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I'm an IPhone developer who wants to change to Drupal developement.
I have already read some books, coded some samples and stuff like that.
I feel like my level in Drupal is not that bad now but I have no experience, how can I find a job? How can I show off my level in an interview?
* Coding a module? And posting it on Drupal.org?
* Coding a template? And posting it on Drupal.org?
* Coding a sample website? And posting on a website?
* Other ideas? I'm open to everything...
Martin Magkian
Best thing you can possibly have happen in a job interview is you to be an author or contributer of a library your potential employer loves.
After that, having code available to show you know what you are talking about, even if you don't have the professional experience.
After that, just the ability to speak passionately about it, and demonstrate a breadth of knowledge.
All of those things (except maybe the last) are as good or better then professional experience. Another thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have the bullet points on your resume, you really need to make up for it in your cover letter. Show the above things, but take the time to research the company, and write a customized cover letter for each application.
Drupal is known for its capabilies, but also for its steep learning curve.
This is why I believe the right way to get into the Drupal world is by demoing your capabilities.
Think about a certain content you want to work on, and build a demo site around it, including all of the different aspects of it.
Try not to write code, but to find the existing modules that fit to your needs, and to implement them properly. From my experience I know that in most cases you will get 80% of the features ready, but will need to handle the rest of the 20% yourself.
Those 20% are the hard stuff - you will need to debug code you didn't write, find yourself between all of those hooks, and solve the bugs properly.
A solved bug, combinning features from several existing modules, is a great achievement, much bigger then just writing some new module out of some code examples.
Same goes to themeing - select a well-known theme, and make it yourself ! Use advanced themeing modules like Skinr and don't just play with CSS files.
These are the main things, as far as I see them.
Good Luck !
Shushu
All of the above.
If you want to be a well known themer - build you own theme, host on drupal.org, tweet about it, offer help to others, support your issue queue, etc. If it's a nice theme, you should get a decent spotlight from that.
Outside of that, if you want to be a well known developer, you might jump on in with an existing module rather than build your own. There's thousands of modules out there all doing just about every task imaginable. It would take some imagination to come up with your own.
If you are a good developer, and are willing to learn drupal, a great idea would be to get in on existing projects. Most module developers would welcome help from others to keep things moving along. Big projects like Views, Context, Features, etc, would love to have you combing through their issue queues.
I've seen these scenarios several times before: guy helps with issue queue, guy gets named co-maintainer + gets mention on company blog, guy gets job there or with another company.
Issue queues are the perfect place to show your wares. best of luck!
Terry
Your username on Drupal.org, your reputation in the community (see certifiedtorock) will help.
Many good drupal jobs (I was looking about 4 months ago), ask for your drupal.org username before interview. They can track from this, your modules, themes and patches you have written for core or for other modules.
Having a portfolio of other site you have worked on will help. Even if they are hobby sites you have set up yorself it at least shows that you can do something.
You need to let your competence and your personality shine though. Hint having a username like user119333 with no link to a further profile may not help.
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I am looking for the most Client Friendly CMS out there. What exactly do I mean by this? Well I want something that is intuitive to use, maybe uses some drag and drop stuff, and click/edit stuff as well. I have developed a number of wordpress and Joomla sites. And while both products are great, I continually get clients that come to me and just say, "I hate Wordpress, I don't want a Wordpress Site".
I have done some quick research (mostly through this site) and I have found basically two options that people have talked about. SilverStripe, and ModX. Both look like viable alternatives to the Wordpress/Joomla CMS's, but I was curious if anyone has any other options? And if not, and you recommend one of the two I mentioned, can you tell me the advantages over one another, and which one "YOU" think is the most client friendly. Obviously I could dive into both and explore the framework, but if others have experience in them, maybe you could just save me some time and point me towards the right one...
It would also be nice if it was developer friendly as well :) but the most important thing is making it easy for the client to add/edit content without really knowing much about HTML/CSS.
