Hi,
I'm writing to guage interest in a New York City Drupal Beginners2Admins Class. Also, if interest exists, what people would like for it to cover. Basically, I have a small core of clients that want to pay me to take them from basic HTML to deploying and managing an online store with Drupal.
I've been tossing around class structure in my head, and I'm thinking about one class a week for three hours - probably on the weekends. Everyone in the class will be developing a site real-time as the class progresses. The final class will (hopefully) be launch for everyone participating, and a new group of drupal admins.
All classes would be optional, but we won't recap if you've missed a week, thats on you.
Something like this - if we do e-commerce:
Week 1-3: Basic intro to web technology, HTML syntax, basic PHP, Hosting, CSS etc. - Easily Skiped for many people, but lays the groundwork for the rest.
Week 4: Installing a localhost for development, Installing Drupal on your localhost and server installation, Touch on Multisite install...basicaly cover everything in install.txt
Week 5: Site Configuration - Overview of Themes, Blocks, Taxonomy...basicaly a full walk through of the default avigation menu.
Week 6: Advanced themeing - PHPtemplate engine, overriding theme functions with tpl.php, etc.
Week 7: Modules - Best practices for testing contrib before install, Install most commonly used contrib modules, activation and configuration of common core modules - contact, path, image, ++
Week8: Catch-up - By now I'm sure we'd ned a catch up week - this would be a long Q&A for al things up to this point. Remember, it's optional.
Week9: E-commerce - install and walk through of each ecommerce module. Configuration of the payment gateway of choice (paypal?)
Week10: Store Setup - depending on the product being sold... ...
Week 11: Troubleshooting Howto- Group troubleshooting for all glitches - and best practices for solving problems in the future. More about logs, configuring cron for backups, etc.
Week 12: Launch - Upload the site, pointing nameservers, celebrating...
This is, obviously, very rough. It could just as easily be done with a ommunity site and OG instead of ecommerce. I wouldn't want to have a clas over 5-7 people at any given time; I feel this would need to b a small group.
So, what do people think? Is this something people would be interested in. I haven't even thought of cost yet, just want feedback.
UPDATE: Anyone interested in taking the class should contact me as well as leaving feedback here. My contact form is enabeled, or use sam at treslerdesigns dot coom

Comments
Good Idea
I think the class is a good idea. The outline might need a little work, but if you're looking for instructors, I'd be more than happy to pick up some of the teaching dates.
Mike
Excellent
Yeah, as I said "This is, obviously, very rough." I'm still thinking it through, guaging interest, etc.
Will you be at the meetup tomorrow night? We should talk regardless. Thanks!
CNDP, LLC
I would want to take this
Yes- I would totally be interested. In fact I need something like this soon. I think limiting to an online store is a little rigid. It should be project based, and people should be able to construct their sites independently.
All the above could be covered, but equally important would be some one on one instruction- figuring out how to make drupal work for a variety of ideas.
Well,
In principle I agree with you, in practice, this would be very difficult. I've done some significant work on the syllabis since I posted this originally. Its now 15 weeks and broken into three sections.
1-3 Basic Web Skills
4-6 Basic PHP/MySQL and Installation of Drupal
7-9 Content Types, Blocks, and Troubleshooting
10-12 Theming, Organization (taxonomy, etc), and Contrib
13-15 E-commerce
13-15 Organic Groups and community sites
13-15 Anything else someone proposes
More details can be found at my site http://treslerdesigns.com/class
Keep the feedback coming. I'm possibly going to push the date to first weekend in November to accomodate people's schedules.
CNDP, LLC
I'm interested
I'm interested. -Bruce
beginner class
Did this class idea ever take off? I am in need of a few start up lessons. I have a web site but have never maintained it. I just installed it into my web host and have accept to drupal thru my Cpanel. Now what?