Drupal Help For Newbie

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

I have installed drupal on my server and i want to make a good website from it. But after spending 2 hours, I don't even know how to add links to my navigation menu,I chosed drupal becuse after searching for about an hour on the internet I found that wordpress is best for blog sites but not so good for non blog sites who need to make modifications. The other important competitor was Joomla. I searched a lot on the internet and found that joomle creates dynamic web adresses and other things that are not search engine friendly and may negatively effect the SEO strategy. I do not want the search engines to treat my website badly therefore I went for Drupal which according to my search on the internet is the best of the three in therms of Search engine optimization.Now I need some very basic help regarding the use of drupal and developing a website through it.Please explain to me what is a module and what is the use of it.How can I add links to my navigation and sidebars.How can I divide the content of the page into three divs. I need three divs because of the format of the website according to which the top div will contain the title of the article, the second div will contain the googel ad and the third div will contain the actual content.How can I customize the look of the links, the color of the text, the size of the heading and slogan seaprately, and how can make my homepage of different look then the rest of the website.

[zenia 0]

Actually your website looks very good. The use of html made it possible to create a very usefull and clear website.The next things to be done are:Filling the sections with content.Promote your website.Make your website known to possible interested visitors.Spending time to learn how to use and how to control Drupal can be rewarding on the long run. It is a piece of consideration what is the most important: finishing the website now and to start to attract new visitors or learning Drupal first in order to make a fresh start with the website.

[mahesh2k 0]

Wordpress is not good for non-blog or static site ? that is news to me. ha ha. Wordpress is one of the easy CMS out there for coding and learning curve. By taking the difficult CMS like drupal you made things much more difficult for yourself. SEO is much easy with CMS like wordpress that even google employees like matt cutts prefer wordpress for his site. Anyway, leaving you at drupal to discover. Sorry but have to break this bubble of wordpres being not-good for static site. Make sure you join drupal forum to get most of the questions answered for you. There is lot of learning curve for drupal and you have to read a lot of documentation. Joining their forum can give you quick answers for your problems. I have seen people getting their answers on official forum than on here at Xisto.

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Wordpress is not good for non-blog or static site ? that is news to me. ha ha.
Wordpress is one of the easy CMS out there for coding and learning curve. By taking the difficult CMS like drupal you made things much more difficult for yourself. SEO is much easy with CMS like wordpress that even google employees like matt cutts prefer wordpress for his site. Anyway, leaving you at drupal to discover. Sorry but have to break this bubble of wordpres being not-good for static site. Make sure you join drupal forum to get most of the questions answered for you. There is lot of learning curve for drupal and you have to read a lot of documentation.

Joining their forum can give you quick answers for your problems. I have seen people getting their answers on official forum than on here at Xisto.

I dot know I have learnt all that I have read from webpages on the internet. I have not used wordpress for non blog websites. I have used it for blog websites. I read a strong comment on a website about wordpress that wordpress may not prove good for non blog websites. (the article was on comparison of wordpress, joomla and drupal) you can check it at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/.
So if you think wordpress is good for non blog sites the I think I should give it a try.

[mahesh2k 0]

Yes, you should because wordpress will allow you to do lot of SEO hacks using plugins which even drupal and joomla lacks. Wordpress does have simple themes that are similar to your old html sites. I suggest you to search for more information on how much static content and design you want from wordpress or put your requriements here so that we can work on it. I'll see how much i can help.

I disagree with the article that you linked with many points.

Wordpress is not developer friendly ? Ans - really ? in that case they are wrong. If you can code simple 2 column html page then in just few minutes you can come up with a better theme. How's that for wordpress not being developer friendly ? wordpress plugins are much easy to develop and maintain than joomla and drupal, want facts ?

Community complains ? LOL. this guy who wrote article looks like noob to me. I mean seriously, he makes point that developer friendliness is lacking in wordpress and then he claims community complains. I stopped respecting his views the moment i saw this point.

