Is Drupal too hard to skin?
January 1, 2010
Hi,
I occasionally use email questions sent to me as the basis for a quick article; this time around I had a question about Drupal:
Just enjoyed your website introduction video. I am a senior but am still a regular producer of ads books and booklets for my church, having been a printer all my life. A member has set up a Drupal site – I have been asked to ‘smarten it up’ – I am new to it but I don’t see to prospect of arriving at a graphically attractive site from that program. I think I would be better suggesting we start afresh and build our own site.
What do you think?
Kind regards
John
Hi John,
Updating the look of a Drupal site can be a bit of a challenge since you have to work within the Drupal framework. What that means is that you need to understand basic web technologies:
– html
– css
… and the Drupal ‘theme’ architecture.
In the end though, using a content management system (nerds call them: CMS’) like Drupal will save you guys a huge amount of time updating and adding to the site over time – especially if you plan to have several contributors.
Another simpler to understand option that could work for you is to base the site on WordPress. It has many of the Drupal advantages, yet the set up is less daunting and the number of available visual templates (called Themes in the WordPress world) are many.
We have a video course on that subject here:
http://www.killersites.com/wordpress/wordpress-theme.php
And my basic HTML and CSS video course:
http://www.killersites.com/web-design/
I hope that helps,
Stefan
www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com
