Is it difficult for a beginner to create a site on Drupal?

Question

CMS

Good afternoon.
I would be very grateful to hear the answers to my questions regarding the IT project, below is a brief description of the situation and questions.
There is an idea to create a large site, in order to understand the project in terms of structure, this site will be similar to a narrowly focused social network on a specific topic.
Creating such a project by a professional studio will be at least 1 million rubles, I don’t have that kind of money at the moment, although I earn quite well , I can’t accumulate a similar amount in less than a year - one and a half.
Having studied a lot of materials on creating a site, several solutions began to arise: 1 - try to create the initial version of the site yourself, using ready-made engines (the choice fell on Drupal) 2 - find a freelancer who is ready to create a simple but working version of the site. (I don't even know how much it will cost).
After the implementation of the first version of the site, a stage will be launched to raise funds for the project and search for investors to further create a development team.
As for the questions, they are as follows:
1) How realistic is it for a person who has absolutely no knowledge in programming to try to learn Drupal himself, devoting about 2-3 hours to this?
2) With the same time investment, how long will it take to create a similar site (of course, not the final version, but a full-fledged working site that you can show, and not say “here there will be a menu, and here is a jump-out list, and here is this, etc. ”?
3) Will there be problems in the future related to the fact that the site works on a ready-made engine, if the project is successful? (Planned number of registered users ~ 6-7 million people, with online ~ 1 million. These are the figures that should be with the success of the project and its existence for at least 2-3 years. At the initial stages, no one expects this))
4) If in the future problems are identified with the fact that the project is made on Drupal, will it be possible with the participation of professionals to somehow transfer the site along with the database or rewrite the site with a specially created “engine” for these purposes?
5) When attracting a freelance programmer, how much will it cost to create a basic version of the site? And will the programmer cope with this task alone, or will it be necessary to involve a web designer?
Thank you all in advance for your replies and advice.
PS
I apologize in advance for the possibility that my questions and description sound stupid, this is due to the fact that I have nothing to do with programming at all.

Answer 1

Alone on Drupal, you won’t be able to do this in the near future

Answer 2

If you need a social network, use the social network engine.
If you are not a programmer, then using any engine you can configure the functionality you need using only the engine's capabilities in its administrative part. Therefore, the functionality of your product will not be original and sufficient.
The approach “I have a brilliant idea, but I don’t want to spend money on it” will not lead you anywhere, if you are confident in the genius of the idea, it is better to invest your money in it, attract money from outside. In any case, a good project needs a good team, professionals.
And I want to warn you right away, today is 2015, not 2000. Just creating a website is not even half the success, but a third, maybe a quarter. Much more money than in creation, you have to invest in competent marketing.

Answer 3

Make a detailed terms of reference with page prototypes. Think over all the key details in advance so that you don’t have to redo it later. With it, you can already go to web studios and freelancers, find out the exact prices.
If, in the end, you still do it yourself, then at least you will have a completely clear idea of ​​\u200b\u200bwhat exactly you are doing, that is, in any case, it’s worth spending time writing technical specifications.
Depends on your abilities and the complexity of the project. If the site is not at all template, then you will have to learn to program a lot yourself - it takes several months (even years) for people to do this. And if you just use (install and configure) Drupal without programming skills, you can get used to it in a week.
The basic functionality of a social network on popular engines is implemented without programming skills at all. You just have to click the mouse for a few hours. But after all, everything will not be limited to the basic functionality and template appearance, right? And here the implementation of "wishlists" will already begin, which can easily drag on for weeks (months) of work, even for professional developers.
Will arise. No one has yet managed to create a good, large project and avoid all sorts of problems.
Anything is possible, but it will take time and money. In fact, it may turn out that you have to rewrite absolutely everything. It is better to approach the choice of a specific language / framework / cms immediately and not plan to redo everything later.
Look for similar orders on stock exchanges: http://freelansim.ru/tasks?q=social+network
Even better - still write a TOR and try to find a contractor, place an offer on any popular freelance exchange, indicating that the price is negotiable, showing there TK (do not be afraid for an idea, ideas are worth nothing). You will immediately receive a specific offer. Purely intuitively, given that you have not written what your social network will be different from all the others (and it should be something) - I think a good developer will take on 150,000 ± 50,000 rubles.
If you need a non-standard (template) design, and none of the paid templates will suit you either, provided that all of them can be redone to some extent, then you also need a designer. For sure, you will also need a logo, with this, too, to the designer. By the way, freelancers often work in tandem: developer + designer.

