Posted by bostonfete on May 7, 2009 at 6:07am
Hello All,
I'm brand spanking new to Drupal (and CMS's overall). After a bunch of research on the best solution for managing content, Drupal seemed to make the most sense for my needs.
Now please, can someone let me know if this group is for folks who already understand Drupal? Is there room/acceptance for beginners?
My goal would be to move a basic html event listing site into a fully functional, dynamic Drupal site.
Any help or direction would be great!
Thanks,
BF
Comments
Hi bostonfete, and welcome!
Hi bostonfete, and welcome!
There is certainly room here for Drupal users of all experience levels. In fact, some of us got together tonight for coffee and ice cream and all we did was talk about Drupal and the Drupal Design Camp coming up in June. During the introductions, several people described themselves as being new to Drupal.
My first recommendation for getting started with Drupal is to attend as many Boston-area events as you can. There are camps, conferences, workshops and meetings that are more social (like the cafe meeting that we had tonight), and many of them are free. Ask people what their early experiences were, what tools they use and recommend and which modules, themes, webhosts, etc. to try and avoid.
If you'd like to talk online with other Drupal users, there are many IRC channels listed at http://drupal.org/irc (including the new #drupal-boston that we started up tonight). If you're new to IRC, it stands for Internet relay chat and can be accessed with dedicated IRC chat programs and with websites like http://webchat.freenode.net
There are also a couple excellent books that I recommend, including the new Front End Drupal. For a book that goes deep into Drupal internals, I recommend Pro Drupal Development, which I think can be described as being oriented towards intermediate Drupal users as well as experienced programmers who are new to Drupal. A book that's very approachable is Using Drupal, which describes different types of websites and then shows how to build them.
Again, though, the best advice I can give is to go to local Drupal events. The Drupal community is so large and diverse that the conferences, camps and user groups are the best I've seen around any industry or software project.
I was where you are two months ago...
I learned about Drupal in late January, spent a month or so looking at the various competitors and seeing what Drupal was capable of, then just jumped in and started developing my own site (http://www.greenfieldgames.com).
My best advice would be to just jump in and go. Grab a book that will provide you with a walkthrough, set it up locally and get your hands dirty. I found that whenever I had a question an answer was just a google search away. The amount of resources for the new user is just staggering. You should be able to not only find answers to your questions but, in many cases, you can also find tutorial videos!
Sometimes the way Drupal approaches things takes a little while to wrap your head around but it doesn't take long to really "get it." Of course, I'm still really new to it so I tend to have to go back to books or Google whenever I do something new.
Learning Materials
I started (only a couple of months ago) by going to drupal.org and reading their documentation.
During my reading, someone recommended a Lullabot video series:
http://www.doitwithdrupal.com/free-videos
After watching the free ones, I invested the $95 for access to the whole seminar (which took place back in Dec.) and it was easily worth it. These videos were a great help, because they brought me up to date fast by exposing me to major personalities involved in the Drupal community sharing best practices (the video on Media Handling alone presented by Nathan Haug saved me a lot of wasted resources), not to mention the seminar focused on other relevant subjects "around" Drupal (e.g. Social Network Theory, Performance and Scalability, etc.)
I spent a fair amount of time at drupal.org on their modules page. Setting the filter there to version 6.x and sorting by usage statistics, I explored the most popular modules (overall and in individual categories) to get a sense of how I can build my project without custom module development.
You may find it beneficial initially to focus on CCK and Views in addition to Drupal Core. Since you're dealing with events, perhaps the Date module (http://drupal.org/project/date) will serve you well.
Whatever path you choose, I wish you well.
Thanks Scott!
Thanks for the appreciation, Scott. We've been getting a lot of great feedback about the Do It With Drupal videos.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention our other Drupal training videos. Our videos on CCK and Views will act as a great hands-on start to get a grip on the Lego-building-blocks-style capabilities of Drupal. And if you're still getting your head around questions like "What is a node?", "What is taxonomy", "Who makes Drupal?", and "How does the community work?", then I would recommend Understanding Drupal, which provides a good conceptual overview.
All of the videos in the Lullabot Learning Series are available as both DVD and high-definition video downloads.
There you go. I've done my sales pitch for the day. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
-= Jeff Robbins | Lullabot Consulting =-
-= Jeff Robbins | Lullabot | Drupalize.me =-
Thanks, everyone!
I really appreciate the warm welcome and wonderful feedback. I must admit, I was a bit intimated by the rumors of drupal being a complex system to install. A buddy of mine really pushed me to go the JOOMLA route, but trust sources all lead to drupal.
After a series of unreliable webmasters, I decided to put my website in my own destiny and see what happens.
After my first drupal group post ever, I feel very comfortable moving forward and look forward to learning more about Drupal.
I will look out for events, as suggested, and hope to keep it touch with progress.
Again, thanks! I'm very excited!
Couple more questions--
-Did anyone come from a Joomla system? If so, what was experience with both?
-Is drupal good for event listing /entertainment, or best for blogging and instituions?
-What are some recommended photo gallery options?
I apologize if my etiquette is off, as I am literally as new to Drupal (and CMS overall) as it gets.
Any more recommendations/resources on starting would be much apprecaited.
Thanks!
Need help, Drupal rookie..will you be my friend? :)
bostonfete, To answer your
bostonfete,
To answer your second question, Drupal is excellent as both a blogging/forum tool and for listing events and entertainment. For event listings, CCK, Views 2, Date, and Calendar will serve you well. With blogs, you can add audio and video capabilities.
For an photo/image gallery, check out Drupal Therapy at http://www.drupaltherapy.com You'll find a number of excellent screencasts.
Jim
regional events
bostonfete, I wanted to post a reminder that there's an upcoming Drupal Cafe on Thursday (June 4), a meeting in Providence on Tuesday (June 9) and a design-focused DrupalCamp in two weeks (June 13-14). I hope you can attend at least one of them!