[Wayne Luke]

Originally Posted by KTBleeding

How so? There's one "page.tpl.php" file and the rest is css. Of course if you're making a massive site, there's quite a bit more to it than just that.. but with core that's all there is.

Well core has absolutely no functionality except for taxonomy, urls and basic content management. If you want custom content types with fields and different views, you need to install at least three plugins (CCK, Views, Panels) to get it to work right or write a lot of PHP code yourself. If you're going to re-write most of the content handling why use a CMS to start with. This doesn't even touch on elements needed if you want to have basic social networking components included on the site. That is probably another 5 or 6 plugins right there because the basic user profile is just that, basic.

Then you need to make sure that all modules and styles inherit the output properly, etc... This is probably why the commercial version of Drupal, Acquia includes 20 third-party modules to provide the basics people need. Probably also why CCK and Views will be absorbed into Drupal 7 as core components.

I guess if you're making a simple blog site with just one author and basic comments then you can simply edit page.tpl.php. Most sites that need a CMS are more complicated than that though. Of course in the long run it does mean that most Drupal sites are less cookie cutter than many Wordpress or even vBulletin sites. They do take a lot more investment to get working though.