What is the hardest part of Drupal to learn?

As you know, I came to Drupal 6 about 2.5 years ago, and found everything about Drupal very strange. But I managed to discover it's power slowly. As a designer NOT a programmer, Drupal 6 and now 7 offers more interesting challenges. Mainly the syntax was my first hurdle but also the way Drupal spreads things out all over the place: Blocks, Nodes, Modules etc... In order to make one simple change, you first have to locate WHERE to make the change. It is NOT an easy thing to discover this. But once learned, it opens your mind to the patterns and logic of where things are and why.

I has taken me years time to figure this out about Drupal. My ongoing "Drupal Scavenger Hunt" and now that I am starting to experience Drupal 7, I realize that there are still challenges for the "non-programmer" but as with anything, all you need is patience, and good Drupal user-friends, to make the road less bumpy.

I am currently involved in a project that is still keeping me on my toes and as I search for where I used to make edits in version 6, there new variables in version 7!

I guess it never ends, but from what little I've seen in version 7, I prefer it to what I remember about version 6.

So I am in the deep end once more of the Drupal pool, and I look forward to my more experienced Drupal friends to toss me that lifesaver once in a while! Thanks in advance for your help with what will soon become a series of Drupal 7 questions.

To recap: the single most challenging thing for me about Drupal has been WHERE to make the edits and HOW to customize modules and/ or choose the best templates/ modules for the effect or purpose that you need.

Gigi :0)

I was a web developer for over 10 years using everything from Zend to WordPress to custom MVC frameworks before I started working with Drupal. The hardest part for me was learning when to use custom code versus a module, and which modules were the "standard" ones for a given type of problem.

After 2 years with Drupal, releasing my own modules, and participation in the community, my belief is that the best Drupal (not web) developers are those who know the most useful combinations of modules for different use cases, and the often obfuscated core API functions. If I were starting over, only with that realization, I'd read more "top module/function" lists/feeds, like Lullabot's Module Monday and @drupaleveryday on Twitter.

In my experience there's a lot to admire about Drupal but the learning curve for someone who can't tackle it every day -- sometimes not even once a week -- has been quite steep. A volunteer currently advising Green Mobility Network has just recommended that we start fresh in Wordpress. In partial support of his recommendation he cites this piece from TechI: http://www.techi.com/2011/07/open-source-wars-wordpress-vs-drupal-vs-joo... . The comments below the chart are particularly interesting. I'd welcome your thoughts on this -- especially about whether Wordpress is not so good for building beyond the level of a blog. Also, what about the relative merits of Drupal and WP for collecting money and posting/sharing calendars?

John Hopkins

For a basic site that has some blog posts and/or static pages that need to be editable, contact form, image gallery, I always use Wordpress. It seems to cover 90% of site use cases. Wordpress definitely has a WAY better admin UI (IMO) for content editors/site managers.

Although I haven't implemented a money collection solution for anyone yet, I looked into it one time for a lawyer friend who wanted to set up a subscription system for gated content. I remember that there were several good options (both shopping cart as well as donations and subscriptions) that integrated with PayPal and other payment gateways. Feeding the google was the main way I discovered Wordpress's capabilities.

No experience with calendaring, sorry.