By jaqkar on
Are there any programs where a new Drupal user can get a mentor to handhold them through the learning curve. I am not interested in anyone doing stuff for me but rather monitoring my progress and providing advise and coaching on things like best practice etc.
Comments
I'd be interested in this as well.
Just starting to learn Drupal, and while I have quite a lot of development experience, it's still a lot to learn. I've run into some issues that I've been trying to find answers to, but someone to point the way would be helpful.
Thanks, Cameron.
Steep learning curve
It does seem like a steep learning curve and it would be good if there was something like a Drupal Newbies forum where people could ask 'dumb' questions.
As it is there are just too many questions in this forum to be able to keep up with so that it is easy to miss some good advice to newcomers.
Would be great if some of
Would be great if some of the more experienced users or community members will take some of us newbies under their wings. What could be done is we then later offer the same to other newbies, once we are more proficient of course. Or a "We are N00bs" forum with some seasoned users keeping an eye on it would also be cool.
So who wants me?
Might be a good idea
I know there is a group that works on Beginner documentation at groups.drupal.org. But I don't know if there's any kind of mentoring group. Let's see what kind of response we can get.
Nancy W.
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Design or How To notes in your database
NancyDru
Drupal Cookbook
Nancy,
I must make a point of reading your Cookbook more often - it looks useful, although I think it would be even more useful if you had a section which had step by step instructions for recreating an existing Drupal site
Maybe someone will volunteer their site as an example - I'm sure it would attract a lot of hits.
drupal-dojo
http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Dojo
Thanks for pointing out Dojo. Correct me if I am wrong but it seems that Dojo is more of a group learning setup and not a 1 on 1 programme like mentoring.
=-=
One on one tutoring, would more then likely require you to hire someone.
there is a support channel on IRC, and the forums are a good place to get questions answered, especially when they are asked well : )
To speak for myself...
To speak for myself, I guess I'm afraid of asking questions that others would think are stupid & not worth a response.
I might spend a few hours trying to figure out how to do something, yet someone else (or many others) may have found the solution already.
Trying to figure something out blind can be a bit of a headache. It took me a few days to actually figure out how to do something I wanted by using Taxonomies. I was stumped in thinking about sites being structure-centric (as that was my experience) rather than content-centric with taxonomies to add structure. I've still got some other issues that are probably "teething" problems, but may not be. & I don't have the experience to tell the difference.
I guess I'm in a bit of a different spot to many. I have the experience to build my own CMS but figured I'd leverage the power of Drupal to help me along. I have a specific set of requirements, and lack the knowledge as to whether it can be done using Drupal Core, with a module or whether I have to build it myself. I'ld prefer not to have to rebuild the wheel.
Cameron.
just ask and don't worry about it
Drupal is a CMS (Content Management System).
Drupal is a CMS (Content Management Framework).
Lots of people that start using Drupal have built their own CMS and have decided to try and leverage the power of community rather then re-invent the wheel themselves.
It's not that the community is unaware there is a learning curve. That curve is different for everyone. So don't worry about it and just ask your questions. Being a forum and open source, some get missed, some get ignored, some get answered and some get links to pages. Generally this has more to do with when people are reading the forums then any other factor.
Check out the dojo screen casts http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo
Try things.
Have fun.
Ask questions.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
As we used to say...
The only stupid question is the one you don't ask.
Nancy W.
Drupal Cookbook (for New Drupallers)
Adding Hidden Design or How To notes in your database
NancyDru
Wiki
I realize that this is an old thread. But I want to just chime in with 2 cents, and say that this is usually what wiki is used for, to create a quick and easy way for people to plugin what they did and how they did it, and to allow new people to come along and state that the info works or does not work for them etc.
It would be *awesome* to see drupal project employ wiki this way. In wiki, it becomes less about "asking stupid questions" and more about turning your question into a stub-document that others can contribute to.
=-=
drupal.org has a handbooks section whereby any registered user can create a handbook page.
Take it a step further and join the documentation team and you can edit pages.
sounds pretty close to a wiki to me.
Fact: drupal.org eats its own dogfood. What is done on drupal.org is done without any 3rd party software. Now THAT! is AWESOME! : )
_____________________________________________________________________
My posts & comments are usually dripping with sarcasm.
If you ask nicely I'll give you a towel : )
contribute tab
http://drupal.org/contribute >> http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide