My thought is to set up an idea exchange main topic with separate responses where questions from and tips for newbies can be posted, making the answers globally available. If we handle the topics individually they will be easily scanned and accessed for new ideas.
As a "newbie" to Drupal, I've already picked up numerous useful tips about Drupal from my interaction with the members of this group. There are many general forums; what I'm thinking of here is a simple local repository for questions that have a local flavor, or are directly related to this group's activity.
Examples:
What is the net and channel preferred by local experienced Drupal users?
What books did you find best for getting started?
What sites are you working on? (to facilitate review before meetings, and help find local resources for similar sites/problems)
Good local events coming up (i.e. Barcamp)
What add-ins / frameworks do you use? (DRUSH?)
What is the correct Drupal vocabulary for "stuff"?
What is the best Pandora station for Drupal development background music? (OK, maybe that last one is a bit off-topic... but it could still be interesting.)
Any interest? Or does the "local help exchange" belong in a different location?
--Art
Comments
idea exchange for Drupal beginners
Art:
This sounds great to me so I'd like to be included. As a friendly amendment to your proposal, could questions be included that bridged Drupal beginner questions with questions which originate in other professional contexts? For example, are there problems of interest to small office managers with small under-used websites? Which modules and development strategies are best for small retail businesses? Small law offices? Which features are most useful for nonprofits seeking donors?
Monte
Drupal for Beginners Webinars
Hi all,
Sorry I missed the meeting last night - 17 people, I hear. That is fantastic! Here is a link to some Drupal webinars that NTEN is putting on. They aren't free (sigh), but if your business or org will pay for them, maybe they would be of interest to folks.
http://nten.org/events/webinar/2010/03/09/webinar-series-cranking-your-n...
I do think NTEN is a great resource and if you are a member of the Montana Nonprofit Association, you can get a free membership for one year. That's what the YWCA did.
Look forward to meeting you soon!
Caitlin Copple
YWCA Missoula
migrating to drupal . . .
I think this is a beginner question ... I need to migrate my WordPress site (hosted at Modwest) to Drupal and don't want to lose the data in the MySql database. Any links to good instructions and/or a MySql migration primer? Thx ...
Importing from WordPress
Monte,
There's not a direct migration from WordPress to Drupal. In other words, the database tables don't match in a way that would make moving the tables themselves from WordPress to a Drupal installation.
Since WordPress is such a popular platform, however, there have been a few modules developed that can ease the transition. A first choice may be the WordPress Import Module. I've never used it myself, so I can't vouch for its usability.
I am currently importing a number of WordPress blogs to an existing Drupal site using the FeedAPI Module (and its related modules). I've been pretty happy with the results. Looks like FeedAPI is set to be replaced by the Feeds Module. [An article about the transition to "Feeds."]
Let me know how it goes, and feel free to ask more questions if I can be of any assistance.
-Scott
Scott Rouse
http://about.me/scott.rouse