*Updated: 11/07/2005*
Please, can someone tell me why Drupal still sucks? I guess a more general question would be why open source CMS systems in general still suck? Am I asking for too much? I converted this web site from a custom PHP / CGI / static HTML mess 4-6 weeks ago to Drupal 4.5.2. I’ve spent nearly part of every day since trying to get it setup to my liking.

I’ve installed dozens and dozens of modules to try and get the features I think should have come installed right out of the box. I have searched, and searched, and searched for themes only to find a paltry few available, and even the most popular ones (Spread Firefox) are riddled with validation errors.

What I like:

I was quickly entering content, with options for front page, sticky, and categorizing it as I went. Input format and customizable user permissions were nice to haves.

What I dislike:

• The entire taxonomy situation. Why can’t I assign content directly to a Vocab item? Why can’t I assign a sub-term to a term? (now fixed – see below)
• No taxonomy categorization page. Even the taxonomy_dhtml module is barely usable and could stand much re-work (using it now, see sitemap on top nav links)
• Stats and log files. Just pages that go on forever. Not even decent modules for this. Show me charts and graphs of what’s going on in my site. Where’s the snapshot?
• A decent baker’s dozen working “floating / expandable” themes W3C validated *without* errors
• Decent modules for Amazon, Google, Paypal, and other affiliates that work with all themes (Amazon working, google shaky, paypal – not installed)
• A “HTML Area” or like module that works with all themes for rich text handling of content (saw the other day that HTMLArea dev and support was abandoned early 2005)
• Decent support for handling inline images and image uploads as content (the modules I’ve tried like img_assist – really suck, see problems below.)
• Better support for feed management
• ANY kind of decent support for customized HTML titles, and metadata tags (see below, found nodewords module for keywords only)

I will not upgrade my 4.5.2 to 4.6 Drupal yet because I want the installation(s) managed in my Fantasico option within my web site cPanel admin (and it’s not yet available). (*bit the bullet and installed 4.6.3 last month)

I also won’t trash Drupal just yet – sadly because there’s nothing better out there just yet that I’ve seen. However, the goal of installing a CMS system is so you can concentrate on your content and manage it without having to write all kinds of code and customizations to do so. There are lots of basic things I think Drupal should do – and I’ll probably have to write code to do them, including writing or enhancing a decent theme without tons of problems and blunderous errors.

If you have comments or fixes to any of these problems, feel free to comment!

*Update: 10/19/2005*
After I posted this, I also posted over at Drupal.org. Even though my list of items is plainly valid – it seems many of the Drupal forum posters don’t take lightly to the word “sucks”. It’s also very apparent that many of them post here without reading this full post or the only in the Drupal forums, just adding a comment based on the title alone.

If you’re going to post another “you’re rude”, “You suck” comment – why not save your keystrokes? All you’re doing is raising my search engine rankings for the keywords “Drupal sucks” every time you do!

Eaton posted a pretty damn well worded response entitled Why Drupal “Sucks”

*Update: 10/27/2005*
I’ve been working hard with Drupal on this site….really I have! I’ve updated my site to Drupal 4.6.3 in the last 10 days, and all my (new) comments are based on that (new) install. First, here are some things I like:

• nodewords module: allows you to add keywords per node (page), and also globally for the site – on every page served. You add the node keywords as you submist and write content…awesome!
• amazon items module: you can add in book codes as you submit content for items to show up after your story or post – genius! works well…
• print friendly pages module: gives printer friendly page – working well (no control over logo printing in header of pages that I can find, probably have to edit misc/print.css)
• taxonomy_menu module: puts your taxonomy is collapsible menus in your navigation – great module (poor layout)
• delicious module: adds links to delicious tags after your nodes – I love this one.

