Any suggestions on the best way to learn Drupal?
Any online tools available? Maybe videos? Ideally it would be something free.

Thanks

Joel Simkhai

Comments

andybrace’s picture

you should have a look at the following

http://drupal.org/handbooks
drupal handbook - good for answering faqs

http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo
drupaldojo - videos / tutorials

if you know some php and are willing to spend a little cash then i'd definitely recommend the following book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww...
it will help get you up to speed with the core drupal system and module development. It has been invaluable to me over the last year.

hope this helps.

cog.rusty’s picture

See http://drupal.org/handbook/customization/videocasts

Also google for drupal videocasts

jjeff’s picture

Lullabot has growing collection of Drupal training videos which include specific training for Site Buiding, Administering Drupal, CCK, Views, Theming, jQuery, and many more. The videos run the gamut from a very basic non-technical introduction to Drupal concepts and the community, through Drupal site building 101, through to the ins and outs of CCK and Views. The videos are VERY comprehensive and have been very well received.

You can find them all at http://store.lullabot.com

daniel347x’s picture

Any way they could cut the cost of those videos in half so that an actual person could actually afford them? $385 for the series is, if you step back and think about it, a bit steep.

Thanks,
Dan

VM’s picture

not when you take into account the amount of work that was involved in bringing them to fruition and the amount of information that you receieve and what you can therefore do with it afterwards.

Realistically the cost is less than a college class per semester at many schools and you are learning more than a single subject.

Canine Coaches’s picture

Also how much of a site would $385 buy you?

spendonlife’s picture

Do you think I can learn PHP and Drupal concurrently or should I get PHP down first and then start learning Drupal specifics?

cog.rusty’s picture

Knowing PHP is not required for using Drupal. You can go pretty far building Drupal sites without knowing PHP, and then much further knowing just a little PHP.

You can follow any of the routes that you mentioned, but I would suggest starting with Drupal (a) because it is easier and (b) because you happened to ask the question here, which implies that you want to build sites.

dreamleaf’s picture

Another good way is to actually play about with it in a safe environment. Depending on your knowledge/skill level having a local testing server is a great way to do this.

Even if your knowledge/skill level is low, you can set one up easily using Acquia's version which has an installer and does the drupal setup for you... found http://acquia.com/downloads <~there.

nihonsei’s picture

http://learnbythedrop.com/

I learn a lot from "learn by the drop".

Canine Coaches’s picture

Two invaluable free resources (although donations are appreciated) for me are:

Mustardseed Media, and
Drupal Therapy

although screencasts are very helpful I would recommend reading as much as you can. Start here with Drupal documentation and read through every handbook that you can understand. There is an endless amount of info out there for learning drupal as I'm sure you're starting to see by these responses. Search google and start reading/watching. Set up a bunch of sites locally (or sub domains or directories) and start working with it.

JoshuaBud’s picture

I have put together a site that includes many videos from the above mentioned sources which are pulled in from YouTube. With the ability to search the site for what you are looking for it makes it quick and easy to find what you need. http://DrupalOnlineTraining.com it isn't the best looking site but it does the trick if you are looking for specific information in video format freely available on YouTube.

Joshua Needham
(801)613-2778

donkeymailer’s picture

i also want to learn drupal. But i think it is so difficult

1024 GB of RAM’s picture

although it is difficult ,it is very interesting.. install on a local site and do whatever you like .. so that you can get some knowledge .. after that start from reading books,videos. ....
Regards...!

Tjchiller’s picture

If you want to learn Drupal you will, as it isn't too hard. Google guides, watch youtube vidoes and read handbooks. But most importantly try, fail and learn. If you get stuck and can't figure something specific out, google it, ask on the forum or search youtube.

JoshuaBud’s picture

I'm surprised that they haven't been mentioned yet but IRC is one of the quickest most resourceful methods to get help with Drupal, and it offers a wide array of various topic specific rooms to target your questions.

http://drupal.org/irc

If you haven't used IRC before there are plenty of resources around the web with more information. Hang out in a couple of the rooms and you'll be helping people yourself in no time!

Joshua Needham
(801)613-2778

Mannma67’s picture

thanks

Marianne

TomDude48’s picture

Here is a pretty comprehensive survey of scores of ways to learn Drupal that you might find helpful - from DrupalCamp Atlanta.

Website: getlevelten.com
Build faster: Open Enterprise Drupal
Analyze deeper: Open Enterprise Intelligence

nilashis’s picture

Best way to learn Module writing - I found is to learn the code in the examples project: www.drupal.org/project/examples

codekarate’s picture

I wrote a blog post answering this question. It can be found here:

http://codekarate.com/blog/best-way-learn-drupal

It contains some comments with other suggestions that I didn't name in the post.

You can also watch my Daily Dose of Drupal videos for Free here:

http://codekarate.com/daily-dose-of-drupal

This is a little bit of a self promotion since I created the article/videos, but I do think that the blog post contains a lot of useful information and the videos will help any new Drupal developer or website builder.

Shane Thomas
http://codekarate.com

Erica12’s picture

Learning drupal is an interesting process. There are so many online guides that are available free for learning drupal. If you do not want to learn online then you may join training centers that are providing drupal