Already familiar with WordPress, having created many sites, I need to spend quality R&D time assessing the Drupal CMS. I used Microsoft IIS link here to get me started – it was a LOT more straightforward then the IIS-specific doc. on the Drupal site. Here is the install process thus far:

Pre-Requisites As I’m running IIS 6, the FastCGI notes were ignored. PHP 5.3.2 and MySQL 5.0.45 already installed

NOTE: To avoid the PDO support missing message during installation edit your PHP.INI file and ensure the extension for php_php_mysql.dll is activated i.e. NOT commented out, save and restart IIS to be on the safe side! Install pre-reqs do refer to this.

Download and unzip .ZIP’ed Drupal, version 7.2.6 from here

Create a new IIS Virtual Directory and point it at the path into which you unzipped Drupal. Note: No manual permissions were granted or needed on these files/folders prior to install.

Manually create a Drupal database, in my case using MySQL Administrator

Start the Drupal installation dialog from http://localhost/drupal/, substitute your domain name if required for localhost.

Answer installation questions to set up your site – to be honest they’re pretty much the same as the WordPress install questions – at the end of which you’ll be shown your bare-bones site. FYI it took me about an hour from not even being able to spell Drupal!

Now I have my first Drupal site, the hard bit, find out what I can do with it. Now where did I leave my Drupal documentation. Ooh look there are Themes just like WordPress 🙂