Welcome to the Treehouse Community
Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.
Looking to learn something new?
Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.
Start your free trial
Konrad Pilch
2,435 PointsDrupal
HI,
What is this Drupal ? xd yes i did hear Diane .
So with the tutorial here, it seem you can make facebook site like right? And with basics of PHP and an ish middle OOP understanding , this should be right? though i dont have any terminal experience.
Sounds interesting and Hello new teacher :D Plus the course is fresh .
2 Answers
Francois Martel
24,694 PointsHi Konrad,
Drupal is a Content Management System (CMS) which allows you to easily generate websites without necessarily having to know any code. Another popular CMS which you may have heard of is Wordpress. Drupal tends to have a slightly higher barrier to entry than other CMS's but ultimately this pays off, as you can do many sophisticated tasks through it such as creating and storing information and interacting with databases.
Although PHP is useful to know for Drupal (and may be required for this particular Treehouse course) it actually is not a necessity in the day-to-day workflow of many Drupal developers. The main use case for PHP is when you would like to create your own custom module (Modules are similar to plugins in Wordpress in that they add functionality, such as Webforms, to your site). However, the Drupal community is very active and chances are, if there is a feature that you want to add to your site, someone has already built a module for it.
So TL;DR: Drupal is a relatively easy (and fun) way to quickly build sites which range from simple static webpages to complex web applications.
Hope this helps!
Francois
Francois Martel
24,694 PointsFirst the bad news: building sites in Drupal probably won't teach you object oriented programming in the same way that building an app with PHP or another OOP language would. The only time you really would need to use PHP is if you want to build your own modules, and this isn't usually necessary. However, building sites in Drupal can be good practice for using HTML and CSS because there are places where you can embed your HTML in blocks on a page and use CSS to style your pages beyond the basic themes. There’s even room for JavaScript functionality through jQuery if that’s your cup of tea.
Now the good news: as far as building a social media site like Facebook with Drupal, the answer is a resounding yes! There are plenty of modules that add social media functionality and there are even Drupal site distributions that have these out of the box (https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-commons-social-business-software). So if you’re looking to build the next Facebook, Twitter, or whatever Drupal is great for that.
Konrad Pilch
2,435 PointsKonrad Pilch
2,435 PointsHI, Im familiar with WordPress . Im actually learning it right now and im getting used to it by making blogs and stuff like that . Infact im doing my portfolio now with WP CMS and coidng the blog and other stuff with it so im fairly new.
What you told me , seem kind of WP in a way but, i know PHP basics and i know it to the point where i can learn OOP . I actually know like 50% of how OOP works, but still not enough and if i use Drupal, would i understand how to use OOP even more? and can i make facebook site with drupal? What im looking in first place is to learn it all in the right way.