Wrapping my Head around Drupal

Drupal has succeeded in splitting my head wide open. Every time I think I have a grasp on anything, there's some new approach that has been implemented, lauded as infinitely better than the original - so I dig and I read and I try to understand... but I end up with my head bursting wide open.

And the problem isn't so much that I can't get a handle on things - but that, if I'm to build a community based on drupal, how in the heck are my members ever to understand how things work? I'm really scared that they'll feel as lost as I do and just give up.

So I thought maybe I'd offer up what it is I'm trying to accomplish, and maybe someone might help me to at least get started in the right direction.

Of primary importance is that users with little to no experience can create and share content (video, audio, text, graphics) and meet others who share their interests. I don't really care how difficult it is for ME to set up Drupal to create this environment - but it absolutely must be simplistic for the end user.

Managing Content

In my opinion, content is absolutely worthless unless it can easily be shared with others. For instance, if a new user writes a humorous blog entry, they should be able to easily identify it as "humor", then be instantly rewarded for their effort by having their work instantly appear in the "latest humor" section of the site, for all to see. Other members should then be able to rate that humor - so that after the entry falls from the first page, it's easy to find in a "Best of" section (for the week, the month, the year, etc.) And I'd like for the same method to apply to audio (with different categories), video (with different categories), pictures (with different categories), artwork (with different categories), etc. I'd like for all members to have an equal opportunity to share their work with everyone else.

Apparently, their is a category module, which is supposedly "better" than the taxonomy and book modules for organizing content and allowing users to navigate that content. But I really have no idea?

The problem I'm trying to solve here, again, is that users should primarily be allowed to SHARE their content with others. Who wants to bother creating something, then be forced to send a URL (blech!) to their friends to view it.

Meeting People

MySpace obviously works. Apparently, people love to tweak their little myspace profiles to the point that the pages are completely unreadable, filled with stupid pictures and all sorts of junk lying around the web. It's then a competition to see who can make the most "friends" while distoring their profile page to make it as "unique" as possible.

Even though I think it's completely retarded, it obviously works. Geocities took the same approach, allowing people to create their own little websites - which again, were pretty much completely unreadable.

So I'm thinking that profile pages should allow members to display as much info as they like about themselves, and be infinitely tweaked to the point of absolute disaster (without allowing any PHP scripts).

Basically, the ultimate "Profile" page should allow the end user to "express" themselves without being locked into any preset design. Chaos reigns supreme.

And my guess is that forcing users to accept a design, or even a set of designs, most likely won't be very successful. It would be like asking people to accept a preset number of answering machine messages. Users want to "own" their space. They want the page to have their personality.

When approaching this problem, it seemed that CivicSpace had the best approach to the problem - at the very least, the CRM allows for zipcodes to be defined and used for finding events and other users.

But... for the life of me, I can't seem to figure out how to work it - or whether administrators are the only people allowed to use the CRM. It all seems too geeky for end users - no way to just enter a zipcode, drop in a name, and try to find the girl you went to high school with.

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So anyway, that's the basis of what I'm trying to accomplish. And I'm utterly confused as to where to begin - as it all takes quite a bit of time to comprehend, and I'm scared to death that I'll choose the wrong path and be forever blocked from ever finding my way back out of the maze without starting all over again.

The 4.7beta seems to be out, because there is no CRM for it - and, as far as I understand, no other way of implementing zip codes without it for finding "friends."

CivicSpace is apparently just a pre-fab version of 4.6 - but it's never made clear as to whether it's actually just Drupal with CiviCRM dropped in and ready to roll out of the box, or if it's actually a lot of different code "based" on 4.6.

And finally, there's the category module vs. the taxonomy and books module - I read through the entire handbook that was created for it, on its own site - and while it sounded good, it didn't seem to have much community backing - which means I could eventually be stuck with the "temporarily better mousetrap" that ends up being abandoned.

And then there is the filemanager module, which is supposedly "better" than the default Drupal method and required by other modules - but there's really no way to tell whether it is or isn't, or if 4.7 or a later version will take a new approach, obliterating the need for it and then causing everything that hooks into it to fail - same for flexinode and the other "base" modules...

So if anyone might bother, I'd really appreciate any guidance on what flavor of Drupal is best suited to creating the most simplistic yet powerful end user community environment. Again, I don't care how difficult it is for me to put things together - as long as it all appears seamless to the end user.

And I really am worried that, as powerful as it is, Drupal may just be too darn geeky for end users, that they can't be shielded from taxonomy and the rest of it?

Thanks for any help.