I discovered Processwire a while ago and really recommend it. I think it's intuitive for both developers and clients. It won a Best Free CMS award from cmscritic.com last year, and the community is very friendly and helpful.
Before i mostly had worked with Drupal, but it always felt like a behemoth. Processwire on the other hand feels very light, fast and easy in comparison. The API is a joy to program with and the administration backend is minimalistic and straight-forward.
Here is a link to video tutorials and introduction: http://processwire.com/videos/
Here is a forum discussion on PW vs. WordPress et al: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/4143-wordpress-dominates-19-of-the-web/?hl=comparison#entry40592
A quote (from the above link):
I have yet to discover one client who didn't prefer ProcessWire over WordPress after a 5 minute demo. Another quick fix would be to let a prospect talk to one of your previous clients. Let them tell the prospect how they work and how little time they have to spend to actually edit their website instead of wandering around a (looking beautiful, but UX wise dramatic) backend. ProcessWire is point and click and it does what a client expects.
And here is the cmscritic review: http://www.cmscritic.com/processwire-review/
I have never heard of ModX, but can say for certain that SilverStripe is the most user friendly CMS I have seen so far. and above that, it is extremely developer friendly as well.
if you ask me, SilverStripe is perfect for developers.
for web designers I am not so sure, the thing is, there are not so much SilverStripe modules.
but thats not a problem for a developer because in SilverStripe creating new modules is so easy, that you are often faster coding a module on your own than searching and installing one.
of course SilverStripe is not perfect, there are some rough edges here and there, but overall, I am extremely happy with it.
I am using SilverStripe since years now and have only received positive feedback from my clients about the CMS.
if you are interrested in SilverStripe, checkout the demo at http://demo.silverstripe.org or jump right into the basic tutorial: http://doc.silverstripe.org/framework/en/
I do in fact build all of my client sites with WordPress. The administration is very smooth and impresses them upon first login. Its easy to design for and the community maintains some awesome plugins I use on every project.
People often express dislike for Wordpress but I have never heard a valid issue when it comes to WordPress being 19+% of the internet and one of the best client solutions out there.
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I am a novice for both concrete5 and drupal however I have been looking at Concrete5 and Drupal. I am looking to create a web application that needs to be extensible. Client requirement will start from basic content management and it will need to extend to workflow based web application. I have been looking at the architecture for Drupal and Concrete5. For those who haved used either one which one would you recommend? Thanks in advance.
My two cents... Concrete 5 is far superior to Drupal.
I have over 25 sites using C5 right now. I have had 4 drupal installs in the past and have converted all of them to C5. I have also used Joomla, Expression Engine and PyroCMS extensively.
When I first started using C5, there were some great advantages for my customers in terms of end user updates to pages. It is FAR more simple for an average non-tech user to update content. This was a major win in my eyes. Most users were struggling to update content with the other options because it wasn't fluid or as WYSIWYG. The inline editing of C5 is outstanding.
That said, it was also very easy to convert HTML into templates using the tagging commands of C5. So in no time at all, I could take a site that was static HTML or PHP and convert it into a C5 instance. Again, very simple.
Within the last 6 months or so, I would say the extensibility has increased dramatically. New modules are added to the marketplace nearly daily. Some are FREE and some are paid, but I think ALL of them are cheap for the functionality and worth it. Most are $20 in that range.
If you know PHP well, you can write your own modules easily and not have to pay a dime and also not worry about the C5 core upgrades. There are lots of mechanisms built in that help developers take advantage of the system without having to worry about getting lost in software upgrades. This was another great advantage, that has cost me in the past with other CMS platforms.
In summary... Concrete5 is a top-notch CMS that is widely extensible with a ton of functionality that is super easy for anyone to use.
I've been using concrete5 for about 2 years now and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Drupal is more powerful, but the amount of work that needs to be done to get to the starting point that c5 gives you right after install is huge. The concrete5 core provides you with a whole lot of stuff out of the box, and adding further functionality is straightforward with its comprehensive (although not always terribly well documented) API and active forums.