Now – here’s some modules that have really sucked (for me at least):

• fckeditor module: a rich text editor for text areas – this thing was horrible to install. Had to get extra files (other than the module) downloaded from the fckeditor web site, upload all (hundreds and hundreds of files) – and it sucks…HARD! Does the title stand for F this editor?? I configured everything, but you can’t customize what appears on the toolbars like you can with HTMLArea. It has an upload button for files and images that won’t work. I enabled user permissions, settings, read the readme, AND visited the web site and it still won’t work. I had to turn this thing off – no luck!
• TinyMCE module: another rich text editor I tried since fckeditor didn’t work. No matter what I did – it just displayed a mini version of my Drupal frontpage in every textarea. Yes – I viewed user perms, blocks, admin settings, and the readme….it still doesn’t work!
• HtmlArea module: had it in 4.5.2 and hated it…screwed up all of my auto line breaks and paragraphs. I’d rather add the html myself that have this nonsense.
• adsense module: I can get 3 to display in a block (like you see on these page), but I can’t get it to appear in content tags like it says you can in the settings using a [adsense:format:group:channel] tag. I even emailed the module developer on this one and described the whole problem and exactly what I did. He says it should work and he doesn’t have time to help me. You get no love from me here…
• atom module: tried many times and it never created a feed. I went with the syndication module instead.
• img_assist module: it worked in 4.5.2 but doesn’t for me in 4.6.3. with it installed and enabled for all content types – it doesn’t even show up as an option when adding nodes. I don’t currently use a rich text editor to try it there (see problems above).
• sidecontent module: only seems to work half the time…..screw you sidecontent module…*update* 11-16-05, got all kinds of table errors in watchdog so I permanently turned this module off.

Modules that I don’t know if they are working or not:

• blogapi module: pings go through 90% of the time and fail 10% of the time seems like (according to watchdog entries). I have no way of tracking or knowing whether or not the blog sites are listing my updates or not. Isn’t this a core module? I see pings go out, but I’m still not getting any trackback love at all…
• gsitemap module: It says “google site map submitted successfully” so I guess it’s working. Is it doing me any good? who knows…*update: 11-06-2005, getting keyword hits from google for new nodes, so I think this is working (but have no proof).

Things in my original post that I’ve figured out how to do now, or (some things) that you could always do in Drupal (and I didn’t know how):

• You can’t assign a node to a vocab item (without a special module for relationships), but you aren’t supposed to. You can however make sub-terms as many levels deep as you want, by assigning another term as parent when creating a term.
• There are modules for keywords (nodewords) and description HTML tags, and I’m using them now. Description still sucks, you can only do it sitewide, not per page like keywords.

I still stand by a lot of my original comments…themes support is better in 4.6.3, but you still probably need to hack your own. Taxonomy categorization type page (other than taxonomy_menu for navigation and normal breadcrumbs) still bad or non-existent. Write your own (I’ve yet to try the sitemap module – maybe that will do it) (update, tried sitemap and it kept giving table errors, and I followed install to a “t”). Stats are still a nightmare with no consolidated snapshot or charts and graphs. Rich text editing modules are beastly. Inline image support is at this point spotty at best. Feed management is good for what it is, but needs work (more settings are needed to manage how and when they’re used).

So – things are getting better with my Drupal experiment, but there are still a LOT of things to work on. I will post more as I get more things fixed (or have more problems)…leave comments if you know how to fix any of the issues of have relevant feedback that might help! Thanks for reading the ongoing saga…..

*Update: 11/06/2005*
Even though I’ve gotten farther with Drupal than I thought I would since the 4.6.3 upgrade, there are lots of things that bug me and I haven’t been able to fix.

• img_assist module: what a pain in my ass has this module been. I had it working in 4.5.2, but since the 4.6.3 upgrade it hasn’t worked again. At first image upload wouldn’t work either. I found out that somehow, during the 4.6.3 upgrade the Drupal install hosed all permissions to 740 for the /images dir and everything beneath it. I couldn’t even change it myself and had to submit a ticket to my host for them to do it.

