So recently I was asked to do some work on a Drupal project, sure I though, I have worked with WordPress and Joomla – how much different could it be. Well as it turns out – quite different and pretty confusing for somebody coming for a WP background. Here are some of my observations:
Config
Drupal’s version of wp-config file exists in:
/sites/default/settings.php
Moving Sites
When moving drupal sites make sure to copy the .htaccess file as well – the .htaccess wont regnerate like wordpress by flashing permalinks.
Logging In
For some reason the login url is /user/login
Drupal Version
Wow really tricky to work out what version you are running, its not like WordPress which prints the version to every page. I basically ended up guessing I was running 7.
Resetting admin password via phpmyadmin
http://www.werockyourweb.com/how-reset-drupal-admin-password/
Theming
Admittedly the theming part of Drupal is very similar to WordPress, with a few small caveats:
- Theme sits in sites/themes
- Made a change to the existing theme and cant see the changes? You need to turn off caching to make changes to themes. This is acutally a kind of cool feature where Drupal itself takes care of caching.
Adding JS
Oh boy, to add js to your theme all you need to do is edit the .info file in the theme, here you set your regions (widget areas). You should be able to figure out how the js enqueing system works by opening this file.
Moving a field to a block – oh my god so tricky what am I doing!
https://www.webwash.net/drupal/tutorials/create-call-action-block-using-field-block-module
Modules = Plugins
The modules area in Drupal 7 is a total nightmare.
Closing throughts
Parts of drupal are insanely bad, to me it seems like it was developed by l337 backend developers with no thought to the user experience. On the plus side Drupal actually has an asset (JS and CSS) management system built in (think W3 total cache – Minify), which WordPress could learn a lot from.