In terms of downloadable addons, there are many which cost but I've found that in many cases it's simpler to pay what is normally a low sum to get the functionality I need than to spend all the time (and time = money) coding it myself. Those situations where I've had to code a solution have been pretty painless - any trouble has been my failing, not the CMS'. Hooking into the core is really easy, including adding Dashboard pages for particular functionality (there's a helpful howto from Andrew, the core dev, on the site which explains how to do it).
Of course, the trump card is users' ability to edit their sites without having to understand UI 'metaphors' and 'paradigms'. It just works. You go to the page, click edit, and type away. Simples. My experience with pretty computer-illiterate clients has been very positive indeed, and I feel genuinely confident when I tell new prospects that they can expect to learn how to edit their site in 5 minutes.
I have been using C5 for over a year now. The core team for C5 is committed to making it better and better every release, and they often implement contributed Code....but the thing I like most over say, Joomla, is that the directive of the CMS doesn't change. while it is open source in that solid community contributions that line up with the overall vision will be included, the core team (original developers) oversee all aspects of the code. So it's more carefully comed over than other "community driven" CMS's.
There is a huge community involvement and help in everything from getting started to deep programming.
And above all other things...Clients pick up using the C5 dashboard in minutes. You'll be lucky to get that in most other CMS's.
I have enough experience with to confidently say that it is pretty extensible. There are modules for most common things that you would want to do. If there isn't you can always create you own module. Downside is that the learning curve can be a bit overwhelming at first. Drupal's UI had been lacking but it's been improved with Drupal 7. But it also benefits from a decent sized community.
I also dabbled a bit in Concrete5 and was impressed with it's easy to use content editing functions. From what I remember, there was a smaller learning curve and the metaphor they used for content mimicked a normal static website with files and folders. The other big difference I noticed was that most of the modules have to be paid for. Not sure if that means they would be of higher quality but something else to consider.
I'm also interested in some perspectives from Concrete5 users.
Concrete5 hands down is the best CMS I have used. I'll second what Chad says about clients picking up on C5 in no time at all. When I demo Concrete5 to potential clients that first thing they usually say is "I can do that." Users also love that amount of functionality that comes rigth out of the box and I like that fact that most of the code that I have worked with in my experience has been pretty solid.
As CTO of concrete5 I'm a little bit biased, but I can tell you that concrete5 does offer a lot of extendability, and we try to do so in a way that scales the learning curve along with your knowledge of the system.
For example, the CMS tools are simple to understand right out of the gate. You can build sites with no customization that clients can easily edit. Then, when you need a bit more, you can go to our marketplace to download free or commercial add-ons that extend the functionality of your site. Once that isn't enough, it's easy to create custom block types which present small, encapsulated bits of presentational content on your site, and let your clients use the CMS to place new instances of them. If you need more than just bits of content, you can use concrete5's custom model-view-controller functionality to start working with full pages and external scripts. From there you can start diving into the framework itself, including our concept of events (similar to hooks in Drupal/Wordpress), helpers, attributes, and libraries, and start working with our file manager, user manager, permissions and interface at a low level. You don't need to know any of that stuff to get started, however, which is what we think makes concrete5 so compelling.
And, as Chad mentioned, when you get the stuck, the community is one of the best and most responsive out there.
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I'm just starting to learn Drupal, and I am really liking it.
What are the most common pitfalls for a beginner? How can they be avoided?
First of all you should be clear with yourself on what you are trying to learn:
Theming?
Site building?
Developing new modules/functionality?
Of course the boundaries of each of those areas are not sharp, but the patterns that you will follow to learn about drupal will be quite different. Here's my opinion:
General pitfall (applies to all areas)
The single most recurrent mistake beginners do is to be in a hurry. In a world of books with titles like "learn to master C++ in 24 hours or less" people approaches drupal believing that they can get away with a couple of days of playing around with somebody's else code. If they do not understand at first sight how things work in Drupal they switch to rant mode and begin to post on blogs and forums on how much drupal is stupidly complicated.
