Here’s a link to a tutorial I found that has been incredibly useful for assisting in getting my head around Drupal: http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/create-a-killer-band-site-with-drupal-introduction/

When I first had a go at Drupal I attempted to refer to the drupal.org documentation, which as has been said, is not very useful for the novice. I ended up scratching my head and wrestling with Taxonomy just trying to get a workable navigation up and running.

Once I found the right resource to get me started, suddenly everything became very clear. In fact I would say that Drupal is quite easy to get started on, it’s just that the documentation makes it seem very complicated!

The other resource that is very useful for Drupal is the book Pro Drupal Development, 2nd Edition.

The Drupal.org website would benefit hugely from being reworked. For a start it looks fugly. But it’s also a bit of a mess in terms of content.

Put yourself in the shoes of the Drupal newbie. You want to download the files, install it and then have a quick tutorial in doing the basics. So you download the package, and go to the “Getting Started” secton of the drupal.org website. This section is okay up to the point of installation, but as soon as you get to the Page Building section, it fizzles out. Suddenly the newbie is buried under an avalanche of terminology. The best way of learning is by experience.

How this site would benefit from a quick and dirty “Make a basic Drupal site in a couple of hours” tutorial…

@amarjeet, well i can answer you briefly and put you on a path.

You can very well design a hundred pages in front page and upload them online.
No designing pages for Joomla and wordpress is very different from designing on frontpage. I really dont know how you can design on frontpage. Cause designing takes place on photoshop or its counterparts like fireworks etc.
I cannot possibly explain how designing a page on joomla works in this comment here.
Your questions are a little vague so I will give why and for what should use joomla and when

If your 100 pages are going to be updated regularly and new pages are going to be added, if you need visitors to rate the pages(since you said it is movie page) then you should go in for joomla or wordpress.
About the site design both cms have a variety of templates free and paid from which you can choose. Later if you go through the documentation of both cms you will learn how to edit and customize those templates to give your site a unique look.(or if you get too good you can create a new design from a scratch).
Once the Joomla or wp is up, then anyone can update and add pages. So other non-techies can update and manage the site. only will have to do a little learning.
you can also hire proffessional help just for creating a template for joomla or wordpress.
The rest you can do yourself.
I hope this helps
But I think you should get your self an account on wordpress or goto joomla site download joomla install it really dive in and then you will get more clarity on what youwant and what you can do.

I agree that Drupal is all about providing jobs to the developer industry, with a focus on corporate clients.

Drupal is Microsoft (catering to developers, techies) while Joomla / Wordpress are like Google (catering to noobs). We all know who’s winning that game. *I personally think that Wordpress and Joomla cater to the same groups, so I reference them both.

I didn’t know there was a commercial version of Drupal. I find that a major conflict of interest. So they are selling a product (or “support” as they call it) with modules that were built by the OS community? That is like Wikipedia putting ads on their site and taking revenue. What idiot would put time into Drupal development so that it could be later integrated and sold with a commercial package? For a commercial CMS, people should go with Expression Engine.

I think Drupal “people” are elitist based on the fact that they are obviously not noob friendly or think that noobs should be able to build a website. I’ve been designing/building sites since ‘95, but since I don’t program, I’m also in that noob category. I get the impression that they think design and looks are irrelevant. Maybe this is all ego because when a site is done, the looks and content get all the praise and attention.

It’s not really Drupal’s fault, but an industry (programming, development people) not wanting to loose their livelihood. Imagine if some average joe could build a digg like website without the need of programmers. I think they have overcomplicated their CMS almost intentionally to make it harder to implement. Even modules are so complicated that most are not even ported yet to 6.0.

I don’t see Drupal using creative design in anything they do. They don’t consult with front end designers or noobs in how to make their CMS better. Compare Drupal with Joomla / Wordpress. Compare their websites, site organization, admin interface, user friendliness, etc. Drupal has none of this. Compare Drupal sites with Joomla / Wordpress sites. The only Drupal sites that look high end are corporate giants. Meanwhile there are Joomla / Wordpress sites that look just as good as those corporate sites run by poor non-techies. Now compare the forums, see how many people are helpful and respond to posts compared to Drupals dysfunctional “forums” where most posters answer their own questions. The hard truth for Drupal is that a good website requires programming and design. Everything they do lacks design and I see that as a serious flaw in their system and operations. There almost no true front end drupal themers out there. Creative types avoid theming for drupal, leaving people that use Drupal to pay for custom designs.

Here’s what’s funny… Look at the big sites like digg, etc. They use custom solutions. Drupal is in the middle between Joomla / Wordpress and a custom solution. Sorry but most people don’t have a round of financing to afford using Drupal. If they do they go custom. The programmers in turn who CAN implement with Drupal build ugly ass websites and can’t afford or even know good design when they see it. Thus most Drupal sites are not one man operations, there needs to be a team. Sorry but a website with fancy functionality will fail without good front end design policies.

I think Joomla / Wordpress are the future of CMS’s, not Drupal. I personally don’t have any experience using wordpress or Joomla, this is just what I see in my research. I do like wordpress over joomla. Wordpress seems easier, faster to implement and much more appealing to work with (for every person involved). Time for me is an issue. Drupal people KNOW their system has a learning curve, but don’t even see that as a problem. Drupal could be as easy to use as Wordpress, but they prefer it to be technical.

people ask how to best to build a site structure/hierarchy – no answers. do you use books or taxonomy? nobody frickin knows or wants to say. if you go with taxonomy you can’t separate the navigation vocab from the other vocabs – it’s in the same vocab container. there is no data on different ways to build site structure – no examples i could find.

what if i want to have a page (node) with multiple content types submitted at different times and layed out in different places on the same page? I want a page to be comprised of multiple child data only associated with that page and shown nowhere else. nobody seems to have a clue. to do it is a tedious process it seems.

I can’t find basic data on drupal functionality and asking for it on the forum gets no responses. stuff that is almost required in modern web design is missing in drupal, such as multi-column layouts in the content section. you can ‘t easily reorganize your data on the page in different columns and locations. add on modules just complicate the entire system even more.

i think joomla caters to noobs/non-techies verses drupal who hates them, and wants to cater to developers/programmers only. until they let go of this ego trip drupal won’t go mainstream with all the majority.