Posted by bartbutell on April 11, 2011 at 5:57pm
I am a Microsoft guy wanting to learn open source for Drupal. What resources are available in the Portland area (ie. Courses, books, classes, ....). What are your suggestions on an effective path to take?
Comments
A few resources
Some of the best resources are on the Drupal home page, most notably:
For manuals, search for Drupal on Amazon, but make sure you pick up more recent books. There are tons of Drupal books out there now... and check out the reviews as they are useful. Some might pipe up with their favorite Drupal books.
If you have a budget and like video training then Lullabot have their Drupalize.me subscription service with some of the best training videos out there, or you can buy individual DVDs directly.
Our two monthly meetings, both the formal DUG with presentations and the more casual Brewpal gatherings, are great places to have conversations and find help, as is this list. You can also find help at the Drupal forums or on one of the many Drupal IRC channels. There are even more resources listed on the drupal.org Community & Support page.
There are also plenty of websites out there talking about Drupal and, as always, Google is your friend. Give yourself time. Drupal has a steeper learning curve than many other CMS, but what you get is a framework and CMS that is immensely powerful and customizable that can be used to build almost any website out there, and does it better than any other CMS I know.
Hope this was useful.
Sala kahle,
Grant
Foundations
Grant's recommendations are great! So yes you could take training classes and just learn about the "Drupalisms" about the CMS platform. But without a strong understanding of the "preferred" development platform that it runs on you won't have the whole picture.
So, I would recommend that coming from a windows and .net development platform that you also learn about the preferred platform for Drupal.
Linux - Operating System
apache - Http server
Mysql or MariaDB - Database server
PHP - programming language and application server
If you are on windows or a mac you can either pollute your primary operating system with the dev environment or do what I do and install a Virtualbox instance on your local hard drive.
http://www.virtualbox.org/
Download an ISO of linux (I use ubuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/) and use Google to learn about how to use the console and GUI.
Once you have the operating system installed open up the console (command window) and learn about using apt-get to install apache, mysql, and php5.
For development environments there are plenty to choose from, I use netbeans (again a free open source IDE) http://netbeans.org/
For administration of your servers I use the console and a web-based client called webmin (http://www.webmin.org)
a post on how to setup your environment (there are literally 100s a google search away) http://groups.drupal.org/node/6266
Just my recommendation, you'll learn more and get farther.
Robert Foley Jr
Solutions Architect
http://www.robertfoleyjr.com
I like to compare working on
I like to compare working on drupal to learning about cars.
Much like I wouldn't tell a person interested in cars to build a motor from scratch, I wouldn't tell a new drupal user to do what was mentioned above. Much like with a car you first learn to drive the thing (IE: Get used to drupal, the terms, etc etc), you should just learn how to use durpal and the basics of what it's about. Then, just as with a car, you slowly start looking under the hood. Start by learning a manageable and very useful aspect of it such as themeing, then work your way inwards. Eventually you'll get into the motor, and by that time, you'll be ready, the transition will be easy, and you'll do good! It's also really nice to slowly step in and poke around some, as you'll start to learn the terms and the lingo. As I'm sure you already know being a microsoft guy, knowing how to ask the questions is half the battle!
I normally teach an introduction to Drupal at PCC, although this semester we didn't have enough students sign up! When I teach the summer class you should join up!
There is also the Drupal themeing course. If you can get yourself through some basic of drupal (CCK/fields, Views) then you should be fairly prepared. Basic HTML and CSS skills will go a long way in that class as well.
Jesse Nicola -- Shredical six different ways to Sunday! -- My Portfolio
Learning in steps
Robert's great information does remind of something. A lot of beginners find the Acquia Drupal distribution is a great place to start. From an advanced user's perspective the distro is a bit bloated in terms of functionality, but by the same token new users don't have to learn what the major modules are or what the good modules are as Acquia include most of the modules you'd need to build all kinds of websites. It lets you concentrate more on the CMS and less on the Lego aspect of Drupal. Further, Acquia offers a free stack installer that will set up a locally hosted Drupal web page/pages on Linux, Mac or Windows. This could save you a ton of time setting up the WAMP stack (WAMP is Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP).
On the Linux thing, like Robert I like Linux and prefer Ubuntu Linux. LAMP (Same as WAMP, but with Linux instead of Windows) has a lot of advantages over the others, and it is a great long-term direction for you. However, the truth is that Apache, MySQL and PHP are everywhere for a reason, and that is that they are pretty solid on most Windows, Macs and Linux platforms. For this reason, in part, my own personal opinion would be that you not use Linux just yet.
While it is true that many aspects of LAMP and Drupal are better on Linux (like the Drush Drupal command-line utility and the ease of use), and that Linux is a great environment for developing websites (not just LAMP ones), for the most part the WAMP stack is decent and my own advice would be to stick with what you know (Windows) at first, mostly because Linux would add a helluva lot to the learning curve (new OS, new line commands, new editors, new installation methods, new limitations and challenges, etc) and you will have enough on your plate already. There's enough to learn with just Drupal in that you will be dealing with a new language, database and CMS/framework.
I have also noticed a sizable number of our user group develop on Windows PCs, so maybe a couple of them will offer up some advice. It would be nice to see more of us using Linux, but the truth is that there are far more Mac users than anything else, and this is true of every open source tech group I've been to. Drupal will work fine on any of the three and the Acquia stack installer should help you easily get set up on any of them.
Yes, I developed WAMP before LAMP and currently I'm on MAMP. Yes, I miss a lot about developing on Linux... but Macs make up for this in many other ways. Yes, learning everything at the same time was too damned intense and that's why it's hard for me to recommend it. I'm a big believer in learning being fun, but for most of us that means manageable chunks.
Sala kahle,
Grant
Too much to learn
I tend to agree with your approach. It seems daunting to learn Linux along with the rest of drupal. Thanks for the advice. I am sure I will be back for more.
There are also classes available on Drupal at PCC
In case you are more interested in classes, we (Portland Community College) offer a couple of classes on Drupal each term. Our next class this term is "Customizing Drupal Themes" , which starts on May 14th. The next time our beginning class, "Drupal Website Development" is offered, is summer term, starting on June 28th.
You can also find more info on our BLOG, pccProDev.org.
John