i was happily desinging sites using HTML5 and CSS3 but then did a course which recommended using Wordpress (as a large majority of pro' designers use it and it speeds up workflow, end users can edit their sites etc).

 

So I moved over to Wordpress. It was great for setting up sites quickly although i feel i had to compromise on design (fitting around themes which sucks)...

 

i was then advised that Drupal was much better - on paper it seems to be in terms of the way it can manage lots of content more efficiently in the long term.

 

So I installed it and tried to make something decent but even putting an image on a page where i want it and formatting text is causing me major grief.. the themes are beyond ugly (are they meant to be that ugly?). how can something that advanced be so un intuitive and frustrating?

 

my question is should quit Drupal or is it worth reading the really thick book or should I just revert back to wordpress and try making my own themes in that.

 

thanks

You shouldn't have to fit around the templates when you are using WordPress as you can create your own custom theme to look exactly how you want it to look and you can use the WordPress codex to ingrate lots of built in WordPress functions.

 

These may be of use:

http://www.wpexplorer.com/create-wordpress-theme-html-1/

http://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/wordpress_create_theme.htm

 

Drupal on the other hand I haven't done much with but reading about the theme building side of things there are a bit more tricky.

 

These may help you a little:

https://www.drupal.org/node/1351116
https://www.drupal.org/documentation/theme

Systems like Wordpress and Drupal rely on "themes" rather than "templates", and of course their themes then rely on PHP which makes things much more complicated.

 

It's well worth having a look at other systems that have a proper template structure, you'd probably find these easier to work with and much more flexible?

thanks for the pointers will check those articles out.

 

blue dreamer - you mention template based systems over theme based. Do you have any recomendations of these systems as I haven't heard

of any?

 

thanks

The 3 I usually suggest for a look are ExpressionEngine, Craft, and Statamic which uses flat files, no database.

 

All of them have their own templating systems so you are in 100% control of your markup and content.