benon7

Try looking into the "Zen" theme. The Zen theme comes with a tutorial to create an extension of the "Zen" theme.It's the ultimate starting theme for drupal. Very customizable from the start. I'm not too crazy about "views" though. I actually have a question on top of this - is using "views" more secure than creating your own custom blocks with includes and some inner join queries? I'm very noob to optimizing queries or making them lean. I try and inner join only what I have to. Sorry if I sound like an idiot..

I agree with all of this entirely. Also think drupal can handle web-design as good as any other CMS.

Also, make it appear beyond cluttered, like oversimplified with good functionality. Make it look concise, people are afraid of a large amount of choices, options, buttons, and links they can't read all at once or understand.I'm sure there are people out there whose eyes have adjusted to various forums, but overall, I hate signing up for forums just to post. I want to be able to put my email address in, bypass a decent captcha, and then post. Maybe even have anon go to an admin approval.

Maybe something that leverages existing communities to join. Making it useful for them to join. It's probably better to target clumps of people rather than individuals, though going the individuals route isn't bad either, building your visitor base one person at a time. I guess eventually it all just picks up?

Hi all, new to this forum. Name is Ben if anybody sees this post... Hope you don't mind of me telling my story of PHP discovery. I got into PHP thinking I could learn from the ground up after using Joomla, and I did, and then I started trying to make a framework or CMS as one would call it, and thought I was approaching some kind of novel idea. I disregarded Joomla as some amateur effort and swore of CMS' and thought it good to make my own CMS. Then I discovered drupal. Hated it. Then I was in heaven!! This is amazing! Makes my life easy and I can kind of rely on a community to help me!Just found this interesting thread about Failblog while trying to guess what CMS it is created with - I'm quite a fan. There's a certain part of me that is jealous for someone getting rich off of such a novel and original idea - something almost I could have thought of. If only I were that "original."I feel like these ideas all peak to one central point within a given community, and then someone decides to take action and put the idea in motion. That someone could be one person or a group of people, and that someone or group of people could actually make money off of the idea. So I guess while having the right knowledge or resources is important, so is taking action. One strength with another.I guess these communities give good ideas life.As for the perfect CMS, I feel like any of them can be adapted to do what you want them to do, and further optimized as one learns what the CMS can and cannot do. I don't have a lot of experience bending wordpress or joomla, but I have played with drupal and I love it.I talk too much...