By brett.anderson on

I am currently considering purchase of the 4-video set of Lullabot's CCK/Views tutorial set (http://store.lullabot.com/collections/lullabot-learning-series), but am wondering if I'm looking at a sound investment. As a personal developer $70/video is a considerable investment. Is there anyone out there who has seen the series and would be willing to write up some of the pros and cons of the video set? Is there a comprehensive location for reviews that have already been written on the series?

Thanks, in advance.

-b-

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x, Drupal 6.x

Comments

tinem’s picture

tinem commented

I'm also very interested in this subject. Struggling for learning and understanding how to use CCK/Views and ALL it's possibilities.

jjeff’s picture

jjeff commented

Hi Brett and Tine,

We're looking into enabling comments and reviews on the Lullabot store so that you can have some reviews right there on the page. We have gotten a lot of very positive feedback on the videos, but we haven't formally sent any videos out for review, so I haven't seen many reviews pop up on the web. You can find some of this feedback on our Get Satisfaction page. Here's a particularly good review of the Lullabot Learning Series. Here's another short but sweet review of our theming videos. And someone else who is "very impressed".

The series is still pretty new so we're getting our systems in place and we hope to have better connections to reviews for people like yourself who are considering the purchase. We put a lot of work into these videos. We look at them as condensed versions of our workshops rather than one-off screen casts. We realize that the videos are more expensive but we make every effort to make sure that they're worth it.

We've also just launched a new store site which allows us to offer bundle pricing. This lowers the cost of the individual videos considerably.

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact Lullabot and we'll be happy to answer them for you. Also, be sure to get on our mailing list if you're not already on it. We periodically have sales, coupons, and special discounts for people on the list.

-Jeff Robbins
Lullabot

gemils’s picture

gemils commented

I am looking to jump into Drupal with both feet here in the weeks and months ahead. As a part of this experiment, I will be convincing folks in the office that we need to purchase the entire bundled DVD set. It's my budget, so it should be fine (and the money we will save by not contracting this out is going to be quite significant).

If all goes well, I will start downloading the videos tonight and will have finished watching all of the videos by next week. I intend to write up an in-depth review next weekend, explaining my experience with the videos (individually and as a set) as a person new to Drupal but with a wide and shallow swath of web- and application-development experience.

I will write up some ongoing reviews as I develop various sites and use my two books (halfway through Using Drupal and 1/5 through Pro Drupal Development). Issues that I have applying what I have learned, which resources I turn to (video or book) as developing, things that I am struggling with after finishing the series, etc.

The sites that I am making in the next few months:
-A nationally used telehealth community site with user accounts and a mix of privately- and publicly-accessible content, providing technology reviews, forums, blogs postings, and interactive media.
-A personal photography gallery, with options to buy prints, and log-on options for clients.
-A small community site for bike polo in Alaska.
-A small informational site for a local bicycle co-op.
-An online retail store for a local boutique that I have done some design work for in the past.

Having some help as I get going will be great. The two things that I hear from people who are actively using Drupal is that a) it is an amazing platform, and b) it is a steep learning curve. Time to throw down some money to see if I can make this a gentler climb. Is it going to be worth $385 in productivity? I will let you know in the near future!

gemils’s picture

gemils commented

I haven't followed their recommended viewing order 100% (I sneaked a little basic theming in tonight instead of watching the CCK video). In short, I am finding the videos to be really helpful at getting myself familiarized with the layout and terminology of Drupal. Could I have found the information in various books and websites, etc? I tend to think so. Could I have found it this quickly, or without missing certain important nuggets? Probably not.

There will be a more complete review of the Lullabot series here as I wrap up my movie marathon. For now, though:
-Understanding Drupal is for your boss, or for you if you haven't read anything about what Drupal can do and how it is designed. I have spent a little time reading the introductory chapters to a couple of books and perusing some web sites, so much of this was review, even for a n00b like me. That said, it is a decent primer to what you are getting into (and why your boss should let you run with this platform) and wasn't a total waste of time. I picked up some jargon and got a few more talking points to explain to management why I feel like this is the right product for us.
-Site Building With Drupal (1&2) is solid information. Depending on your level of savvy with the LAMP stack and creating websites, some of the early content will be a little slow. Some good gems in there, though, including some gotchas that could easily add up to cost a couple hours in lost time / hair / productivity if you didn't know about them. Good discussion of the parts of Drupal, how it works, etc. Five hours to get through it all, but it was time that I likely would have spent reading, googling, and hitting forums. Especially dug some of their discussion on particular modules (and how to really make use of the Drupal site to find out more).
-Basic Theming was really good. If you don't know HTML and CSS, this will definitely be a bit much for you. Likewise, it would have been useful for me to have gone through CCK and Views a bit before hand, not critical, but having a general grasp of the concepts will help out. I got the general gist of a few of the view-specific tasks, but would have been well served to have gone through those other parts first. Nothing lost, really, just thinking that there will be some points I am self-teaching as I go over themes in future sites.

So far, I am thinking that this has been worth the money. While I don't know everything (not quite yet, leastways), I know what to look for, how to look for it, and what the right answer might actually look like. Production quality of the vids is good, not perfect, but definitely reflects a good chunk of time on their part in condensing a lot of material into a digestible format.

More later, it is almost trash day and I must get things to the curb. And maybe get myself to bed.