So: be prepared to invest time and energy to embrace the high level of complexity (which is something different than complication) of Drupal. Be prepared to actually study how things work rather than skim over help requests on forums and mailing lists. If you are still not convinced. Here it comes some good reading.
If you are learning about theming
Pitfall: learning by trying to hack a previously existing theme.
A better way: first off, give at least a good in-depth look at the Drupal theming guide. It's dry and it's boring but it gives you a good overview of the flow of the theming engine. Then download and install the zen theme and start you theme by using the starter kit that is included. I recommend - if you use Drupal 6 - to use the version 2 of the theme, although in beta, as it has a much more logical organisation of its internal files, at least IMO.
If you are learning about building sites
Pitfall: getting overwhelmed by the amount of available modules and missing out on the big ones.
A better way: read some of the case studies that have been presented over the years on drupal.org. You will get a pretty nice idea of what are common patterns in implementing functionality by means of contributed modules. Explore and understand the core components of drupal well. They are the basis for everything else, so you will definitively need to know how the mechanism of nodes and revision works, what is the functioning of the taxonomy, how the permission/roles system work, what are the differences between nodes and blocks etc... Do not miss out on CCK and Views, which - although they are (until now) contributed modules, are a component of 99% of the drupal sites "out there".
If you are learning about writing your own modules
Pitfall: trying to put together a functionality by mean of assembling PHP and jQuery snippets of code retrieved here and there on the web.
A better way of doing: if you want to be good at drupal you can't afford to go by the just in time learning paradigma, you have to go for the old-school just in case one. You really need to have a general overall understanding of all the components of the system (amongst others: form API, menu system, hook logic, js in Drupal, node processing, theming engine, localisation, caching...). Drupal is somehow a framework, and if you do not know well the ecosystem in which you are planting your code, chances are you will spent lot of time in producing an horrible code that will soon or later fail in doing what it is supposed to. Above all you will take a lot of time to code something that possibly would have taken a fraction of the time to be realised "the drupal way".
My opinion about possible tools for learning to code well in drupal
http://drupal.org - Is packed with useful information, but it is so messy and the ratio signal/noise is so low that I would discourage to use the site as your main source of information.
Books - IMO if you are new to Drupal it might be worth to invest on a couple of books. Books provide that logical structure and learning sequence that you can't have by jumping from one site to the other, following a screencast here and a how-to there. My top three: Module development is a book very well written, with a smart progression of topics, it actually guides you to writing a few modules with increasing complexity. It is a good reading to quickly get an idea of how drupal works. Pro Drupal Develpment is the book for Drupal. It is quite dry and - although it has examples of code all along - I like it more as a study-book / reference text. Be sure to get the second edition as the first one deals with Drupal 5, which is going to be obsolete soon. The only noticeable shortcoming of Pro Drupal Development is javascript (introduced in a very hasty way). JS and Drupal is a wide topic, and for that purpose I like Drupal 6 Javascript and jQuery better as the first book I mentioned, this book is also project-based (i.e. You learn things in relation to the needs to implement a project).
Other websites - They are an invaluable source of information and examples. It is the perfect place to search when you have a general understanding on how to realise things, but too little experience in a specific domain to be autonomous (and everybody, no matter how experienced, have some domains in which they are not "pro"). Some good websites have been already mentioned by others. My all-time favourite is lullabot but drupal dojo and learn by the drop are also very good.
Community - This is a huge asset of drupal. The community is very big and very helpful and you are likely to all the time find somebody wishing to help. The IRC channel is a good place to start.
Meetings - Every 6 months the Drupal community meets for a few days (once in North America and once in Europe) to exchange expertise and information. Although travelling to DrupalCon can be (too) expensive for doing it, since a couple of meetings the community got organised to post all the videos of all the sessions held. They are an excellent resource too.