Upgrade brings more bugfixes ? ROFL. now this is height from that article writer. This guy has no idea how much stable wordpress is and what are bugs to begin with. How come he claims developer non-friendlyness and then talk about bugfixes ?

That article is 1 year old and the author is not bringing valid points to table. So let's ignore it. He didn't commented on security, learning curve, plugins and quick fixes. So it's upto you to either go with that article authors views or find your own way to get better CMS for yourself.

Tell me after trying wordpress and drupal which CMS you found more easy to learn and do things ? if it's wordpress then go with it, if it's drupal fine.

[zenia 0]

This is a way lots of things are done. And lots of things on internet are done like this too. There is a lot of information. And different people have different opinions. The tric is to find the program and the approach that meet your own needs the most and to find the way to do things that you like yourself the best.And this forum is an interesting place to discuss different ways things can be done. What this topic learns the reader is that it seems to be important to talk about opinions and information in order to get different views. These different opinions make it possible to get a well founded idea about something.The deliverance of the link makes it possible for interested people to read the article themselves and to comment on the information in the article.

Edited November 28, 2010 by zenia (see edit history)

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

Yes, you should because wordpress will allow you to do lot of SEO hacks using plugins which even drupal and joomla lacks. Wordpress does have simple themes that are similar to your old html sites. I suggest you to search for more information on how much static content and design you want from wordpress or put your requriements here so that we can work on it. I'll see how much i can help.
I disagree with the article that you linked with many points.

Wordpress is not developer friendly ? Ans - really ? in that case they are wrong. If you can code simple 2 column html page then in just few minutes you can come up with a better theme. How's that for wordpress not being developer friendly ? wordpress plugins are much easy to develop and maintain than joomla and drupal, want facts ?

Community complains ? LOL. this guy who wrote article looks like noob to me. I mean seriously, he makes point that developer friendliness is lacking in wordpress and then he claims community complains. I stopped respecting his views the moment i saw this point.

Upgrade brings more bugfixes ? ROFL. now this is height from that article writer. This guy has no idea how much stable wordpress is and what are bugs to begin with. How come he claims developer non-friendlyness and then talk about bugfixes ?

That article is 1 year old and the author is not bringing valid points to table. So let's ignore it. He didn't commented on security, learning curve, plugins and quick fixes. So it's upto you to either go with that article authors views or find your own way to get better CMS for yourself.

Tell me after trying wordpress and drupal which CMS you found more easy to learn and do things ? if it's wordpress then go with it, if it's drupal fine.

I am not going for drupal even if I have no other choice atleast for the time being. I spent about three hours looking at drupal installed on my site and I even do not know how to create one single link. If I have to go for drupal then I will wait and first learn it but I think you are right starscream. I should go for wordpress because of its ease of use. For the time being I am planning to develop a blog with my ordinary HTML CSS website and then I will make another site on some else topic with wordpress once I get to the roots of making good website with wordpress.
How does the idea seem to you?
Also I read on a webpage that for sites which do not need to change their content often, HTML and CSS is good enough to work with. Now i have good knowledge of HTML and CSS and the content on my website does not need to be changed at all. Also I do not need additonal functions on my website like user accounts etc because all the content is going to be free and available to every one. Associating a blog made in wordpress with my static website appears good to me but I request you to please guide me what pros and cons it will have.
I am planning to make the blog on a subdomain of my website for example blog.mananatomy.com. How will it be in terms of seo. Can it help the overall rating of my website.?

[Ahsaniqbalkmc 0]

This is a way lots of things are done. And lots of things on internet are done like this too. There is a lot of information. And different people have different opinions. The tric is to find the program and the approach that meet your own needs the most and to find the way to do things that you like yourself the best.
And this forum is an interesting place to discuss different ways things can be done. What this topic learns the reader is that it seems to be important to talk about opinions and information in order to get different views. These different opinions make it possible to get a well founded idea about something.

The deliverance of the link makes it possible for interested people to read the article themselves and to comment on the information in the article.

Thank you for your good comments about the discussion but I would be more grateful If you can help me about the issue like starscream is helping me. Please share with me any knowledge you have about CMS.