 66420 times)

mouser · « **on:** April 10, 2007, 04:48 AM »

Because I made a post a long time ago saying how I liked drupal a lot, i thought it was only responsible that i make another post saying that after trying to do a few things with it, i'm developing a very deep hatred and disgust of it.

I can't help but feel it has some great technical cool aspects but is not suited for humans to use it. I may change my mind eventually but right now i would warn everyone to stay away from it if they actually intend to use the site they create with it. I can only assume that the large population of people who like drupal are mentally disturbed in some way..

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** April 10, 2007, 04:59 AM »

ps. it's hard to describe how messed up drupal is in human english words. if you want to try an experience in sanity-destruction, try to set up a drupal site with a reasonable calendar/event display module which shows which events are scheduled for which days and times. good luck.

tinyvillager · « **Reply #2 on:** April 10, 2007, 05:02 AM »

I couldn't agree more

I was pumped with the release of version five.It was super easy to install,two weeks
later there was a security update,i botched it.I tried to follow instructions on the site,
their docs are like an unkept wiki.Since Version 5 is their flagship product,they should
gut all the old info,plugins,etc before version five,imho.So i did a fresh install,then i got
spooked...you spend all your hard work,design,etc and you know your going to have a horrible time updating.That,and i don't know,i just don't like the "node" thing.

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** April 10, 2007, 06:29 AM »

I have to say that some of the core Drupal structural organization things, like using generic nodes, is an absolutely wonderful and super cool idea in theory. And it does let you do some wonderful stuff (like having forum posts also shown under book hierarchies, which is similar to the modifications i wrote for the simplemachines forum that let us create the blog page, etc.). But god damn is the drupal administration thing confusing..

Not just confusing but totally inexplicable. You've got this powerful infrastructure, and then absolutely horrible facilities for formatting content and the documentation is atrocious.

mitzevo · « **Reply #4 on:** April 10, 2007, 08:10 AM »

Cmon guys.. now now.. Don't hate the cms, hate the customization! hehe j/k

Josh · « **Reply #5 on:** April 10, 2007, 09:30 AM »

No, just hate mouser for not being smart enough to figure it out ;-)

Curt · « **Reply #6 on:** April 10, 2007, 10:31 AM »

I can't help but feel it has some great technical cool aspects but is not suited for humans to use it.
(...)
I can only assume that the large population of people who like [this] are mentally disturbed in some way..
-mouser (April 10, 2007, 04:48 AM)

You just described what I think of computers...

cnewtonne · « **Reply #7 on:** April 10, 2007, 04:12 PM »

WOW... I do not think I have ever seen Mouser this frustrated. When I saw the 'f*cked' word, I thought, who dares to use this in Mouser's forums. Guess what, it was Mouser him/herself.

I actually installed drupal last month and chose some of plug-ins like FCKEditor. I have test-driven 10 of the top ones on the CMS open source site and I came up with Drupal first, CMS Made easy second, and there was a 3rd done I can't remember its name.

I have not done any serious development with Drupal. I have one simple site I created for my documentation and believe me I can't even imagine how would Mouser react having to deal with the other CMS solutions out there.

I like Drupal 'so far' because of ...
- simple and straight forward administrative interface.
- Best documentation.
- Active and responsive forums.
- Good deal of plugins.

I do have some more work to do with it, but for what I have seen so far, I do not feel that bad about it.

dk70 · « **Reply #8 on:** April 10, 2007, 05:11 PM »

Try search for "calendar" at Drupal site. Many people are frustrated. An example http://drupal.org/node/111485 or worse http://drupal.org/node/120710 May be you consider that helpful and may be it is - but certainly not to all.

I also only have quick impression of Drupal - only good but I can smell it is very hard to modify. When stuck you are truely stuck - unless on top of things which most are not. I dont need modified calendars but perhaps some CSS hacking. Ask about that on forum and you will be told to install default theme and work up the ladder from there = not easy to tinker with. May be cool for real developers but my quick impression of Drupal is overkill for basic/personal sites - even if it appears very user friendly in administration. Could see it as engine for DC but not when ADM freak out over a little calendar plugin

MrCrispy · « **Reply #9 on:** April 10, 2007, 05:33 PM »

How does Drupal comapre to Joomla. I need to setup a CMS/Wiki/Forum hybrid and Joomla looks like it has enough plugins to do the job. But I don't really know how to admin Linux.

mouser · « **Reply #10 on:** April 10, 2007, 05:34 PM »

i still hold out some hope of using drupal for more powerful custom cms stuff - the use of generic nodes offers some very intriguing possibilities. but i have a low threshold for frustration and drupal is just beyond frustrating when it comes to even the simplest of things.. my advice: stay far, far, far away from drupal if you are human and want a pleasant experience setting up a standard kind of site, and don't want to invest large amounts of time learning something very alien. if you have special needs, that's a different matter, and drupal may still be a good choice.

mouser · « **Reply #11 on:** April 10, 2007, 05:35 PM »

Joomla has the advantage of a very large userbase, but i never particularly liked the feel of it. We've had some cms discussions before, and it may be time to have another, so everyone chime in and hopefully we can find someone who has some real experience with these things who can offer an informed opinion (i can only offer infuriated opinions).