Answer 4

Where does this price come from? I made a clone of one type for 80k in two weeks. (toly I screwed up with the price of roofing felts they are trying to breed you for grandmas).
In general, Drupal is slow and incomprehensible shit. In general, all these kms shit are faster and slower. They are at most suitable for a simple blog, and not social.
UPD networks .
The price of a new social the network will be about twice as high, since all the layout must be done from scratch, and not copy-pasted from VK.

Answer 5

Well, can you just take it and try it?

Answer 6

1) How realistic is it for a person who has absolutely no knowledge in programming to try to learn Drupal himself, devoting about 2-3 hours to this?

Of course real!
The whole question is how long it will last.
... something tells me that they don't live that long. ;-)

Answer 7

A beginner will not be able to create a large social networking site on Drupal.
Now for the list of your questions.
1. Don't even start wasting time learning Drupal. It is better to invest these portions of 2-3 hours of time into learning HTML5, CSS3 after them PHP, the SQL structured query language.
2. Having started studying according to point 1, immediately start trying to make separate pages of your project. This will allow you to navigate in the future, what can be done and what is impossible.
3. Read the license of the engine, as a rule, the terms of use are written quite carefully.
4. Everything is possible with the participation of professionals. And transfer, and rewrite, and make your own engine. For reference, top portals and everyone who looks up to them do a redesign on average once every 2-4 years, because. Web technologies are developing very dynamically. Those. make a site once and for all will not work.
5. A programmer can't do it alone. About 100 people are needed to create and support the social network project. Here's an expert's opinion for my support . A social network, even a highly specialized one, is not only the development of an engine. This is a bunch of support departments: support for the portal itself, technical support for users, legal, accounting, monetization department, project administration to coordinate the work of everyone, etc.
But the development of any project always begins with one person, who later attracts assistants.

Answer 8

You have two ways -
You either invent your own product like a Zuckerberg by
hiring engineers or becoming an engineer
Or use a ready-made solution, paid or free, if it has the functionality you need
And then you are just an admin and fill in the content
In this case, you need to study this ready-made engine and understand what and how can be additionally filed with the help of hired specialists - graph design or plugins ..
Surely there are examples in nature when someone using a ready-made engine, for example, a forum or blog, was able to achieve success

Answer 9

Yes very.
Drupal is a hulking monster, very slow and complex. You will have to:
- install about 20-30 plugins to create more or less basic functionality
- understand the intricacies of native tools with documentation that is, say, "not very" and the lack of feedback from the frail community (you will wait 1-2 weeks for a response)
- in conclusion, if, if everything is ready, you will have to suffer with Drupal optimization. You will be surprised how many people ask the question "how to make Drupal work faster?"
It is much easier to use a normal CMS, like Wordpress (because it is the most flexible, powerful and at the same time simple and fast solution with a very active community), or use a framework (any code that you get will work faster and more efficiently than an analog on Drupal).
Drupal is the bottom.

Answer 10

Create social media on Drupal network is possible. Those who write Drupal is slow, so it means the programmer's crooked hands. Yes, for that matter, there are Boost and Varnish, but they probably don’t tell pseudo-developers anything, and the caching system in Drupal itself is not the worst out of the box. What 20-30 plugins are you talking about? Drupal does not use plugins and there is no such thing as a plugin for Drupal, only modules - this is not Wordpress for you. Find a competent Drupal developer, and your site will work adequately even under heavy loads. And if you wait another year, then most will move to Drupal 8, and there are completely different perspectives, because you will get Symphony with an admin panel out of the box.

Answer 11

Q&A: Do you have a list of competitors? I'm talking about such narrowly focused social networks of precisely this kind.