OXDUG - 03/07/2013
Drupal resources
Mike started Drupal development and learnt slowly through self teaching.
He runs a system that combines Perl and Drupal.
Team of three developers currently.
How do we quickly and efficiently get the team up to speed?
Interested in books, courses, online tutorials.
Books:
Using Drupal
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596515805.do
NB: 2nd edition of Using Drupal, including D7 coverage
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920010890.do
Pro Drupal Development
http://www.apress.com/9781430228387
Programmer’s Guide to Drupal.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Programmers-Guide-Drupal-Jennifer-Hodgdon/dp/144...
The Definitive Guide to Drupal
http://www.apress.com/9781430231356
Drupal 7 Development by Example
https://drupal.org/node/1849868
The Tiny book of Rules
https://drupal.org/files/tiny-book-of-rules.pdf
Drupal Modules:
https://drupal.org/project/examples
Online resources
The weekly drop
Weekly emails of intersting posts and podcasts
http://theweeklydrop.com/
Stack Exchange for Drupal
Great for answering specific questions.
http://drupal.stackexchange.com/
Video Tutorials
Build a Module
http://buildamodule.com/
Brilliant! Small bite-size videos in series of tutorial parts.
Various topics covered, from site building to PHP concepts.
Drupalize Me
http://drupalize.me/
Node One
http://nodeone.se/en/learn-drupal
IRC
freenode
drupal-support
drupal-uk
Check out the Drupal Coding Standards
Coder Module ++
https://drupal.org/project/coder
Code Sniffer?
https://drupal.org/coding-standards
CRM in Drupal
Mike is also interested in CRM functionality for a commercial company.
Looked at
CiviCRM http://civicrm.org/ which is tightly integrated with Drupal, but uses a separate database.
CRM Core - Drupal package of modules
RedHen: Drupal native -
SugarCRM: Freemium model - NOT DRUPAL
SalesForce: Proprietary software, great integration with Drupal.
Goldmine - DO NOT USE!!!!
CiviCRM
Civi is not Drupal native . It usually sits in a separate database alongside Drupal.
It is aimed at Charities, NGOs and voluntary sector.
It makes various assumptions about how to manager
CRM Core
https://drupal.org/project/CRM_Core
Native Drupal.
Fieldable entities - so very extensible.
Makes no assumptions. Leaves you to create contact relationships.
RedHen
Drupal native.
Quite promising.
They have a logo!
https://drupal.org/project/redhen
Party
Less use, but interesting!
https://drupal.org/project/party
Drupal 8
Check this intro video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDBGluyY0B8
Symphony in core.
Views in core.
Lack of backwards compatibility is potentially a pain point.
Other systems do provide backwards compatibility.
If we did maintain backwards compatibility, we would not be able to innovate.
Release cycles:
How can I convince companies that choosing Drupal is a good idea if we need to completely upgrade in a few years?
Should we start a project with Drupal 8 now?
There is certainly some advantages in early adoption if you have the budget and time.
Comments
Great list!
Thanks to everyone for putting this together, and for Finn for transcribing it to the wiki page. I showed it to our team today, as we're looking at upskilling previously non-Drupal developers so finding all these links collated in one place is great timing for us.
Party and Programmer's Guide
Thanks Finn, that was a really useful session, and thanks to Lin and Andy for the recommendation of O'Reilly's A Programmer’s Guide to Drupal. At first read is the book that I wish I'd had at hand when I first started with some 'serious' Drupal; it's just what a programmer needs, it gives you a broad overview of Drupal, what you need to know, and, most importantly, where you need to look. Am currently on the Common Mistakes chapter, and can hold my hand up to having made some of them, albeit, innocently, although at the time I think I knew I was doing something wrong: I just didn't know how to find out I was. This book's the one and I can't recommend it highly enough. Not a non-programmers book though, so be warned!
Also tried the Party module, it seems very extensive, and offers more features than crm_core or RedHen - the Commerce customer integration looks especially promising. However, it didn't really work for me, tumbling over with some pretty nasty errors. So it seems like it's very much in beta and using it will definitely mean getting involved in helping to get it stable.
--
Mike Harris
w: http://mbharris.co.uk
t: +44 7811 671 893
0: http://mbharris.co.uk/keys/pgp.html
Party
The folks who are making Party are pretty active in #drupal-uk IRC channel, they are very quick to respond to problems and welcome people asking questions, they are very proactively working on it but need more test cases.
Frontend developer and loud mouth