Just a note to let folks know that The Austin Drupal Newbies will be kicking off their first meeting on Feburary 18th at Tech Ranch Austin.
Based on feedback from members, from polls and conversations, we will be taking a "Leisurely Boot Camp" approach to Drupal...
February 18
This week answers the main "need to know" questions about Drupal: what's Drupal, who's using it, why are they using it, and how does it 'work'? It also provides some (brief) historical context to Drupal, introduces essential terminology, and other introductory information. We'll point you to some resources to start including current stacks, installing from scratch, advantages and disadvantages of both, setting up your working environment and useful modules that will help you get started. This week will also include information regarding initial configuration and security settings, including users and roles and content security settings.
March 18
We'll talk about modules - good ones, bad ones, funny ones. There are a LOT of them so this will definitely take some time...!
April
This week will show you how to use Drupal's core functionality, as well as a few contributed modules, in order to build a basic business website. By the end of this week, you should feel comfortable in Drupal's administrative section, and also know how to create basic content through a WYSIWYG interface like FCKEditor, or TinyMCE.
May
These week introduces two big topics so we're splitting them out - the Content Construction Kit (CCK) and Views. By the end of these weeks, you'll understand how to create custom content types, add form fields, use CCK- and Views-related modules that are useful in site creation, and learn how to customize their look.
June
This week provides overview information about Drupal's theming system, and some basic tricks you can use to override the look and feel of Drupal. By the time you finish this week, you can start modifying template files and start to give Drupal your own look and feel! We'll discuss what tools like Artisteer, and modules like Composite and Panels can give you - and can't.
July
This week we'll start covering building your own Drupal Modules. We'll talk about Module Builder, PHP, debuggers and other tools to help you create your own modules that customize Drupal to work how you need it to. We'll also talk about other resources for learning Drupal both here in Austin and on the web. We'll also take a look at where Drupal is headed with Drupal 7 coming along quickly.
We'll move forward from here - but offer this six-week cycle on a regular basis. There are no prerequisites - and you can come any week that sounds interesting to you.
Everything is friendly, fun and low-key - which is the best reason to come!
If you have questions, please feel free to contact me or visit the meetup website http://www.meetup.com/Austin-Drupal-Newbies-Meetup/
Chana Schulman Campos