Tri-Valley Drupalers

This two-day workshop will explore modules and configurations you can combine to build more customized systems using Drupal. You’ll create many examples of more advanced configurations and content displays using the Content Construction Kit (CCK) and Views modules.

The Drupal experts at Exaltation of Larks and Chapter Three will guide you through the complex User Interfaces that Drupal provides for controlling and customizing the many different ways to present lists and tables of your site’s content.

What you will learn:

• Creating custom content types
• Building RSS feeds
• Allowing viewers to filter results
• Building interactive tables
• Displaying content in a grid
• Adding a date field to your content, and sorting by date
• Creating iCAL feeds and other date displays
• Using views arguments to dynamically filter your results based on the URL
• How other modules integrate with Views

This three-day workshop teaches you how to create a comprehensive Drupal module. We'll use and explain each of the top ten Drupal hooks, the menu system and the Form API. You’ll learn how to conform to Drupal coding standards. You’ll write secure code by using Drupal’s built-in functions to sanitize data for display.

You’ll learn from the Drupal experts at Exaltation of Larks and Chapter Three the correct way to save and retrieve data, including how to add your own custom database tables. We’ll also practice using theme system from your module. Depending on interest, we’ll show you how to expose your custom data to Views, demonstrate how to create SimpleTests for your module, or teach you the proper way to upgrade your custom database schema.

What you will learn:

• Drupal coding best practices
• Understanding hooks
• Using the Form API
• Saving custom data
• Providing themable output from your module
• Techniques for keeping your site secure

Days

3 days: June 21-23, 2011. This training is from 10am-5pm and begins at 10am sharp.

Prerequisites

At least six months of prior PHP development. Familiarity with Drupal terms such as nodes, blocks, fields and views. Experience with Drupal configuration and contributed modules/themes is necessary for understanding the concepts of module development.

Let's have our first official meeting!

It looks like we're on for April 18th at the Hopyard Alehouse and Grill in Pleasanton. I'm really looking forward to meeting with you all and discovering what our local Drupal knowledge needs are. The Hopyard also has free wi-fi so come and join us for some great local Drupal discussion!

Here's the schedule:

6:30 - 6:45 (or 7) Introductions and other group business

Greetings, get to know each other, and our interest in Drupal.

6:45 - 7:45 Presentation with Q&A

Update: This is a Drupal 6-specific training that was previously scheduled for May 9th. The new date is May 2, 2011.

Drupal in a Day is a full day of training offered by the Drupal experts at Exaltation of Larks and Chapter Three for just $400.

This introductory workshop will touch upon almost every aspect of the core Drupal framework:

• Discover how to add, edit, and moderate content.
• Learn how to create user accounts and understand Drupal's permissions system.
• See how to set-up menus, and position blocks on a page.
• Create human-readable URLs, and categorize your content using Drupal's taxonomy system.

At the end of this one-day class you'll have a completed Drupal site, which looks and functions a lot like many sites you'll see on the web today.