joomla, drupal, phpnuke, or...nothing at all?

TurtleShell

I'm trying to learn to write PHP and use MySQL. I feel as if I showed up late to the game--I didn't ever consider a CMS until now. I've started reading up on joomla, drupal, phpnuke,...all that. Am I wasting my time trying to learn to write this code myself? I enjoy doing it, but I feel as if I'm not getting very far.

I like doing everything for myself, but I don't know if I'm making everything harder on myself than it needs to be.

What are the disadvantages to using a CMS? Advantages? I'd like to hear your preferences, and why.

rvec

a cms makes it easy to set up a site. But if you want some extra functions which are not supplied with blocks the cms itself or extra modules you have to make them yourself. And if you want to make a simple blog and don't need all the extra functions you can try to find a cms with no extras but you can also write one yourself.
There are loads of cms, forum, wiki, blog, groupware,... programs on the web, but if you want something specific you'll never find it.

TurtleShell

gosh, that's encouraging:)

kody

If you enjoy the coding aspect, I suggest you jump in and help out any of the projects you've just mentioned, as they're open source! There's always bugs to squish or new functionality to add.

chartcentral

I'd prefer Drupal if it's any CMS. Then I'd rather code from scratch for other purposes.