Hope this helps to get you going, and best luck with your learning! :)
For Drupal beginners, and "especially" if, like me, one has a firm grasp of MVC or MVP concepts, I would recommend buying or borrowing "Pro Drupal 7 Development", Third Edition.
As for pitfalls:
Learn the menu (routing) system
Embrace the Form API
While some have embraced Zen, I have personally embraced Omega
As one stated earlier, Views are your friend. Model and create as many "Content Types" as needed, then use Views to display them.
CTools is great, Views is the best sauce on planet Drupal, but tread lightly around the Panels and Page Manager interface. :)
I hope that helps.
Learn to theme using the Zen theme or something like it as a base
Theme fields, not pages
Views are your friend
ImageCache rocks
You could - a lot of people started with the Garland theme that comes with Drupal and got stuck because it has logic in the middle (big no-no in a theme) and renamed its parts confusingly. Zen is documented.
Here's a podcast at Lullabot about it:
http://www.lullabot.com/audiocast/podcast-74-drupal-design-round-table
One common pitfall is not to do enough research on the different modules available for each task or function that you are trying to accomplish. It is very easy to install a module in Drupal and start working with it without fully understanding the nuances of that module. It might seem as though the module is working as expected. However, halfway though your project you might find that that a particular module has a limitation or issue that cannot be overcome without major custom code. Another module might have been just as appropriate for the project but also met your additional requirement. A good example of this is deciding how to setup your user permissions. There are many modules that help enhance Drupal's out of the box permissions system but each one works differently and has a specific feature set. Do you need special login screens for different users, workflow requirements, etc? Also included in this is a proper evaluation of whether you should use a module that does not quite meet your needs or write your own instead. Without fully understanding the limitations of the module as related to your specific requirements you could go down a path where you would spend a lot of time trying to fit the module into your needs instead of just quickly building one from scratch that exactly matches your requirements.
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Looking for some feedback on those of you who have evaluated umbraco lately.
I've been on a quest for the 'best' cms that balances ease of use/extendability/customization etc. to use as a base for a new vertical product I am in the planning stages on, so for the past month or so I have been downloading, installing, reading source code and creating test sites in every asp.net cms I can get my hands on - and so far I have pulled down GraffitCMS, MojoPortal, Oxite, Orchard, Kuboo and maybe a couple of others that I am not remembering of the top of my head.
For each of those, except Umbraco, I have been up and running in less than a couple of hours, including adding pages, customizing templates, and in some cases (especially Graffiti), writing drop in widgets in C# in a matter of just a few hours....
But with Umbraco, after wrestling it for almost 2 days just getting it to run, and now another morning watching videos, and then building pages etc, I am still unable to even get even a simple site operational, and even the pages I have gotten working crash routinely (not to mention being a dog)...
So, the question is: Am I doing it wrong? or is it really that hard to work with? and more importantly, if I continue to push forward, will it be worth it? or do I cut my losses and move on?
Edit: asp.net with SQL Server support are requirements of anything I pick.
UPDATE ONE YEAR LATER (Feb/2011):
My initial impressions are still accurate, Umbraco is different than most of the other CMS's that I have used in the past, and for me took a bit longer than usual to 'get it', but now that I have, I have to say I have a much better appreciation of the product, what it does, and how it does it - and to top it all of, it really performs really well - especially with the latest release of 4.6.1. So call me a convert - I am glad I stuck it out and then took another look. I only update this post now, over one year later so as not to leave my initial negative 'review' here for posterity.
The learning curve for umbraco is short but steep. Once it all 'clicks' then you'll be up and running in short order.
It's different from other CMS platforms in that you doesn't give you anything out of the box - just a blank canvas to work with. Other cms systems will set you up with a default template and allow you to drop in pre-built functionality. Umbraco is, by design, not like that at all. You only get out what you put in, it doesn't generate anything for you.
