DRUPAL GARDENS

Seriously functional and professional, but steep learning curve.

Drupal Gardens is the "light" or consumer version of Belgian CMS Drupal, which is used by professional developers the world over to create high-end, complicated data-driven sites - amongst other.  It was launched in 2010 and has been used so far to create over 50.000 websites.  This is a very versatile tool with lots of functionalities, but be warned that it's not for novices !

Getting started

When you register, you're requested to select the type of site that you want to make : campaign (standard), product (e-commerce), blog or create your own.  The first 3 options are shortcuts to a specific set-up related to that category of sites.  The "create your own" lets you determine everything from scratch to have it 100% personalized.

Once that's done, you must determine which pages & blocks you want on your site, and which features you want to include :

... then you can create your site, and the complicated stuff begins.

The dashboard

It looks like this and it's in your left top corner :

• Dashboard : click on this to have a quick look at the basics of how your site is being used : who's online, who has last registred, which content was most recently added, and similar stuff.
• Content : to see a list of all the content items that have been created for your site : basic page, blog entries, FAQ items, galleries, news items, polls and webforms.  All these can be sorted depending on status : published, not published, promoted, not promoted, sticky or not sticky.
• Structure : to manage your settings related to blocks, content form, content types, mailing lists, menus (4 different ones), simple views, and taxonomy.
• Appearance : themes, brand, lay-out, styles and advanced settings (CSS).  Basically this is to determine fonts, colors, links, backgrounds, logo, and borders & spacing (see screenshot below).
• People : for a summary (list) of all the registered users of your site.  With a filter to determine role (editor, administrator...), permission level (to which modules does that user have access) and status (active or blocked).
• Modules : list of all the modules that are available for use, including options to edit any of these.
• Configuration : related to setting content authoring, system information, user interface, media, development & maintenance, web services, search & metadata, regional and language settings.
• Reports : to find out how your site is performing : status report, log messages, field list, mollom statistics (this is a built-in anti-spam function), top search phrases.

Still with me ?

Template design

All the above works together to create content, determine its characteristics and its settings.  The content then has to be put on your site somewhere, and to achieve that Drupal Gardens has divided their templates in regions where you can put the content that you want to see there.  Here's an idea of what it looks like :

PRICING 

Notes :

1. content elements are included in all the plans, as is the option to export your files and have the site hosted somewhere else.
2. basic and higher : you get 1 free domain name and you can duplicate your site (just copy it)
3. professional and higher : Drupal branding is removed (it's never conspicuous though, not a problem if you have a Starter or Basic pack)
4. with Premium you get one-on-one support
5. with Unlimited you get priority one-on-one support

CONCLUSION

Drupal Gardens is so exhaustive and rich in features that I'm still getting to grips with it.  If you have a head for technical things and you don't mind spending more than a few hours to learn the ropes, your site will be excellent in all respects.  Definitely to be recommended, but not for everybody.

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