What is Drupal? For large and complex websites, nothing beats Drupal! Where do you start? What is the best way to organize your project to get the best chance of success?
This workshop will help you turn your ideas into a concrete todo list — whether you're building the site yourself, handing it off to a developer to build, or something in-between.
Seating is limited. You'll have access to the experts at Exaltation of Larks — a Drupal strategy, consulting, development and training company in Los Angeles — learn about Drupal and have a fun day!
| Sign up today at http://www.larks.la/training |
What to Bring
This is a lunch and learn-style workshop. Come during lunch and learn about Drupal! You don't need to bring a computer. Bring lunch!
This class is a fundraiser for Droplabs, where you can come and find help and resources for your Drupal project and cowork for free. You can donate cash at the time of the class, or conveniently pay using Paypal or Dwolla at http://droplabs.net
Suggested donation: $45.
No one will be turned away from this class. If you are unable to donate we ask that you volunteer some time helping Droplabs run more smoothly when you drop by and cowork.
Classroom space is limited, so please sign up early.
Prerequisites
- An active interest in learning about Drupal
- A basic understanding of the Internet and familiarity with how websites function
- A conceptual understanding of Content Management Systems (CMS), HTML and CSS is beneficial (but not required)
What we've covered in the past based on the interest of our attendees
- When and why to use Drupal
- Considerations when starting a Drupal project and how to organize your project
- The basics of Drupal, from content management to membership ("user") management
- An introduction to databases and queries
- How to organize your site using Drupal Content Types, Taxonomy and Views
- How to turn ideas for features and functionality into achievable tasks using user stories and use cases
- Which tasks are crucial for a successful Drupal website and how to organize them
- How to choose the right Drupal version and modules for your project
- The basics of web hosting and getting Drupal running on your own computer
- How to connect with the Drupal community, its meetups, conferences and job fairs and online discussion forums and chat rooms
General Outline
Hour 1:
- What is Drupal?
- Terminology
- Pages — it's a metaphor
- Blocks
- Regions
- Themes
- Users
- UID / usernames
- Roles
- Permissions
- Functionality
- Modules
- Drupal core vs. modules
- Popular modules
- Views
- Navigation - Menus
- Taxonomy
- Best Practices
Hour 2:
- Organizing your Drupal site
- Wireframes? Not at first.
- User Stories - think in workflows. This is dynamic!
- Design thinking
- Lifecycle of a site build
- Site definition and discovery
- Project plan
- Agile development
- MVP
- Organizing your todo list
- User stories
- Content types
- Views
- Other functionality
- Best Practices
- Where to get help
Hour 3:
- Hosting
- Deployment strategies
- Backup Strategies
- Running your Business on Drupal