modular, yet extensible
The original title above wasn't meant to be a pun, that Drupal as image problems, but it surely could have been, which would lend itself to a completely different missive. That would be one about Drupal's various deficiencies in the area of image handling and media management. What follows, however, are some thoughts about Drupal's various public perception problems.
The matter of Drupal's public perception problem is one of various misimpressions and misapprehensions about it, created as some people first encounter it, and as some new users attempt to introduce themselves to Drupal and familiarize themselves with it. In short, Drupal is often misunderstood. Drupal is also sometimes underestimated by newcomers. Drupal also has an undeserved reputation for being "difficult". As a Drupal enthusiast, seems worth exploring some of the reasons for the perception problems that Drupal has.
It seems like Drupal is often misunderstood for multiple reasons. While Drupal's core is on the one hand actually rather succinct, Drupal is also modular. Much of what truly defines Drupal's capabilities and utility, exists within the functionalities implemented by extension modules contributed by other people, and not included in Drupal's core distribution. Consequently, any pragmatic attempt to deploy Drupal for site building involves significant insights into which of many community contributed modules needs to be deployed, and how to deploy them. Furthermore, because there isn't any single roadmap to what a Drupal nirvana might be, newcomers often miss the sign posts to roadmaps that might guide them toward the requisite insights.