This is ideal for developers and designers who want 100% control over their code/markup.
Version 4.7 (currently in release candidate) introduces the Razor syntax for creating macros. This does away with needing XSLT+XPath which I think was a big stumbling block for a lot of people. Even if you're not familiar with Razor, it is much intuitive to learn than the XML based offerings.
The videos have been mentioned by other posters below. $20 is a small price to pay to get up and running quickly.
Does it matter? What I mean is, if you find it hard to use, and there are other alternatives available, why persist? If it's non-intuitive to you, then you're going to find it hard to use. If it doesn't have some killer feature you (think you) need, dump it and move on. You don't need the hassle of trying to wrap your head around some oddly-designed (to you) product, and the product's developers don't need the hassle of trying to support people who think their product should work in some way it wasn't designed to.
None of this is intended to be harsh, just practical. You have the freedom to choose, so choose what works best for you. This sounds like it isn't working, so move on. My brother-in-law wanted to buy a Volvo, but found the controls and dashboard totally confusing, so he wound up with a BMW instead. Nothing wrong with the Volvo, nothing wrong with my brother-in-law, just cognitive dissonance. Don't worry about it.
I've been building sites with Umbraco for something like 5 years now, and I don't recognize your description of Umbraco as a very difficult CMS, but I'll try to provide a few pointers here to help you if you're still considering Umbraco:
Go to http://our.umbraco.org, read the Wiki-pages, and post any questions in the forums there, it's a really friendly community.
Always use Microsofts Web Platform Installer when installing Umbraco, It'll help you create your site, and set up your database. Just be sure not to install Umbraco in a sub/virtual directory, since Umbraco can't handle a setup like that.
If possible, do your install on a development machine with IIS7 and SQL Server Express, it'll work for sure, and deployment of a finished site can be done with a xcopy transfer and a restore of a database backup.
Don't start a new Umbraco site, before you've coded the HTML you'll be using for the site, or at least have a really clear idea about the page types, and html content you'll need.
I hope I'll be seeing you on the Umbraco forums.
Regards
Jesper Hauge
As a grizzled CMS veteran I can say that Umbraco is no harder to set up and use than many other CMS solutions.
However much of whether you find it hard or easy depends largely on your previous experience with CMS and your expectations for what a CMS should provide out of the box.
I've worked mostly with larger CMSs:
Microsoft CMS
Immediacy
Obtree
Reef (anyone remember that one!)
etc....
Against those it is no harder to use and is probably easier as it tends to get out of your way and lets you get on with building the functionality you require.
However if your expectations are more based around things like Wordpress, i.e. install and go but with more limited options, then it can be hard to start with (if you just fire it up without installing a website starter kit).
My recommendation is that if you are building a small site you take a look at the Creative website starter kit at our.umbraco.org. There are also many packages that you can install to make things easier or add specific functionality (including pre-built navigation controls and full blog solutions).
Also take a look at the Wiki on our.umbraco.org and ask questions in the forum, the community is helpful and friendly.
Umbraco is a bit different than other CMSs like Sitefinity, DNN, or Drupal. It does compare well to Sitecore.
Yes, there is a bit of a learning curve. I think the XSLT can cause that, but more likely its just the fact that you have to understand how Umbraco is structured. There are very few "modules" out of the box that you have to arrange and style. Rather, it allows you to easily create your own structure and markup that doesn't force you into a box that is hard to get out of.
I've used Drupal, Sitefinity, WordPress, Sitecore, and some others and frankly Umbraco is my favorite. If you know how to develop great web sites and you don't want limits on your design, markup, or client experience then Umbraco is a great choice. If you aren't really building a site but just want to put pieces together and get "something" working, then it may not be worth your time. If you build lots of sites or want your end users to edit content easily (not just a big rich text editor), then it may be worth overcoming the learning curve.
