I want to be able to build medium to large community sites. After looking closely at Drupal, it seems like its really capable of doing a lot cool things. I just want to build quality sites fast, am more of a project manager and don't have a lot of time to practice coding so I think if I start learning PHP it would take me too long to get a decent site up. Which of the 2 should I learn to start publishing complex sites faster? again I want to create sites like soompi.com, flixya.com. If I were to put in 2 hours/day. How long estimately would it take me to create something like the links above?
If you dont know PHP then dont learn it to make community sites. Just stick with scripts that are already done. Drupal, Wordpress, vBulletin, ect. These sites are built using PHP already so theres no need to learn it.
You are talking about two different things here: PHP is a programming language, It takes a lot of time to be a god coder. Drupal is a content Managment System, its pre-made code, It lets you concentrate in the content without having many knoweledges, It can still be difficult to get a good-personalized site on Drupal. Learning PHP is the long and hard way, to create that kind of sites from zero you would need months or years of PHP learning and coding. You should try Drupal or another CMS.
lucaspal is right... Unless ur an extremely genius person.. u can learn PHP in just a matter of seconds... If you want to build a website quickly and easily.. Use Drupal of Joomla If you want to build a shopping website, you can use osCommerce or Zen Cart If you want to build a blog.. u can use Wordpress or Movable Type There's a lot of opensource softwares to choose from
Agree with all above but... If you are a project manager like myself why are you wanting to learn how to create sites? If it is for hobby sites then speed to market really shouldnt be an issue so it is a case of do you want the fun of running a site? if yes then go for off the shelf, or do you want the fun of creating a site then learn a programming language. If this is a commercial project and not a hobby site then why do it yourself? As a project manager my hourly rate is massively higher than a developers so it makes much more business sense for me to spend my time being a PM and pay a developer to be a developer - they will also be quicker, better quality product, more robust etc
Yes you're right, my hourly rate is a lot higher than a developers. If it was easy to just let the developer do their job and get things done then perfect! but the problem is finding a dedicated developer to stick with the project for a long period of time. A site always need upgrades and maintaining, what happen if your trusted developer takes a vacation and something gets broken? Also it is very annoying to have to ask the coder to fix tiny problems that I wish I could just fix myself. I want to learn Drupal so I could do commercial sites myself. I find that I spend more time and money with a developer in the long run then if I were to just do it myself. I want to at least know Drupal or PHP well enough to fix problems or continue a project if needed be.
Holidays, sickness etc are all problems with dealing with a freelancer/ sole trader which dont exist with employing a company so you either take the lower price of a freelancer and accept the risks or pay more for a company and know you have mitigated the risks. As to paying someone to fix tiny things etc, the same goes for anyone but as either a project manager or a business owner you should have bigger more important things to do than fix code. Do you not think that the CEO/ President of a multi national bank could not clean their own office rather than pay a cleaner to do it? But do you not think they have more important things to do than get the duster out every evening? I am confused why you say in one breath that you earn more as a PM and the next to say you want to become a developer and work for another PM? Personally I wouldnt want the 66% pay cut that it would represent. It does sound by your earlier comments that you need to spend time building up relationships with developers or consider taking on direct employees
I wouldn't say that I am so big of a project manager that I absolutely cannot afford to waste my time. I have been in the business for 8 years now as a project manager and just know basic CSS and html and it has hindered me greatly. I think knowing atleast intermediate level of techical aspect is essential. I ofourse won't wish to be developing everything myself but it would make a project go smoother if I can do some of the stuff myself. I think the problem here is Freelancing, there is too many risk when starting a big project. I think it's great for small project though. Perhaps I should look into opening up a studio. Also I didn't say I want to work for another PM, I want to be able to build sites myself in case the developer couldn't.
I have been a PM for about 6 years and whilst most of that was as a business PM rather than IT I have never been able to program a single line of the languages that were used back in my corporate life but that didnt stop me delivering multi million pound projects - unfortunately AS doesnt bid for projects of that scale, yet . You certainly do need to have a good understanding of the methodology of building and testing be it V or Agile etc and a moderate to high level on the concepts of technology (eg web services, relational dbs, OOP etc) but not actually how to program yourself. Back when I worked for a mutlinational bank there were 20 different programming languages used simply within their insurance division of which 1 we were the last know commercial user of, it would have been impractical for anyone to have learned all 20 to the level of being any use at all to a project and for a project manager who also needs to learn other skills such as Prince2, stakeholder management etc even more of an issue.
You will not go far with Drupal if you dont know PHP. Learn php then try Drupal pro development book.
it depends of the needs of the site. Drupal is extremely flexible, and with modules like views and cck you can do a lot a lot a lot of thinks. But in 1 hour you can begin to program in php, in less if you have prior experience in other languajes, and you will win extra flexibility in the multiple php input fields (ex. block visibility, nodes, views,...), that can boost drupal, and moreover, you can begin to write custom modules that sometimes are very useful, or edit properly some template files.