drupal for beginner site managers

Sure it gets frustrating at times, but the information is out there (albeit usually spread all over) - but it comes down to having a good set of modules that you know well, being able to write good requests for help when you do get stuck and i'm sure doing some support in the issue queues would probably also endear you to the mod maintainers when you do have a question to ask.

Web Development is a technical field that usually requires a technical response to an issue, no one ever said that Drupal was specifically aimed for the point-and-grunt developer, maybe your expectations arent quite in line with what's going on here.

For example, filtering a tweet by language - probably doesn't support it, and probably needs some code written to make that work, it's a very specific problem that I would guess very few people would have a need for at this stage for what ever reason - or it would already be in the code, so yes, it might require some development work there

Someone has to have written the code to filter out tweets by language - functionality does not write itself, and - you don't (generally) create functionality by point-and-grunt.

Secondly, I believe that Issue Queue's arent really the place to get "how do I.." type questions answered, as they dont get many people looking over those queues, people would only generally see your question in the Issue Queue if they are looking in the Issue list in the first place which is usually for a very particular reason.

Try the forums or even better drop into #drupal-au on IRC, you need to post your question to somewhere that will get good exposure to people that have a little bit of knowledge about the framework and twitter.

Or stick to Wordpress (does it support filtering tweets by language?)

Hi KayBee57,
No my post on the Drupal Downunder 2011 isn't about a quick easy fix for the technical side of drupal, we have put in the time and paid the money to experts for training and help - and we will continue to do so.

Our push is for a greater design and function standard - best practice - bench mark - quality document. Why is this needed now? Drupal has really taken off with many people learning on the fly in an organic manner (as you have highlighted above) - while this is fantastic it has opened up a real divide in the quality of sites being produced and managed.

Drupal is an excellent platform - however we now need to set some standards as it is complete waste of time and resources having new developers to troll thru forums looking for the best way to install a pathauto - global redirect modules. But most importantly it is about creating quality online experiences for users and site managers - and better working and development/management practices.

As web platforms get more complex and governments start adopting drupal CMS a standard will be enforced by the powers that be - my preference would be for drupal developers to collectively set the standards and drive the quest for best practice. I hope developers can see the long term value in this quest and opening this up at a major conference is a great place to start.

cheers
Anthony

I think that's consistent of everyone's early experience. Drupal itself changes so fast, drupal.org docs go out of date (and just get added to in a big stacks-on), books go out of date, volunteer support goes quiet, etc etc.

There are friendly people in #drupal-au in IRC and local user-groups - these are great resources even if just to vent! :)

If that was an example of you getting flamed, I think you are being too sensitive. That was a very straightforward, emotionally-neutral response from the module maintainer. There was already an earlier, more general request that covered your issue. If I was the maintainer, I'd mark your request as a duplicate and direct discussion to the earlier request. There was information that was relevant to you in the earlier request, namely that it was not possible to do what you wanted without someone patching the code. That is useful because it lets you know what your options are:

a) Find a way to do what you want with the existing module - not possible.
b) Patch the code yourself - possible.
c) Pay someone to patch the code for you - possible.

See, that's the thing you have to remember about Drupal and open-source projects. Before free CMS's like Drupal, you had 2 choices if you wanted your website to have some functionality: code it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. If you read the support requests for most Drupal modules, you'll see time and time again people with the attitude, "Your module sucks. It won't do this thing I want. Make it do it for me" (not directed at you, your requests seem very polite and reasonable). Actually demanding that someone who has devoted enormous amounts of time for free to provide complete strangers with some functionality, devote even more time just because they say so. It's rude and disrespectful. There's no harm in asking of course - most module maintainers would like to know what functionality is missing and useful to others. But whinging and demanding is different - it completely ignores that it's not a closed-source project, they're not powerless to fix the issue, no-one has taken the first two options I mentioned away. The code is all there - take it, change it to do what you want, or pay someone to do it for you. And then submit it back as a patch.

You don't seem lazy or rude. I would advise if you want to to bump, it's better if you include more detailed information about your issue or any further developments - if you can't, you should probably reconsider bumping. You might want to consider learning a bit or PHP. Writing elegant OO PHP is an art form but writing the sort of procedural PHP you see in Drupal modules is not that difficult. Just being about to write _preprocess_node and _preprocess_page functions in your theme's template.php gives you so much more control over the look of your site. Otherwise, if you need something done, consider paying someone to do it - your request would take an experienced dev less than an hour to come up with a generic solution (to add optional custom search parameters) that could be submitted as a patch. If you want a quick and dirty solution just for you, you could probably just change line 65 in twitter_pull.class.inc to: