[documentation] Hitchhikers guide to Drupal

[Larry Garfield]

On Thursday 05 January 2006 12:37 pm, Kim P. Werker wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm Kim, new to the list, and relatively new to Drupal.

Welcome aboard!

> I like Laura's wording below (except that, to my understanding,
> "kibitzing" means chit-chatting -- maybe you meant "kvetching," which
> means complaining?) 

Impromptu Yiddish lesson. :-)

"Kvetching" is roughly "bitching", in the whining-unproductively sense.  
"Kibitzing" is more of a repeated annoying nudge.  Think your mother-in-law 
in the back seat pointing out all of the great places to park that you're NOT 
taking, why aren't you taking them, oh there's a space right there, I'm just 
trying to be helpful oh there's a space... :-)

> I'm sure that in many respects I *am* the person this page is about.
> Though I'm not basing my experience of Drupal on commercial software.
> I'm basing it on software like WordPress, the oft-maligned phpBB,
> etc. I had a hell of a time first starting to use Drupal, and that's
> why I'm on this list.

I think a lot of the difference comes from the different types of software 
we're talking about.  I have a small and rarely-used blog that I run on 
Wordpress.  <insert wonderfulness of Wordpress's install here>  But, that's a 
single-purpose app.  phpBB is also mostly single-purpose.  

When I was looking for a CMS (or rather, a modular architecture I could 
study), the "big three" open source CMSes as far as I could tell were Mambo, 
Typo3, and Drupal.  Of those, Drupal was the only one I COULD get installed 
and working easily.  The only gotcha was needing to change a setting in my 
Apache config (private server) to let the .htaccess file do its stuff.  Then 
I went on and started looking at code and decided it was highly cool, so 
stuck around. :-)  

Comparing Drupal to Wordpress is like comparing KDE to an iPod. :-)  

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, 
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession 
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
Jefferson