You'd Think They Would Get On the Same Page . . .

So Drupal, in my opinion is pretty cool from a developer point of view.

I also really appreciate the customization that you can do without know php or any other coding.

BUT, i've lost way too much using drupal because no one has created a standardized process for certain actions or components.

Something as simple as image uploading has about 5 well developed image handlers, none of which appropriately handle the needs of a normal website site developer.

Here is just a listing of the module i've worked with with some websites. I still haven't found a satisfactory solution to the problem.

[Image] http://drupal.org/project/image

[Image Assist] http://drupal.org/project/img_assist

[Image Cache] http://drupal.org/project/imagecache

[IMCE] http://drupal.org/project/imce

[Upload Image] http://drupal.org/project/upload_image

Image manage in these modules is handled different ways. Image is a simple image upload with html components in the body of the entry. Image Assist is slightly more complicated and allows people to customize the photo slightly in terms of placement in the body. Image Cache automatically readjusts the image for thumbnails and preview images and offers pretty dynamic capabilities but the placement of the photo is static and not as dynamic as Image Assist. IMCE can work well with TinyIMCE, a open source WYSIWYG editor, but is ultimately awkward as well. Upload Image is just a image uploader but not that dynamic.
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So, is it worth complaining about that Drupal doesn't have any standards its documentation help isn't very helpful

Joomla does a much better job organizing its modules [ http://extensions.joomla.org/ ] but doesn't offer the same amount of database flexibility that Drupal does.

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I guess this is what happens when you have grassroots development. Multiple duplications of similar modules and its very confusing to understand the appropriate modules for the appropriate tasks. Something as simple as image uploading is approached from many different perspectives and in the end the user (amateur website developer) is left lost just like a community grassroots meeting where there isn't any leadership to guide the masses.

[The Leaderships is Cashing in . . . ] Just recently, the need for this kind of leadership has been attempted to be filled by the founder of Drupal create a commerically supported version of Drupal [ http://acquia.com/ ] . While it does spark some debate as to whether this wil improve the drupal open source software (management), one can surmise that they will clean things up and standardize some things.

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Take home: Drupal is a grassroots based software that is open source. Because of this, they can't organize, lead or standardize like a for-profit company. And its frustrating; Innovation but no standardization.