The videos are totally worth the $20 to watch BTW. They are far better than any documentation you can find and after maybe 5-6 videos you should be "getting it". Just buy one month and cancel after that.
The community is awesome too. If you're struggling, head over to the http://our.umbraco.org forums and get some help. There's lots of it over there.
Also, try installing the Creative Web Starter Kit package or the Blog 4 Umbraco package to get a head start. Those will be more familiar to those coming from a Sitefinity or Drupal background and may help the learning curve flatten out.
Good luck!
As a senior .NET programmer naturally I gravitate to .NET based solutions, and Umbraco seems to be a solid CMS. So I installed it and tried to gain some knowledge and getting it going and these are my findings:
Videos are ridiculously thin on content. The first introductory video talks of a runway. What on earth is a runway??? No jargon please, I'm a first time user.
You have to pay for the most advanced videos. No wonder it hasn't taken off as a mainstream .NET based CMS.
Out of the box demos are non functional (I chose the business theme an the menus don't work)
Admin area very non-intuative
Installation forces Web-Matrix installatiuon.. I have IIS7 and so do our production systems... I DON"T WANT WebMatrix!!! Finding documentation on this is also not easy.
All in all EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING to use and put me off Umbraco totally.
So I've picked up on Wordpress in the mean time and find it extremely easy to extend the admin interface. Documetnation and community support is superb. Just a pity its PHP bases because that won't fly in my company that has invested heavily in .NET developers :-(
Opinions aside, this all depends on your background. I'm a software engineer not a webmaster. So, I think like a software engineer and not like a webmaster.
Umbraco was VERY frustrating for me to install simply because there was no easily found TEXT documentation. Once I finally found that, it was a breeze to install.
The problem for many web designers is that they are not software engineers. Nothing bad about web designers who aren't also software engineers, it's just a different way of seeing the world. I have worked a lot with web designers who needed to interface with my C++ and C# back ends; they have a completely different perspective of almost everything.
Once I got past the goofy implied install process (which is bad, bad, bad -- you should never require another product JUST to install your own!) I found Umbraco to be simple and intuitive. Even my (non-programmer) girlfriend found it to be much more logical than some of the other CMS's we had been playing around with. Drupal, for example, was simple to install, but isn't really designed for a Windows development (ASP.NET/SQL Server) environment and I hate PHP, so I eventually abandoned that. MojoPortal was really nice and simple, but... it was... well... simple. Too simple.
I like Orchard, but the last time I looked at that there was so little in terms of what to start with that I decided that it would be a problem in the immediate future. I wanted a web content management system, not a web development platform. I kept thinking Orchard is a lot like *nix: "A nice place to live, but ya wouldn't wanna visit there."
Umbraco for me is a nice medium place, extremely flexible and easy to extend. It tries very hard to not get in your way. If you want to extend it you would probably do best to either learn C# (or {cringe} VB) or co-opt someone to write the CodeBehind for you. But, using it is extremely simple and straight forward.
I can't say whether it's just hard to use in general - but I came to much of the same conclusion as you did. I was especially disappointed by the lack of useful documentation - all the potentially useful video resources at their website are for pay $$$ only - what's up with that??
Also, the few intro videos I saw never quite clicked with me. They presented lots of concepts, but really never explained them much.
I also had tried Graffiti, but that never quite worked, either - and with its future less than sure, I gave up on that. Others seemed overly complicated for my requirements (Kentico, CommunityServer, and others).
In the end, based on a tip by a fellow on superuser.com, I went with BlogEngine.NET for my club's web site, and so far, I haven't looked back at all. It's pure ASP.NET which appeals to me, it's easily extensible, has a fairly large community with extensions and themes and stuff. From my personal experience, I can only recommend you check it out, if you have a mostly (blog) post based site in mind.
Strange. It takes me 5 minutes to install new Umbraco site, in 2 hours i managed to create standard portfolio website (well, when I've already got used to XSLT). It's very easy to create, modify, add custom controls, add smth to administration section, etc.