  After they changed permissions image upload worked again, but not img_assist. Yes, I read the readme, I changed access, and turned on all in admin -> settings -> img_assist. No matter whether I use code or filter, it just prints a “%image” to the page. So, I can upload all the images I want – but can’t use any inline in nodes. I posted this to the Drupal support forums, but so far no answers. I think I might try the Acidfree module to see how it works, but it probably won’t help with the inline image problem at all – it just manages images and multimedia files in slick galleries per the posted info.

• captcha module: I just realized the other day that this thing is not working for anon comments at all. This was also working fine in 4.5.2, and now is not in 4.6.3. I noticed it first when I got some comment spam and wondered wtf. Now I’ve had to make all comments moderated until I figure it out. For some weird reason, captcha is working just fine for account signups…

  *Update: 11/07/2005* I found that the captcha images (for registration) were very hard to read. So I downloaded some free truetype fonts, and now the images are 100 times easier to read the text on. I installed the fonts to my modules/captcha directory and updated my settings. Here’s the page I found the font link on. I included it here because it has links to all kinds of international font sets that could be very useful to others depending on internationalization used.

  Also, it looks like officially the captcha module doesn’t work for comments per this issue thread. If that’s the case, then why in the hell does captcha give the checkbox options admin->settings “check during anonymouse comments”?!?

• moviereview module: I just enabled this one today since I wanted to review a movie. I get the whole submission form filled out, and then find out you can’t assign it to a Vocab Term – again, wtf?!? It’s not even an option on the node submit or edit pages. I have a Vocab “Review” and term “movie” that I want to assign these to, so they’ll appear on my taxonomy_dhtml page and in my menus. This may be a feature that it’s screwed up like this. I submitted a bug issue at Drupal.org to find out.

  *Updated: 11/07/2005 This one was an easy fix…they responded to my issue right away, and I had to enable “movie review” in the (Vocab) category I wanted to assign them to. I did suggest this be added to the install text file (because it isn’t now) and they said it will be for version 4.7.

• referer spam: In a new twist of events, I’ve been getting tons of referer spam, or ‘search engine targeted spam’. I guess this is a new type of spam where they nail your site repeatedly for pages they know you won’t have to get in your log files. It seems like basic click fraud to me as most are going through a anonymous proxy from another site to your site, trying to generate a click with a referral ID through your site to an associates account to generate revenue (if that makes sense). All I know is, I never had this problem before I installed Drupal, and based on the Wikipedia explanation I’ve had to submit a help ticket to my web host to try and rectify or address the problem at the server level in apache mod_security or in my httpd.conf file.

I will post more updates as things get better (or worse). I’m hoping to find a way to manage the logs much better than watchdog does….there’s no way I have any idea what’s going on with that thing only posting 20 odd lines per page. There’s no way to sort, no way to filter out (other that the statistics_filter modules, which I’ve already enabled), no way to aggregate, and no way to group buy month, week, day, type, or just about anything at all.

*last minute update*
I did find this page that outlined the referer spam problem and a few decent fixes you can do on your own. One things though – is it talks about upgrading your Drupal instance to stop it, and I have 4.6.3 and it’s plagueing my just the same.

*Updated: 11/07/2005 I followed the advice on one of the referer spam pages and added jsp|cgi|aspx|look to to the list of files to filter out in my root .htaccess file – and so far it has worked and I’ve not had a single search.jsp listing of referer spam. Unfortunately, I can’t add .shtml extensions to that list because the old version of this site was .shtml – and I want to redirect those 404’s to new pages. So all .shtml referer spam I’m still putting up with (for now).

There yet another post over at Drupal.org where a fairly new user is bitching about documentation and steep learning curve (same problems I had, and many others posting each week). I just had to add my two cents to that debate.

Ya got comments?? Click the link below and add ’em – all are welcomed!

originally posted: 2005-11-07 00:38:00 -0400