TucknDar · « **Reply #12 on:** April 11, 2007, 01:00 AM »

e107 is a lightweight CMS, with tons of plugins. The forum plugin may not be the most featureful, but this is still an excellent CMS.

www.e107.org

2stepsback · « **Reply #13 on:** April 11, 2007, 11:14 AM »

hi,
people good at programming but new to web development or PHP (or both) are STRONGLY ADVISED to use wordpress as a learning tool because of the following:

exceptionally large user base
24x7x365 active IRC channel - personally verified
super easy code
generally decent documentation with excellent newbie-oriented language - that kind of Layman-Compatible(TM) language is not seen anywhere else on the www
comprehensive list of plugins and themes
FREE in both ways

After you've started understanding it ( about a week for a decent coder, a month for a total n00b), you realize that using parallel projects like Wordpress MU (MultiUser) and a fork called Lyceum, you can make a multi-user *portal* in no time. Plus all the plugins = full CMS

HTH,
2stepsback

tinjaw · « **Reply #14 on:** April 11, 2007, 11:47 AM »

I can't comment on drupal, because I haven't used it yet. (I know shame shame shame on me

)

However, if you want a really really simple way to set up a site that is centered around a forum, you can install SMF and the TinyPortal mod.

sri · « **Reply #15 on:** April 11, 2007, 11:49 AM »

http://www.k5n.us/webcalendar.php

2stepsback · « **Reply #16 on:** April 11, 2007, 01:58 PM »

How does Drupal comapre to Joomla.
-MrCrispy (April 10, 2007, 05:33 PM)

Not used drupal, so i dunno.

I need to setup a CMS/Wiki/Forum hybrid and Joomla looks like it has enough plugins to do the job.

Very correct. I had to do the same hunting and found that Joomla has 1000+ plugins/addons/modules/thingies and has one even for VOIP called Mambotastic. Couple that with the fact that *IBM* has accepted it as a valued platform for the LAMP stack.

But I don't really know how to admin Linux.

Get any of : XAMPP, EasyPHP, Apache2Triad, Web-Developer Server Suite and many more, develop, test on windows. Run on Linux on a shared host - many free /cheap ones are available

cnewtonne · « **Reply #17 on:** April 11, 2007, 03:06 PM »

The very best way to read about these different CMS solution from people who actually used them is to go here http://www.opensourc...ask=view&id=2097 and for each solution, you will see user comments at the bottom. I spent a whole night browsing through them and reading these comments. Was truly the best way. Ultimately, you will have to make your decision based on your OWN experience.

At this point, I can say I'm not happy with any of them but Drupal was the best due to the reasons I mentioned above.

I'm starting to think that there is just no easy way about doing this. If you do want a web site, then you must learn HTML, some CSS, and if the need arises some server side scripting.

For this reason, I'm finding myself monkeying around again with DreamWeaver. Learn it once and fly solo without having to depend on any other tool or developer.

Hirudin · « **Reply #18 on:** April 11, 2007, 03:44 PM »

Sorry, didn't read the thread, but when I clicked the link with the censored "f - word" I was surprised to see that you started it Mouser...

mouser · « **Reply #19 on:** April 11, 2007, 03:57 PM »

there is a lot to love about drupal, and i tend to fly off the handle with frustration sometimes, so i apologize for the harsh nature of my post.. but i just get so infuriated sometimes when it's so hard to do even the simplest things.. i bet some people feel the same way about my software. actually i know some do because i get the hate mail

Renegade · « **Reply #20 on:** April 11, 2007, 04:42 PM »

there is a lot to love about drupal, and i tend to fly off the handle with frustration sometimes, so i apologize for the harsh nature of my post.. but i just get so infuriated sometimes when it's so hard to do even the simplest things.. i bet some people feel the same way about my software. actually i know some do because i get the hate mail
-mouser (April 11, 2007, 03:57 PM)

That's what Shitware.net is for!

We all get frustrated with computers - that's just how things are.

I shy away from the LAMP stuff like Drupal because I really don't like PHP or the messy type of things that you need to do to configure LAMP applications (e.g. Having to configure a web server for case insensitivity is just silly - IIS has this right). Microsoft tends to have things that are more usable and easier. If I really need a *nix solution, then I figure that I'd want to go with Solaris instead. But I don't need strategic nuclear powered *nix servers...

If you really want a good CMS that is easy to work with, DotNetNuke is worth looking at, but it's ASP.NET, not LAMP.

Dr-Leech · « **Reply #21 on:** April 21, 2007, 04:08 PM »

I'm using Drupal some time ago and it's a monster, but a good monster.
Also tried other CMSs and no one were that configurable and well supported like Drupal. If you see the contributed modules, there are lots and most of them well documented.

I agree that Drupal customization is a really headache, but if you get handly with it you will see that everything is really customizable without modifing the core itself.

mouser · « **Reply #22 on:** August 31, 2008, 09:54 AM »

i got a nice book on drupal and started thinking i was too hard on it.
then i spent an hour screaming today after discovering that the forum i created was in accessible to any users and spent an hour trying to figure out why and how to enable it.

i truly believe drupal is a powerful and horrible evil unusable system. avoid at all costs is my advice.

sri · « **Reply #23 on:** August 31, 2008, 12:55 PM »

http://www.howtotuts...site-using-drupal-1/

Dr-Leech · « **Reply #24 on:** August 31, 2008, 04:05 PM »

Good thing you haven't tried Joomla yet, or your post title should was "Drupal rocks!".