What was hard to understand (took me half an hour) that I don't have to write any SQL or C# code until I need some additional data model that's above Documents concept or Umbraco capabilities. Such samples: auto-resizing pictures, invoking some web-service, etc. - anything that comes from business logic layer that can't be covered by CMS model.
In most cases Umbraco is so easy to use that even that little bit of documentation is enough. There's pretty thin and easy API provided by Umbraco, but there's a good tech. level needed from developer, and that's XML 1st of all: XQuery and XPath to use maximum of XSLT.
And once more about installation: I just followed each step of installation guide and that's all.
The problem with Umbraco is that the UI is awkward and it's not immediately apparent how to use it and where to find things. There are several section buttons at the bottom of the page and when you click on one, you're presented with a tree view where you drill down to what you want. This is bad UI 101: no mystery meat. All functions should be organized and visible to the user. Dropdowns with submenus would have been a better approach.
The UI element names are ambiguous. For instance, there's a Members and a Users section, a Developer and a Settings section, a Content and a Media section. Isn't Media supposed to be Content? Aren't Members also Users? Aren't Settings something a Developer would do? You get my drift.
With the release of version 5, none of these issues have been addressed. The best thing they did was to kill XSLT/Classic ASP.NET and replace it with MVC and Razor. This makes getting your head around the product much easier from a developer's standpoint, despite a lack of adequate documentation for version 5. From a content creation standpoint, it's still lacking, however.
If you want to see a great UI, look no further than SiteFinity. Even though the new design isn't as good as SiteFinity 3 versions, it's content editing is the best I've seen on the market. It's too bad it doesn't support MVC and it's controls are cumbersome to modify and style.
what i wish i would have known!
Umbraco - Before you start
I've started figuring out drupal, and so far most of the results are just ugly.
May be I need to learn it in something similar to a real-life project.
I thought — to reproduce this site's functionality might be a good learning project. But I need help. :)
Without assuming this site is based on drupal (it most likely is not — too quick, I think) is there a way to build something similar in functionality (yes, slower, OK if not as fancy as this one, but close) with existing drupal modules and schemes (or with minimal tweaking)?
Or drupal is not good enough for that?
Or — is it too complicated project for a student?
Which existing modules and schemes might help to build something similar?
(No competition is intended with stackoverflow.)
Firstly, Drupal is by no means a slow system, actually it works quite well.
Secondly, this has been already asked and answered here.
By the way Drupal has a medium learning curve but, once you learn how to use you'll find it simple and you'll find it will satisfy almost everything you want to do with it. Its plugin system is just great and it's very SEO friendly (I don't get paid from Drupal I swear, I just happen to like it a lot)
My website is made in drupal if you wanna take a look (is in spanish though).
-Is there a way to build something similar [to stackoverflow] in functionality with existing drupal modules and schemes (or with minimal tweaking)?
It's a good idea to try and learn a new technology by trying to make a real-world project. But if you're intention is to actually learn drupal, then trying to solve the problem with exiting modules and "a minimal amount of tweaking", you might not learn very much!
-Or drupal is not good enough for that?
Drupal is certainly capable of the type of functionality implemented here, and much more.
-Or — is it too complicated project for a student?
It depends on the student. Different people have different abilities. Your mileage may vary.
Some suggestions that might possibly help:
There's a Drupal distribution for it ... (not just a 'module'), i.e ArrayShift. Quote from its project page:
A question/answer site built to emulate the core functionality of sites on the StackExchange platform, such as:
StackOverflow.
Drupal Answers.
There is a Drupal theme for it, i.e the ArrayShift Theme. Here is a screenshot (from its project pages):
It has been in a kind of unsupported status until recently, though the updated project page contains a roadmap to get it going again for D7 (and D8 later on).
Disclosure: I'm the (new) maintainer of ArrayShift (and its related modules and theme),
I hope this does not violate the site's policy on self-promotion.