By Ragwin on

Hi folks,

I'm an experienced programmer (over 20 years on pc servers and mainframes). Most of web site development skills are in MS products (ASP/C#/SQL Server). I used to create my own websites from scratch with asp, hmtl and javascript. But I'm getting a bit long in the tooth now and I'm looking to get the software platform to do more of the work for me in the future so I can concentrate on marketing, content and promotion. I'm moving from MS to Linux resources for my websites so I know I've got to pick up PHP and MySQL, but from what I've seen of them so far they don't appear too intimidating.

I have two websites to build. Both will require the ability to allow the visitors to join groups and add their content (though that content will be verified by me before being published). They will require some bespoke database tables developed for storing values for each user but it won't be particularly complicated.

So can Drupal satisfy my needs? I've read an excellent comparison between WP/Joomla/Drupal and I got the impression the choice for me was between Drupal and Joomla. One thing I have in the back my mind is scalability.

Thanks for any replies.

Comments

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

Your biggest challenge will be to stop thinking of everything as a programming challenge and start thinking of everything as a process of assembling a solution from existing components. It is highly likely that whatever you have in mind can be accomplished without writing a line of code or mucking about in the database.

As for scalability: https://www.getpantheon.com/

Jaypan’s picture

Jaypan commented

If you are choosing between Drupal and Joomla, pick Drupal. People often go Joomla->Drupal, almost no one ever goes Drupal->Joomla.

Yelvington gives some very appropriate advice for Drupal. I have a hard time with this myself as I'm a coder by nature, and I want to code most everything. But much of the strength in Drupal lies in its contributed modules. My Drupal new year's resolution this year is to try to find out how to do things using modules before defaulting to coding something.

The other strength of Drupal is that it's very, very dynamic, meaning you will not have to write nearly as much code as you may be thinking you have to, even just when using core. Many people come in here and say I want to write a module to do X, thinking that X is too dynamic to have a pre-existing solution to handle, when in reality X can be done with core alone and not need any contributed modules or coding.

So the best thing to do would be to first learn how to use Drupal as a non-coder would, and see how far that can take you, and THEN start coding for it. This will put you in the strongest position, as you will be able to determine when you should be using a module, and when you should be coding your own solution.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying to always use contributed modules, often the coding in them is not so good, or you need 4 modules to provide one piece of functionality you could provide yourself by writing a couple of function calls in a module. Drupal is not only a CMS, it is a framework, and it's a dream to code for once you figure out how it works. But you want to learn the non-coding bits before you start working with the coding bits.

Ragwin’s picture

Ragwin commented

If you are choosing between Drupal and Joomla, pick Drupal.

Since I am almost a complete noob at using a CMS, it might be an advantage to start with Drupal since I am not burdened by any pre-conceptions of how a CMS should work. I don't know how Wordpress or Joomla work so I won't be looking for similarities in Drupal. I'll just be learning the Drupal way of doing things.

So the best thing to do would be to first learn how to use Drupal as a non-coder would, and see how far that can take you

That makes perfect sense. I don't currently have a design plan for either of my sites (I do have set idea about their purpose), so how they end up is pretty flexible.

Useful comments.

Ragwin’s picture

Ragwin commented

I've started watching some videos produced by LevelUpTuts on YouTube and I'm impressed so far. I like the menu system of Dashboard/Content/Structure/Appearance/People/Modules/Configuration/Reports/Help - that seems like a very logical framework to me.

Jaypan’s picture

Jaypan commented

Yeah, there was a lot of effort put into the Drupal 7 UX: http://www.d7ux.org/

Silverngold’s picture

Silverngold commented

Very nice work here.

Ragwin’s picture

Ragwin commented

Thanks for that advice. I find that re-assuring. Pantheon sounds like a Cloud based solution for scaling a Drupal website?

yelvington’s picture

yelvington commented

Pantheon is a Drupal hosting service that is optimized for scalability. To use Pantheon as a customer, you have to learn a very little bit about using the Git version-control software, but really it's something that any sentient being can pick up in five minutes. And the benefit is that you get a fully versioned development environment with dev, test, and live sites.