U7 Drupal Learning Plan

This learning plan is required to be completed by all U7 developers in order to complete their training. Use it as a checklist to track your progress. It is essential to complete the items in order.

Name: ___________________  Date: ___________________

1. Software tools:
   • Content management system: Drupal 6.x
   • Operating system: Ubuntu
   • Web server: LAMP
   • Browsers: Firefox with Firebug, MeasureIT, Colorzilla, Screengrab, and Drupal search.
   • Text editor: gEdit
   • FTP: FileZilla
   • Graphics: GimpShop
   • Browser testing: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, Safari
2. Reading and researching:
   • Read, read, and read. Familiarize yourself with the site and spend time exploring - reading is the most important skill of a good web developer.
   • Read the http://drupal.org/about book.
   • Read the http://drupal.org/documentation/understand book.
   • Try searching with Google to answer a question you have about Drupal; use the "site:drupal.org" search prefix. This technique will help in future Drupal troubleshooting.
   • Explore the file and folder contents of the Drupal .zip package.
   • Get to know the sites folder, its structure, and its purpose.
   • Fully read /INSTALL.txt, /UPGRADE.txt, /sites/all/README.txt, and /sites/default/default.settings.php.
3. Installation:
   • Setup your own Drupal installation with a 1 site, 1 drupal, 1 database setup.
   • Add another site so you have 2 sites, 2 drupals, 2 databases
   • Change your setup to have 2 sites, 1 drupal, 2 databases
   • Change your setup to have 2 sites, 1 drupal, 1 database
4. Administration:
   • Watch the following video from Lullabot (Lullabot Store): Lullabot Understanding Drupal (follow along with your Drupal site)
   • Get to know your administration menu options one by one.
   • Create a regular user account and use it to test out the impact of each of your administrative setting changes (use two different browsers side-by-side)
5. Content creation:
   • Choose a fun topic to make a website about and use this site for the rest of the learning plan.
   • Create your first page(s) and story(ies).
   • Explore all the node publishing options at the bottom of each node.
   • Create links in your primary and secondary menus.
   • Create a guest user account and login with that user in another browser session.
   • Create comments and other pages and stories with that other user.
6. Theming:
   • Learn the basics of CSS, the more you know the better themes you can design (http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp).
   • Watch the following Lullabot video: Theming Basics (follow along with your Drupal site)
   • Explore http://drupal.org/project/Themes and check out the top 30 themes
   • Add-on a theme of your liking from Drupal.org to your site and activate it.
   • Edit an existing theme using Firebug to test changes out and apply them in the correct CSS file for the given theme.
   • Read up on Zen theme framework http://drupal.org/project/zen.
   • Create your own sub-theme with the Zen theme builder and make some basic style modifications to it.
7. Modules:
   • The process to learn, install and configure new modules:
     1. Completely read the drupal.org project page for the module in question (if it exists).
     2. Download the module and extract it into the appropriate "modules" folder.
     3. Read the readme.txt (if there is one).
     4. Enable the module and then visit /admin/by-module.
     5. Read the entire help page for the module (if there is one).
     6. Explore and tune settings for each of the configuration links provided by the module.
     7. Review access control and setup any permissions required.
     8. Test the module like an end-user.
   • Core modules (Learn each of the following IN-DEPTH):
     • Blog
     • Book
     • Comment
     • Contact
     • Database logging
     • Forum
     • Help
     • Menu
     • Path
     • PHP filter
     • Poll
     • Profile
     • Search
     • Statistics
     • Taxonomy
     • Triggers
     • Update status
     • Upload
   • Read up on the top 50 modules sorted by usage statistics at http://drupal.org/project/Modules.
   • Small contributed modules (easy to install, simple footprint, minimal configuration):
     • Advanced Help
     • Backup and Migrate
     • Clone module
     • Filter Permissions
     • Frequently Asked Questions
     • Masquarade
     • Menu Per Role
     • Poormanscron
     • Submit Again
     • Vertical Tabs
     • Vertical Tabs Default
   • Medium contributed modules (requires configuration, larger footprint):
     • Calendar with Date
     • Devel
     • Floating Manager Menu
     • HTML Purify
     • LoginToboggan
     • Mollom
     • Simplenews
     • Tagadelic
     • Taxonomy Manager
     • Token
     • Webform
     • XML Sitemap
   • Large contributed modules (extensive configuration, broad impact, building blocks):
     • CKEditor with IMCE
     • ImageCache
     • jQuery UI
     • Pathauto
     • Panels
     • Content Construction Kit (CCK)
       • Watch the following video: Lullabot Learning CCK for Drupal (follow along with your Drupal site)
       • Embedded Audio/Image/Video
       • FileField
       • ImageField
       • Image FUpload (CCK)
     • Lightbox2
     • Nodeformsettings
     • Override node options
     • Views
       • Watch the following video: Lullabot Learning Views for Drupal (follow along with your Drupal site)
       • Views Slideshow
       • Views Calc
       • Views Bulk Operations
     • Rules
     • Features with Strongarm
     • Feature server (fserver)
     • Drush