[support] Do you *really* have to be a programmer - was Re: Newbie question on concept

[Victor Kane]

I think you are on the right track using Drupal.

The confusion arises as users of all kinds get very excited about all levels
of using this framework, and start getting carried away in their suggestions
without taking into account what your objectives are.

Dries, the original creator of Drupal, spoke at the last conference about
freeing the users from webmasters (you do not have to know HTML) and about
how now the task is to free the users from programmers (and certainly from
programming) and to free the users from designers also.

While people who love to program, or work as programmers, love to program a
lot with Drupal, and as graphic designers work with Drupal in their every
effort to make Drupal "not look like Drupal" for their fashion-conscious
clients, on the other hand, you can fashion very decent looking and above
all, functional sites without any programming or even theming at all.

To go beyond the blogging question, simply set the front page as a page. If
your site is basically a brochure site, you can start out by following Laura
Scott's excellent "Approaching a brochureware website using Drupal" (link:
http://pingv.com/blog/laura/200509/approaching-a-brochureware-website-using-drupal),
which shows you which modules to use, to set up an about page, a
products
or services page, contact form, etc., all without programming.

Then, if you need special blocks, you can make them with a WYSIWYG editor
like TinyMCE.

If you need special content types you can make them without programming just
as you would in Access or the like by going to Administer >> Content Types.

If you need special views, you can create views, with their own special
paths for page views, also without programming. These paths can be placed in
menus or blocks holding links, or put on pages as links.

And you can house everything in the default Garland theme, with your own
color scheme, dispensing with the graphic artist, and you will have a great
site.

Good luck!

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

On 4/25/07, Krister Ekstrom <krister at kristersplace.ws> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> In the message quoted below you talked a lot of having to make ones own
> code to get around in Drupal. I know i'm a newbie to all this CMS stuff
> and i consider myself an idiot when it comes to programming in any shape
> or form even though i know a tiny little bit about Javascript but not
> enough by far to get around, partly because i have a terrible memory for
> syntax, so my question is do i really need to know about programming to
> be able to manage Drupal?
> I chose to go with a CMS because as a blind person it can be quite
> tricky to do layout and contents that looks desent and more atractive
> than working in a standard html editor, but if you have to learn how to
> hack in order to manage this, maybe it's time to think again.
> /Krister
>
> J-P Stacey wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >  > I realized CMS is aimed at Blog users, and I am having tough time
> >> getting quick tutorials for commercial site where no Blog or News Feeds
> >> are needed.
> >
> > I realize I'm late to this party, but as a newbie myself I've just come
> > through the procedure of turning Drupal into my CMS of choice, so being
> > rubbish is still fresh in my mind!
> >
> > Although Drupal isn't specifically aimed at blog users, out of the box
> I'd
> > say it *does* look very bloggy, so the confusion is understandable. The
> > default theme is very much "WordPress++", I'd say. But under the hood it
> has
> > different ways of doing things that mean you can move fairly quickly
> away
> > from that.
> >
> > My suggestions would be:
> >
> > * CCK, as suggested elsewhere. You can create new content types with
> Drupal
> > core, although they all have the same input fields. CCK provides the
> ability
> > to create custom input fields, like dates or extra metadata.
> >
> > * To get a more hierarchical structure to the site, look into the
> category
> > module. This puts Drupal-core taxonomies into "containers": when a
> content
> > node is tagged with a taxonomy term, it then goes into that container.
> It's
> > a slight hack and a bit fiddly but it seems to work well.
> >
> > * Get the hang of PHPTemplate, Drupal API, Drupal Form API and the
> concept
> > of theme_* and hook_* functions early on, as it'll save you extra
> > programming later. These permit you to hook up to Drupal core in your
> own
> > templates, so you (a) don't reinvent the wheel and (b) have less hassle
> > moving to a new theme later on.
> >
> > * Learn about page Regions (sidebar, header, footer etc.) and the Blocks
> > that go into them, and the Views you can use to automatically generate
> > content for blocks.
> >
> > * For your own purposes, check out Drupal's language locale support.
> Make
> > heavy use of the t() function in your own code and you should find you
> can
> > translate between different languages easily.
> >
> > * Similarly for your own use, look into one of the more
> XHTML/CSS-friendly
> > included themes like garland. Some themes still make extensive use of
> > <table> elements for layout.
> >
> > Good luck!
> >
> > J-P
> --
> [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
>
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