Becoming a Drupal pro
maccnl - April 9, 2008 - 19:50
In the last couple of months I started building websites for the school my children go to and for a club I'm a member of, etc.
I want to take this Drupal-development to the next level and become a Drupal pro! All the information on this and other sites is a bit overwhelming and I'm looking for a way to do this as efficiently as possible.
Do you have any advice on how to get started and keep on moving?
P.S. I'm not lazy and understand that it takes lots of time to really get to pro-status, I just want to loose as little time as possible!
Thanks in advance!
more info needed [I'm using this title a lot lately]
You haven't told us your skillset, your background: things in general that might be relevent.
In general: dive in. Push your limits. Try different things. Follow threads and discussions. Watch, and listen. Help people with their problems (especially newbies).
Drupal is large and complex. Such systems are overwhelming. Try tackling them one piece at a time. I know it can be overwhelming, but that's the price you pay for power. Just keep reading, keep working, and don't get discouraged.
Start with themes
I would suggest starting with themes - you'll need some HTML and CSS skills to start with. Themes are a good starting point because you get to know the basics for how drupal works with respect to putting information on a page. That's how I started. I wrote a series of articles too. This is the first of my articles:
http://tarnaeluin.wordpress.com/2007/11/16/working-with-drupal-themes-pt...
Its a shamleess plug - but I don't have ads either so I'm not making any money off it :-)
The articles cover the basics and most importantly point you to Drupal.org's excellent tutorial and also point out tools and thing I learned.
I've also been following up with Drupal 6 information too.
Once you get themes down I would start to look into modules like CCK, panels, and views. These will show you how Drupal's back-end is working and then you can start to think about your own modules.
Going this route also lets you ramp up on PHP as well. PHP isn't hard, but all these things are a lot to absorb and I think the path I described is the easiest for the non-programmer.
beren erchamion
http://tarnaeluin.wordpress.com/
Shameless plugging
Your tutorials look nice. I'm certainly going to read them. Thanks.
Thanks for the input
I know my way around HTML and CSS. I know how to use JavaScript. I've 'seen' some PHP and am no PHP-programmer at all, but understand the basics. Some time ago I learned Java programming, so a programming language doesn't scare me...
I also built some themes, but more or less in a change-a-thing-and-see-what-it-does-than-change-some-things-and-check-those-out-way.