Blogs

Documentation for the Drupal beginner? If you've heard that there's just too little of it, you've heard old news. As the Drupal express picks up more and more steam in the world of site development, tech authors are rolling out the titles to bring the newcomers on board. 

As noted here and here on Drupal.org, our favorite CMS is really coming on to the non-techie "C-M-what?" marketplace with the release of Drupal For Dummies and Sams Teach Yourself Drupal in 24 Hours.

Drupal For Dummies

Sams Teach Yourself Drupal in 24 Hours

A "Dummies" title? That's a clear sign Drupal has arrived. Arrived... somewhere. Wherever it is that "Dummies" status indicates. And "in 24 Hours"? I don't think even Jack Bauer could go from zero to social networking site in 24 hours (and you can't just shoot that Drupal logo guy in the leg to speed things up; he hasn't got legs). But seriously, these books are just what many beginners will need to get off the ground and running with Drupal. Welcome, new books!

With these newbie-friendly releases on book shelves, I tried out something I've been meaning to tinker with for a while: creation of an Amazon.com "Listmania!" list. It's a Drupal for Beginners list, showcasing good newbie-oriented books. (List creation was simple and uneventful enough; not much more to say on that!)

There are yet more books on the horizon that I'll add as they come out; are there any already-released books that I'm overlooking? 

Meanwhile, Drupal beginners, remember that there are already plenty of great resources for you online before you splurge on books. I link to my favorite newbie resources at Drupal for Beginners; give that a peek. Then there's my newbie-oriented admin manual EDAM (now fully updated for Drupal 6; time to add some new pages!). And there are resources all over the Interwebs, like the Drupal 6 Ultimate Community Site Guide (review). It's a great time for anyone to step up to Drupal!

In this earlier Drupal Question, I lamented how changing a site's Private download method to Public resulted in non-displaying images with wacky URLs. Well, the problem is solved... or at least, it's just not there any more. Why? Well, maybe you could help explain. See the link for the full description of the problem and the new solution-of-sorts.

No closure, just working images. I guess that will have to do.

A happy New Year to all! And what could ring in a new year more happily than updates to the Easy Drupal Admin Manual?

Okay, lots. But still, it's not a bad thing, right?

EDAM pages under Terms, Vocabularies, and Taxonomy: "Tagging" Your Content and Menus, Links, and Paths: Navigating the Site are now updated for Drupal 6, with one long-absent item, Placing Menus on Your Pages, finally online. All with a nifty new menu for navigating both EDAM and STARDOM, thanks to the Advanced Book Blocks and jQuery Menu modules. 

There's still more of EDAM to update, but things are coming along nicely. