Making Drupal Easier

In my capacity running this site I get a steady stream of inquiries and requests for assistance with everything from initial installs to theme issues to the configuration of modules and more. I have to admit that while I do the best I can to offer advice on these issues many of them are outside the scope of my knowledge. In fact, sometimes when I get inquiries I'm struck by two thoughts that underscore the nature of Drupal. The first thought is that I have a lot to learn. The second thought is that Drupal is one complex system. These thoughts lead me to some blanket advice that I believe can help a lot of people who are just getting into Drupal and scratching their heads about how to tackle what may seem like a monster task.

As I said I have a lot to learn about Drupal. This is after almost four years of building sites with the platform. So the first pieces of advice that with help the hike up Mount Drupal easier are to expect to keep on hiking and focus on the ground in front of you. To put it in clearer language, Drupal requires continuous learning and it's best to focus on learning what you need to know now instead of being in awe of all that you've yet to learn. This situation is not unique to Drupal. The necessity for constant learning is required with any system that is being constantly improved. This is worth pointing out because every day more people are getting introduced to Drupal who came from a world of closed source systems or html-based, non-dynamic websites. What was once relatively static is now a moving target...forever!

A Commitment To Learning

So a commitment to open source web systems is a commitment to learning. I think that Drupal is a complex system. It's also a powerful system and because of that you can do great things with it. I think what draws people to Drupal tends to be the shortcomings of other systems (I once heard someone say that WordPress was like a gateway drug for future Drupal developers) as well as the well known possibilities of Drupal. Those possibilities come with an overhead though. That's why some other advice I would give to people who are new to Drupal is to spend three hours learning for every hour that you try to do something with Drupal. There's no science in that ratio but I've come to believe that initially that this works better than if you flip it around and spend three hours of doing for every hour of learning. 

As far as I'm concerned toying around on a development site is akin to learning. I'm surprised at how many emails I get that start out with something like, "I'm new to Drupal and working on a site for a client..." For the clients sake I say this. Build that learning time into the development estimate. Because it's better to take longer and get it right than to rush it and force inferior process or functionality on the client. Drupal is just not a start today, launch next week (or even next month) system if you're not very familiar with it. The extra time for learning is worth it. It's worth waiting a few months to launch a site that you can be confident does what you want it to do while at the same time you're confident that you can manage it. What's the down side of this approach? The only possible downside is that you spend all this time and Drupal ends up going away or falling apart somehow. That's not happening. So what you're doing is making a valuable investment in the future of how systems are developed on the web.

Focus On The Task At Hand

Then there's the second part about putting your head down and focusing on the ground in front of you. The world of Drupal code is vast. Just look at all the modules on Drupal.org. There are more every day. And older ones are being improved upon to add new functionality. What that means is that if you are new to Drupal and you are keen on packing your first site launch with every feature found in Facebook or MySpace then you're going to run into trouble. Start a list of things that you would like people to be able to accomplish on your site. Prioritize that list and then focus on the top three things. Research the possibilities for making those three things work very well. If you can't make one of those things work well then skip it and pick up number four on the list. Keep in mind that you're implementing these things in addition to getting used to the core Drupal functions like administering the site. You are much better off launching a site with three things that work rock solid than ten things that work half way. You'll be swamped. You'll feel overwhelmed. And you might blame Drupal. Blaming Drupal for being overwhelmed is like blaming a mountain for how high it is. Drupal mountain is big. Take it one step at a time and you'll enjoy the hike.

Get To Know The Admin Functions

I have some other advice to offer. When you first get started with Drupal take a stroll through the admin section. Click on every link you can find in the core admin section. Study each page so that you can see what's available. Perhaps make notes about things you don't understand about the interface or the available options. There's a lot going on in the back end. All of it is important to the site that you will create and maintain for many years perhaps. I know that there is an urge to start doing something more right away. I've been there so I can't point fingers. But when you're done doing whatever it is come back and make a point of clicking all of those links. I've gotten so many notes from people who had probably slapped their foreheads after I pointed some simple out. My responses are usually delayed so I always hope that they were able to find out via Drupal.org or some other Drupal forum. That investment of time in the admin area can hopefully prevent some undue frustration.

My hope is that the advice in this post can help to make the transition to Drupal easier for some people. There's another more universal benefit of all this effort as well. In many ways the situation with Drupal mirrors other parts of our lives. Drupal is constantly changing. So are our lives. New functionality is constantly appearing just as new opportunities and tools are popping up in our lives. Change and complexity is all around us. So learning to slow down, be patient and embrace learning, especially in the early phases of introduction, is a very good thing. The benefits of such an approach extend to other areas. At least I think so. Oh, and one more thing. Have fun with it. Drupal should be fun. If it isn't then perhaps it's time to slow down and focus on the fundamentals.

I'll conclude by letting you know that I consider myself to be about as average as any person who builds Drupal sites can be. I've done some programming in my time but never PHP. I used to work with Dreamweaver, like so many have, but even then I wasn't a web developer by trade. These are the philosophies that have helped me, as a non-developer, get to the point where I can make some things happen with the Drupal platform. There's lots of other sage advice to be had especially at in-person Drupal meetups and on Drupal.org. This is just one more drop into the sea of Drupal advice because the goal of this site is to help you learn one drop at a time.