I’m considering moving to Drupal. Before I do anything I thought I’d scout through the drupal site - www.drupal.org - and see what it was like. It looks pretty good, support didn’t seem to bad at first glance until you see the number of either unanswered questions, or questions answered with the arrogant RTFM response.
Someone asked for an easy install system, something drupal desperatly needs from my outside persepective. I read the install notes and you have to do a lot manually, like create SQL tables and so on. Not something a new user should have to tackle. Wordpress sets the whole lot up for you, much more friendly. The response on the drupal forum was ‘get yourself phpmyadmin.’ Yes that was the whole response, no editing from me.
So the user asks ‘Should it not be the case that the CMS system is capable of being installed easily and under most if not any configuration?’ which to me seems resonable. CMS aimed at bloggers should be simple to use out of the proverbial box. The response was ‘PhpMyAdmin is really easy to install. Sorry if I sound arrogant, but if you are not able to install PhpMyAdmin you should hire technical help to get Drupal (or anything else) installed.’ Pointless and unhelpful. If this is the kind of response you get from Drupal then I’m not sure I want to be involved at all.
OK for me creating the SQL isn’t a problem, I’ve enough experience and access on my host to do it. But for others?
Why make it harder than it should be?
Why be unhelpful to those that are making suggestions on how to improve Drupal?
Makes no sense to me. Drupal has been given a lifeline by its supporters and SUN, lots of dontations and a new server. If you’re moving to the big time get your forums sorted out, get your installer made. Installs are dull and non sexy for programmers, but essential for users.
Update:
I created a test drupal site at www.creationrobot.com/drupal
Tags: blog, creationrobot, sex, wordpress








1 response so far ↓
1 Joe Mullins // Jul 18, 2005 at 7:52 PM
Even for people who can create the tables, why make them? It’s really simple coding. This is just laziness or spite on the part of the drupal developers.
When I’m developing a site, I want to be up and running without having to re-invent the wheel. There’s no point in me replicating the efforts of every other drupal user in the world when the system could just do it and I wouldn’t have to worry about it. It has nothing to do with technical savvy and everything to do with expending my limited resources developing the site, not doing ass-basic structural setup.
I have used Wordpress instead of Movable Type on a number of small projects for exactly that reason.
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