Hi
I have been aware that there was a thing called drupal for several years, but only last week did I decide to dig in and try to learn it. I have a comp sci degree from a long time ago, and have some experience developing in C, awk, shell, etc.
I also have some ability to develop websites on a LAMP (actually MAMP) stack with HTML, CSS, php, and MySQL. I have deployed a couple such sites to a LAMP stack at godaddy. They ain't pretty, but they work.
However, I'm finding it pretty hard to get started with drupal. I have installed drupal 6 on my MAMP stack, and basically couldn't figure out where to go with that. I also attended the drupal camp last week at the library, and that made it very clear there are incredile possibilities in drupal, but didn't help with getting started.
I since created an account on drupal gardens and quickly become quite overwhelmed with the GUI in drupal 7 (is there such a GUI in drupal 6?). However, after several days, I seem unable to create anything that looks even halfway decent.
I hope this isn't too dumb a question, but can any of you smart folks suggest some free/cheap resources for getting started? It seems to make sense to start with drupal 7, but I am easily swayed.
Thanks, Jim
Comments
Try Lulabot
Hi Jim,
I'm sort of a newbie myself, but I've been slowly working my way to figuring things out. I ended up purchasing a bunch of the video's from Lullabot and watching them. (My company paid for them so it worked out good for me) Sorry it's not a free solution, but they helped make a few things clear. Learning Drupal is one of those things that you just have to really focus on, and hands on experience and practice help you make the leap from generic theory to practical application. There are lots of resources out there, I've learned a lot from podcasts and articles that you can find on http://drupal.org/planet. You can also ask a specific question on the forms and it seems like lots of people are willing to help.
Hope that helps,
Kirk
(btw, I'm not affiliated with lullabot in any way)
A couple of book recommendations
Hi Jim,
as a fairly-recent newbie myself, I found the book "Using Drupal" (ISBN 0596515804) a real eye-opener. Written by several of the Lullabots, it runs you through one short project per chapter. Each project uses a few popular modules and shows you how to configure them to create 10 projects, including a Job Posting Board, a Product Reviews site, a Photo Gallery, an Event Management site, and more. There's also a nice chapter on how to choose a good module. (Lullabot has a video on this, at http://www.lullabot.com/videos/dvd-outtake-drupal-module-selection-tips)
Another book I was glad I purchased, is "Leveraging Drupal: getting your site done right". (ISBN 978-0-470-41087-5) It's a lot more technical, as evidenced by the stereotypical Gandalf-like wise old programmer on the cover, Victor Kane. Victor runs you through all the steps needed to set up a well-oiled Drupal environment, including Subversion source control and Trac project management/bug tracking. The book follows a single project throughout.
Both books are for Drupal 6. Having started a few months ago, there was no stable D7 beta available to me back then. In addition, I prefer the tried-and-true D6 for now — since all those lovely contrib modules work with it! I prefer cutting my teeth on D6 and only move up to D7 once I can feel secure about its module compatibility, which will come with (a) more Drupal experience on my part, and (b) time for more developers to upgrade & debug their modules. This is only my two cents' worth; YMMV.
Note: "Leveraging Drupal" can
Note: "Leveraging Drupal" can be arcane, full of UNIX commands for you to type, so I strongly suggest starting with "Using Drupal". The latter will instill a sense of excitement and a thirst for discovery. If you started with Victor Kane's book, you might run for the hills.
Victor's book however, also shows by example how to plan your project using Agile development.
I also recommend the book "Using Drupal"
I'm also a fairly-recent newbie who got into Drupal a few months ago as a way to build a simple home page for myself. I more or less followed the example projects in "Using Drupal" by rote and I learned how to build that home page. I found it took a few weeks to start "thinking" in Drupal, to get away from following various examples and tutorials by rote. Some concepts take longer, I'm just now starting to understand what is possible with Views and CCK.
I found chapter 10 (Building an online store with Drupal and Ubercart) to be invaluable. The example in that chapter became the basis of a successful e-commerce site I built for my company. Of course it took many (many) hours of building, configuration, refinement, learning and thinking to turn the example into a production site but I credit this book with setting me in the right direction.
Mustard Seed Media videos
Mustard Seed Media has a large set of free video podcasts at http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast. I found them invaluable in getting up to speed with Drupal 6.
Joomla
I am a non-techie who put up a Drupal site and then ran out of steam as the learning curve is steep and most Drupalites are ubere-techies so I felt out of place. This may be a good place for me. Will check out recommended resources.
I ran into a friend last evening and he suggested I look At Joomla, a Drupal-like system with similar background. Anyone have experience with Joomla?
I would advise using Joomla.
I would advise using Joomla. It also has a learning curve and has limitations. If you are a "non-techie" you may want to look at acquia
http://acquia.com/
They may charge for the site but make it easier to get up and running.
Joomla
Coming from someone who's used both, I have to say that Joomla is definitely not my cup of tea. I find it's must more confusing for the end user, and infinitely annoying when trying to get it to do something you want it to do. I have yet to find something I could not accomplish fairly easily in Drupal, yet could not do in Joomla without some serious hacks.
From a user's perspective to add a new page:
Drupal - Create Content - Add title, assign it to a menu, type in the content, and you're done.
Joomla - First, create a menu if you don't have one, then create a category and type before you can create a page. Then, click on Articles to add a page. Put in all the right information. Save. Go to your menu, and add a new item to the menu. Make sure you choose the right type of item, then assign the article you just made to that menu item. Save.
It's just not very intuitive.
That being said, I'm sure there are good points to Joomla, I just can't stand working with it.
It's very true though that Drupal has a steep learning curve from a development standpoint, but once you get used to it, and get comfortable with CCK and Views, there isn't much you won't be able to do.
As a developer, if it's a simple blog, I use WordPress, but ANYTHING else goes to Drupal.
I would recommend the Using Drupal book that someone else recommended. It goes through real-world examples of projects, and pretty much covers all the common elements of Drupal that you will need for the future.
The one thing it doesn't focus on is Theming, which is a bit tricky, but start out using a current one, and play around with changing, and molding it into what you want.
I would say that if you're serious about development, stick with it, and use these forums for help! You won't regret it.
Brandon
Joomla vs Drupal
Before this deteriorates into a mini-CMS war, I would hasten to note that, having extensively used Joomla, WordPress and Drupal, I can vouch that they are all excellent open source systems. They are just different kinds of excellent. :-)
That I'm here in this group reflects my personal preference among the three, but Joomla has its place, particularly as a rapid development platform. It is highly extensible, if not very flexible. One main difference between Joomla and Drupal is that, while Joomla has a lot of excellent third-party extensions, they all kind of work independently of each other unless you do a lot of hacking, whereas Drupal modules normally integrate a lot more easily into a seamless website or web application. Drupal also easily bests Joomla in user access control and permissions.
Joomla is perhaps a bit easier than Drupal to get right 'out of the box' (though that is changing with various Drupal distributions like Acquia) and it works very well for many sites, but in my estimation Drupal is worth the extra effort.
after using Mambo (now called
after using Mambo (now called joomla) I changed to Drupal because of its excellent permission features that you need for community sites. You can decide who is allowed to read it - down to a single post.
I think, wordpress is the fastest to start - watching others doing it. It may take some time, but once you got the idea you will love drupal. Maybe at the moment for a newbie it might be a good idea to start with v7, for me, I will stick to v6 for a while. There are many local user groups around, so maybe you can join one of them. And there are podcasts from lullabot that are free.
Me too I would recommend starting with the book "using drupal".
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Bettina
Don't Follow Trends: Set Them!
https://drupal-training.de
https://www.skool.com/drupal/about