Conclusion

Dear Reader,

Congratulations on exploring through the wild world of content creation!

The basic version of Drupal, until somebody changes something, has no formatting and very limited image upload capability, as you have seen. This is because Drupal is so modular that Drupal developers are leaving it to people to decide on their own modules and how they want to do things. In the next chapter, we’ll take a look at adding some modules that can help with this issue.

This requirement to add modules to even do basic functions is one of the reasons why I end up using Google Sites sometimes, frankly. Technically, what is supposed to happen is that once you add a module, it should work, but what happens is that sometimes when one module is updated, it “breaks” other modules. Updating modules is not that big of a deal, but some people might be intimidated by it, and it can be a hassle.

Generally, the safest territory in Drupal is to stick with popular modules, and not to put too many on your site, to keep things simpler when you update.

And eventually, God bless them, the many developers who have tirelessly created this wonderful software will make things easier and easier to use. For example, classes going through this book might want to first try creating a website manually in Dreamweaver using a trial version with a hosting account from Hostgator. Then try making a site in Drupal 6. Part of the reason that Drupal 6 will be around for a while is because so many people have made sites on it, and are reluctant to risk messing their sites up by upgrading to Drupal 7. There is not strictly any reason why they need to—it might be more trouble than it’s worth. And they’re probably “used” to Drupal 6. But a class might want to create a site in Drupal 6, to see how it functions, and then try using Drupal 7, to see what it adds.

Best wishes with your CMS adventures, whichever way you go!

Regards,

Todd