newbie

Sorry for introducing myself this way, I am new here a.k.a. the Noob... I have never used Drupal, I have built sites the Old fashion way and was informed by a lost friend that Drupal was the way to do it. I am really excited and would really love to learn how to set it up and get cracking at it. If anyone can please help me it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tone

Hey Y'all. I tried getting out of computers after the dot com bust. But Drupal pulled me back in because it's so F*%$ing useful, and so many people need it's functionality. So I'm starting up a one geek consulting business doing XHTML/CSS based Drupal setups. I'm just starting out, and plan to work primarily with smaller businesses and non-profits. I'm trying to figure out how to base my rates. Here's my considerations:

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NOTE: Clearly this is a collaborative effort and I am totally open to adjusting/changing this as we discover what works. I am also actively looking for other experienced Drupal developers to lend time and energy to this, as well as (obviously) hustling up a good crop of apprentices.

Why Apprentices?
Everywhere you turn, people talk about the shortage of Drupal talent. There are various groups dedicated to regional meetups, drupal camps, even formal training events. This group is trying to answer the talent shortage by creating an online community dedicated to transferring knowledge from existing experts in the community to newbies who want to learn.

Just a couple of us met at the last DrupalMentor event (http://groups.drupal.org/node/1698)- and again, Courtney from FloatLeft made herself available by Skype; and again, we hammered the airport wireless at one stage, and then got it reset; and again, the PCs had more problems getting onto the Wifi than the Macs....

I was helping one person with very basic Intro to Drupal concepts, including how to create menus, and where content can end up (promoted to front page in a river of news style, or elsewhere). Ron needed help getting two video thumbnails per node - we tried to use CCK and views, but there was no video content type for CCK yet, so we were stymied there. At least I was able to help him install TinyMCE (the best of class WYSYWG editor for Drupal).

Four of us met at 3DB Cafe this Monday evening. We hosed the wireless connection at one stage, but were able to reset the wifi router and it was all good again.

Courtney was available online (we used Skype-chat) - even though it was midnight in her timezone. ;-) Between herself and I, we were able to answer a bunch of questions.

Henry got help on menus in Drupal 4.7 - how to (re)organize them; remove / reconfigure the default "navigation" menu (that tacks your login name to the the top); and set up a new menu to use as primary or secondary links.

Gina got some feedback on how to use taxonomies attached to events and pages to organize event listings by region - and use a "Sticky at top of lists" to create a dynamic page for each region, with an opening description entry.

I've posted (below) a basic overview of how the Drupal system works - not the modules and menus, but the applications that work together to run a Durpal site (e.g. the web server, the database, etc).

I'm looking for two types of feedback - you can give this feedback in the comments if you want:
* Is this accurate (if you are a more advanced user)
* Is this information too simple or too complex for you? That gives me a good idea of who we're talking to. :-)

Drupal overview

If you're new to Drupal, or Drupal groups, it may seem like a lot of stuff is happening, and it's difficult to keep up. If you just want to focus on a few groups (like DrupalMentor - http://groups.drupal.org/drupalmentor-bayarea - and maybe some other focused topic areas), it makes more sense to subscribe to these groups - which allows you to post content, as well as recieve info via email.

To do so, you'll first need to register on this site (groups.drupal.org). If you already have a login you use at www.drupal.org, you can use that one here as well (but remember to add the full domain to your URL - i.e. myname@drupal.org).