Jason, I was big into Drupal from about 2005-2007. I then moved to a job where Magento was the main website platform (we also used Wordpress). Magento helped me see what a mess Drupal was. If you're looking for a PHP based system to build out a website, at this juncture, I would look first at frameworks (Zend Framework, CodeIgniter, CakePHP, Symphony), and then to CMS packages that use those frameworks (such as PyroCMS, which uses CodeIgniter). Most websites that I've worked on fit into a general category (blog, CMS, e-commerce site), but they inevitably needed some kind of extension. As a developer, I find I'm in the strongest position when I have a full fledged framework at my disposal, rather than a plugin or extension model as you'll find with Wordpress or Drupal. But, I could be wrong. It's been a long time since I have worked with Drupal, and it's possible that they've improved things. Whatever you decide to do, good luck! -Erik On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Jason Hsu <jhsu802701 at jasonhsu.com> wrote: > So far, I have substantial experience with HTML and basic experience with Ruby on Rails. > > My questions: > 1. What books, web sites, tutorials, etc. do you recommend for getting started in Drupal? > 2. How quickly do Drupal books become obsolete? In the world of Ruby on Rails, books become worthless after only a year. > 3. Is the Drupal setup finicky? It seems that all of the planets need to be properly aligned for Ruby on Rails to work properly. That's why I have uploaded my procedures to my web site at http://www.jasonhsu.com/ror.html . It's partly as a resource for the Ruby on Rails community, but it's mainly for my own use so that I never have to relearn everything. > 4. How tricky is deployment? I learned from Ruby on Rails to deploy early and often. If my application has deployment problems, I can take care of them right away and not waste my time working on something that never sees the light of day. > > -- > Jason Hsu > Founder and lead developer of Swift Linux http://www.swiftlinux.org > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > -- Erik K. Mitchell erik.mitchell at gmail.com http://mitc0185.com/