Drupal?

[Super2cool]

I have been a long time user of Joomla but I have been recently considering Drupal as a viable alternative...

The only problem is that Drupal is well known as a DEVELOPER's CMS but I am not a developer. I am familar with HTML and CSS but thats about as far as my knowledge goes.

I just want to ask from those who have used Drupal... is knowing how to code PHP an absolute requirement? Would I still be able to create nice sites without PHP knowledge?

[Odinbc]

There's little wrong with Drupal or Joomla, in the right hands. While you have Joomla experience, I suggest you have a look at this in depth comparison of Drupal*, Joomla and Wordpress. After that you should have a better idea if you really need to switch or which one suits your purpose and skill set.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/artic..._vs._WordPress

*The comparison at the link above was before Drupal 7 was released.

[George]

Hi super2cool

being a Joomla user and Drupal user, administration as well as content, I can tell you that the concepts are quite different but learnable. I personally find Joomla more intuitive, specifically for site administration. But once you have got the hang of Drupal you will be able to quickly achieve your gaols.

If you are using standard Drupal with a standard theme there is no PHP required. The CMS works fine without any coding. PHP is very helpful when you want to extend your features beyond the normal. Specifially the possibility of adding PHP snippets into modules or views is a really cool feature. It is more difficult to bend components in Joomla I find.

Why dont you give Drupal a try with a test installation and see how you can drive it?

[Super2cool]

Originally Posted by George

Hi super2cool

being a Joomla user and Drupal user, administration as well as content, I can tell you that the concepts are quite different but learnable. I personally find Joomla more intuitive, specifically for site administration. But once you have got the hang of Drupal you will be able to quickly achieve your gaols.

If you are using standard Drupal with a standard theme there is no PHP required. The CMS works fine without any coding. PHP is very helpful when you want to extend your features beyond the normal. Specifially the possibility of adding PHP snippets into modules or views is a really cool feature. It is more difficult to bend components in Joomla I find.

Why dont you give Drupal a try with a test installation and see how you can drive it?

Thanks for the advice mate.

I am going to experiment with Drupal on my local machine

[jobwindy]

You can use Drupal as a non-developer, but it would be really handy if someone can help you with the basics.
If you know how to work with the Views module and know what content-types, taxanomy terms and nodes are, how they are constructed with fields, then you can start with it.