On Monday 06 October 2008 9:19:03 am Nathan Rixham wrote: > So as part of my "new job" I've been asked to research and indeed get > used to drupal 6; recon I guess. > > I've been using it for the past week; figured out all the best modules > to do everything I want etc etc. > > q: do you use drupal 6 > sub-q: and love it > sub-q: and would rather not > sub-q: have had to move away due to lack of functionality > sub-q: have found it actually didn't speed up but rather slowed development > sub-q: constantly need to write your own php to get it to do what you want. > > Thanks for all responses, and please no "go to drupal forums" responses, > that's like asking microsoft for honest feedback on microsoft products; > I need the feedback from you skilled php programmers. > > ps: personally I've found it's looks v powerful and been a learning > curve setting it all up + researching modules; but finding it "not > great" for actually making real world sites! > > Many Regards Well, I'm biased, too, as I'm a Drupal core developer. However, I also use it professionally to build web sites for clients, mostly institutional non-profits (museums, universities, etc.), and moving to Drupal was one of the best decisions my company has ever made. You can't make Drupal do everything, but you can come very close to "everything" if you know how to work with it. :-) In general, if you're not using Views and CCK, you're doing something wrong. Seriously, that is The Way Of The Future. You also need to not fall victim to the temptation to "just do it yourself", especially when it comes to theming. Drupal's power comes from the fact that, when you get down to it, it really is smarter than you in many ways if you just learn to trust it. Odds are that whatever you want to do, there's already a module that does 80% of it or more or else a way to piece together existing modules to get 90% of it or so. I highly recommend these articles, written by a colleague of mine: http://www.palantir.net/blog/sustainable-markup-how-be-a-themer-drupal http://www.palantir.net/blog/graycor-drupal-theming-works Along the same lines, use the Zen theme as a base theme (as discussed in those articles). Again, learn to trust it and don't try to rewrite all of its CSS and change class names to what you're used to, etc. It's CSS is *really* solid, and takes care of so much for you it's not even funny. (Disclaimer: Zen was largely written by another colleague of mine.) I've seen the same pattern in many people. They try to think that their code is better than whatever Drupal happens to do, so they fight it and try to do things "their way". And they waste time and produce something inflexible. Eventually they realize that wait, Drupal really is that flexible and can do what you want it to do, if you allow yourself to trust Drupal and go "with the grain" rather than fighting it. Then you produce magic. A smattering of Drupal sites that my company has done recently: http://www.imamuseum.org/ (writeup: http://drupal.org/node/188312) http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections (writeup: http://drupal.org/node/279485) http://www.herron.iupui.edu/ http://artsci.wustl.edu/ http://www.firstbt.com/ http://www.virtualk.org/ For us, we no longer ask "so can Drupal do this?" We go straight to "so how can we do this with Drupal?" because we are already confident that the answer to the first question is "Yes we can". (Obama reference not intentional.) -- Larry Garfield larry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
