I don't know if one can even say using Drupal is appropriate in any situation. The current trend in web technologies is to get a list of keywords, formulate a project around those keywords, and then wind up with some massive headaches as a result. There are a few gems made with Drupal but the majority of sites that are made with the CMS don't scale and are haphazardly put together. There is an argument that a CMS should be usable right out of the box. No agreement is more simpler than install software => use said software. There should be no third party add-ons required.
This is where Drupal fails. To do anything remotely interesting with the CMS you have to install many and not always functioning third party modules. The modules that are built are mostly open source initiatives but they are also open source failures. Some of the modules are actually complete trash and don't scale. Basically if you are going to need a site with a full featured set of options and need scalability Drupal is not your best bet as you will wind up just customizing the third party modules anyway. It takes me approximately three-four hours to implement many of these third party features using my preferred framework CakePHP and then add the features I want on top of it as well (hint build it in CakePHP or an MVC based framework).
To Drupal's success though they have pretty much made making a blog idiot proof. No other tool allows you to setup a blog with some relative ease, download hundreds of third party additions and make your shared hosting provider weep like a little girl who just dropped her ice cream on a hot summer day. Some may say I don't know what I am talking about, but I do! I was the "go to guy" on thrillist.com. That website is 100% Drupal and it doesn't use MySQL it uses PostgreSQL, so I am well versed in the scalability of Drupal, the weaknesses and strengths. In closing, don't jump on the bandwagon, especially if it is going to run off a cliff.
Drupal's goal was never to scale. That's what most people don't realize. Do you honestly think the person who built it sat down and said, "I'm going to make this CMS for large enterprise companies." ?? No way. It was built for himself and others. It's still geared toward those who aren't very familiar with PHP. It is -not- meant to be a professional tool. Sure, some people who got out there and built Joe's blog made some money and are "professional" and sure some real agencies picked it up...Mainly out of the buzz. Mainly because someone asked...And partially because they believed it would save them time and money.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The nature of the web is to evolve and we all know that web sites never end up what they were meant to. Either you have scope/feature creep - or - you have additional work later on down the road (good on you if you can get paid for it). I'm not even talking about all the countless hours in support and making sure the site doesn't crash. I'm just talking about coding work.
So that's the name of the game. That's the business. The industry. If you aren't ok with hacking something up or doing something that client requests but isn't really easy or "proper" - then you're not in the game.
So that said. Does anyone really think Drupal or WordPress or Joomla was built in mind with the needs of professionals? That it was built to be rapid to develop for? Easy to maintain? Scale for the larger sites? No way. It was designed to be quick to install and put up a blog. Add in a photo gallery, copy and paste youtube video embeds, and so on. Meant for everyday users. Meant for small sites.
The real problem here isn't Drupal. It's a wonderful tool that provides help to many many people. It's great for the do-it-yourselfer's. But, SHAME on the big corporate company that thinks they are going to save a buck by using it. They actually DO have the budget to build something proper and what do they do? Make some half arse decision to use the wrong tool for the job.
The real question is why? Why are they making these decisions? Are there people egging them on? Is it promotion for the CMS that creates this buzz and bends the ears of people who make decisions? Most the time, the people making decisions don't know much about the web. So I can understand why something that sounds great would suck them in. ... Or ... Is it inexperienced developers that push Drupal on people because they don't know how to make their own product from scratch? Perhaps web development and design is the new "real estate" where you just pick up a for dummies book when your career runs out or when you get laid off or fired. In this economy, there's more and more of that.
So in this economy things like Drupal thrive. They thrive not only because it is open source and cheap (let's leave the extra hours in hacking it up and fixing all the problems and crashing outside of the cost), but also because you don't have to be a great developer to use it.
Really interesting and I'm really curious how something like Drupal gets to be so popular and used on such large sites. I mean, I really appreciate the hard work from the people behind it and if I was setting up my own personal site, sure! I mean I have used it and my own personal blog was WordPress. I'm not a hater of these CMS' at all. I'm just agreeing here that it should only be used when appropriate and we (as the developer community) should not lie to people and tell them it will scale and solve all their problems because we think we can hand the client crap on a platter and save a buck or because we're lazy or because we simply don't have the talent to do something properly.
One project and you're an expert? Impressive.
Perhaps if you'd done the site the Drupal way instead of fighting it, you would have had as many issues?
Actually I have built many projects in Drupal, this is just a highlight of what happens when companies don't evaluate their needs effectively. @Jenna, the Drupal way should not require loading every module on a page in which it might not be used. It is expensive, costly, and dangerous to web servers. Scalability is the last concern you have when you can't prevent each page costing 100MB of load, at that point you should be researching how to move platforms.