Converting to Drupal

So, I'm not new to the web: I've been writing compliant xhtml/css for about 8 years and php/mysql stuff for about 5. I've got this web site I've been managing for almost 4 years; I built it from the ground up, the efficient and compliant xhtml/css, the hand-coded php scripts that have helped me automate some processes (like rolling my own calendar, shopping cart) and just a few really nice sub sites.

I've got a decent structure with folders for the big topics (/conservation, /data, /permits, /education, etc) and generally each main topic has 10-30 sub pages and some sub sites:
- water conservation is a topic with some regular html pages and some sub sites

But I'm completely lost as to where to start.

Hello Drupal Gurus,

could some please show me the link on how to understand how nodes work and how can I make drupal display an external html file?

Thanks :D

ARTWORK ON VIEW is a nonprofit art organization in San Francisco, California which displays the work of cutting edge and established visual artists on its web site. Details of our operation can be found on our URL, www.artworkonview.org. AOV's URL displays the work of visual artists and encourage web site users to directly contact the artists and, hopefully, purchase artwork directly from them.

The AOV web site is data base driven, php and MySQL,has in the order of 120-130 participating artists, seeks to increase participation to at least 500 artists and aims to eventually sell commercial banners to increase income. The original web site was designed by volunteers and requires upgrading.

The AOV URL is designed for easy use and also seeks to encourage use by tourists to specific geographic areas when they are planning art itineraries. In this connection we plan to also provide an art organization directory. We have loaded about 200 nonprofit art organizations but the art organization directory is not yet ready to go online.

We had a programmer who was upgrading the existing website. However she went out of business and is now in Australia and consequently we now need a programmer or programming firm to take over her work. Her partial work is available on our ISP's (LunarPages) cpanel. She was not using CMS.

Hi there! I'm new to Drupal, and from what I've seen so far, I like it very much.
I'm considering to convert my current website to Drupal, to save time writing HTML (my whole website is manually written at the moment).

But I don't want the look of my site to change at all. So I was wondering if any of you, more experienced users, could tell me if I can achieve my goal with drupal or not.

My website can be found at http://www.nicolaslammens.be (it's all Dutch, I'm sorry for that).

I spent over a week reading how to use drupal books, and have got a decent understanding of the main system. However there are very few books out there on how to create Themes, and many that I find are not descriptive enough, nor up to date. Anyway, I have just spent all day yesterday, and today trying to convert my one sidebar, one logo, one top menu, and one main content area into drupal, and just cannot get it to work for nothing. I am about to give up and use manual php and html, and css coding to do my site with out dynamic content. It will be a pain but I have done it before.

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone can tell me which module allows for signing up into specific roles on an event. Say, I have an event but need users to sign up for their role of choice.

i.e. www.upcoming.org has sign-ups based on "I'm going" or "I'm watching".

Which module is this that allows for this type of flexibility?