Posted by DrupalMaz on June 9, 2011 at 12:03am
Hi all. I'm a complete newbie to Drupal and web development in general. Just wondering if anyone has any advice on where to start learning. Are there any training courses for beginners in Melbourne? Any good books you could recommend to start with?
Thanks to anyone who can offer any advice.
Marion
Comments
Most likely the best place to
Most likely the best place to start is to go to the Drupal Mentoring http://groups.drupal.org/node/154574 where you can get hands on sessions.
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Gordon Heydon
Welcome Marion
Welcome to the Australian Drupal Group Marion!
Gordon's right - come along to the mentoring session - it's pretty informal, and would be a good chance to meet more Melbourne Drupal people.
Using Drupal, and Front End Drupal are good books - although they're both based on Drupal 6 - I'm not sure about Drupal 7 books yet.
There are a lot of good resources online though - especially videos. Look for Lullabot and NodeOne vids.
Good luck - it can be daunting at first, but is totally worth it.
cheers
Donna
Donna Benjamin
Former Board Member Drupal Association (2012-2018)
@kattekrab
Thanks!
Cool, thank you both for the speedy and helpful advice! I may see you at a Mentoring session soon :)
Also the meetup 2nd Tues of the month
http://groups.drupal.org/node/150974
Everyone's welcome there as well. Signup on the above page. We try to do something for beginners and intermediate at each meetup too.
That's next Tuesday.
B
drupal gardens
You could make yourself a test site at http://drupalgardens.com
Then you can play around with settings and quite possibly get lost, I still do.
Another D7 newbie
Hi Marion,
I can also recommend the Mentoring Sessions and find the 'experts' friendly and helpful.
This reference book is a good start : https://www.packtpub.com/drupal-7-create-and-operate-website-quickly-and...
E-book format is low cost and instant!
RR
Practice and take your time
Hi Marion,
Sorry it's taken awhile to respond but here are some more ideas...
I found the Lullabot intro videos really helpful to get an overview of the Drupal terminology and get the basics of installing modules and basic theming. http://drupalize.me/ seems like a cost effective way to get access to them.
As soon as possible, I would suggest that you find a real project. Find a friend or family member who needs a simple website. You will learn a lot and have fun at the same time. You can use a free theme and get familiar installing modules and configuring them. You will then research obstacles and problems and implement as you learn.
I'd also say that you need to be patient with yourself. If you are new to web development there is a huge volume of stuff to learn. Understanding HTML, Javascript, CSS, jQuery, PHP, mySQL and Linux and that's before you get to Drupal. You should not expect to learn all of this before you start being productive and building stuff in Drupal.
I'm currently in learning Spanish (in Peru) and I've been told that successful language learners have the following things in common and I've realised that this applies to learning anything complex like Drupal.
Ambiguity - Successful learners are able to live with ambiguity. They implement what they know without knowing all the detail. eg. you don't need to know PHP before modifying a tpl.php file.
No definite answers - Successful learners are comfortable with shades of gray. There are a likely to be hundred ways to do something. You don't need to always find the best way. Sometimes find a way that meets your needs.
Community involvement: Effective learners participate in the community and practice as much as possible. Others have posted several ways to get involved with the community.
All the best on this journey. Be patient with yourself and as you've already discovered, there's lots of people in the community who are willing to help.
thanks everyone again
thanks for that David. I'm pretty good at picking up new languages (I've learnt Spanish and Italian) so hopefully I start picking up these techie languages too! Thanks heaps to Peter who recommended Drupal Gardens, I've started playing around on there that seems to be a good user friendly way to start while also staying to true to the basics of core Drupal.
thanks all!