Drupal

McCheese · Jan 7, 2013

My company has decided that I should learn Drupal, with the goal of taking over our (currently very basic) website and allowing for a lot more customization and features. Within reason they're willing to pay for any courses or books that I might need. So does anyone have any recommendations on resources for learning Drupal? Until today I had only ever heard of Drupal in passing, so I have no knowledge about it directly.

I should note that although I'm not a programmer, I'm also not a complete novice to programming. I've been dabbling in programming languages since I was a kid, starting with Visual Basic, then HTML, C++, and Python. I even managed to create some very basic games (both text and graphical). However, it has been a while so the more "novice friendly" resources are ideal.

Edit: A colleague recommendedthis book.Thoughts?

Raz · Jan 7, 2013

Don't take my opinion as gospel, as i'm sure some people like drupal. But my personal experience is that drupal is pretty bloated, it relies heavy on user modules to get things done and those can be pretty messy. Imagine having double navigation modules on all your admin pages because they both do slightly different things, not to mention all the dependencies and the update work (apparently its not unusual to have hundreds of modules on a drupal site). Yes it allows non programmers to do advanced stuff but as a programmer its just a big mess. Drupal 8 will use the symphony2 framework so it will get better (more MVC less hooks) but drupal 7 kinda shocked me.

I would make a list of all the features you are going to need and then check how you would do that in drupal + modules, but keep other CMS options open if they are a leaner fit.

As for books, i've been going through this one:Pro Drupal7 Development

mixtilplix · Jan 7, 2013

Raz_sl said:
(apparently its not unusual to have hundreds of modules on a drupal site).As for books, i've been going through this one:Pro Drupal7 Development

Hundreds of modules? If that were true you would be spawning 200+ MB apache threads... The amount of modules you use depends on your needs. Get a basic introduction book from somewhere like packtpub. Try it out and see if you like it. No use in learning to write code for it if you hate the UI or structure.

As for Symfony, Drupal is only using parts of the framework (albeit some major parts) to rewrite its plugin architecture (thank god!), configuration management, and to add RESTFUL services. Essentially it is being used as unified middleware solution to make it more in line with modern web applications and not a complete rewrite into an MVC based CMS. Symfony in its entirety is a pretty resource intensive MVC framework when used as a whole and typically is not recommended on shared hosting. The change in core is meat to make it easier for developers new to Drupal to start writing code. But yeah I agree it is a bit of a mess and the people good at it have been doing Drupal modules for a very long time so they know all the intricacies and nuances of getting shit to work.

If you are just making a basic website Drupal and the views modules should suffice.

meStevo · Jan 8, 2013

We've used Drupal at work for some time (http://drupal.org/node/474838) and do a lot more than that link from 2009 describes (homepage and every landing page athttp://www.zappos.com,http://www.zappos.com/shoes). Everything between the header and footer on those pages are maintained and coming from Drupal.

Like many open ended tools, it's powerful if you have the resources and knowledge to make it do what you need. We basically have a CMS built on a CMS at this point for our landing pages, it's pretty cool. I just do end user support and some documentation, but am looking to move into some front end stuff this year.

For basic website stuff though... tinker with views, blocks, and a good theme to start from and hack at and you're golden. Depending on how simple the website is, using Drupal can be like hammering a nail with a toolbox.

McCheese · Jan 8, 2013

Thanks for the replies, everyone!

Fortunately no one at my company expects me to become a Drupal guru (although doing so would certainly give me leverage for a raise, heh). The problem we've been running into lately is that our VP of marketing wants to do this, this, and this on our website, but we're unable to do much of it because we're hindered by the strict user options that the company who made our website provided. The ability to modify it is there, it's just no one on our end knowshow, and the company we work with for our website charges obscene amounts of money to do stupid, simple stuff.

So ideally I just need to become familiar enough with Drupal so that I can dig a little deeper into the site and do some of the modifications that our higher ups want.

SaxtonHale_sl · Jan 8, 2013

I've been playing with Drupal for a few years and have made some pretty interesting sites. I actually was exposed to Drupal when we needed to build a content management system for a user-driven site. Since then, many doors have opened

I started with creating a local site where I can test out changes. In my opinion, this is the most important part of teaching yourself Drupal.
To this, install XAMPP (check outhttp://drupal.org/node/307956for steps)

Export your current Drupal settings on your company's website with backup and migrate module (http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate) along with the files and folders in the directory.

Copy the directory to the /htdocs folder in xampp and install backup and migrate module on your local. Import the Drupal settings/DB with the backup and migrate module.

Now you should have a full replica of your company's website on your local machine. Feel free to break (I find breaking stuff is the best way to learn) and revert it at will.

p.s. important modules to know is views, skinr, ctools, and for themeing, Zen.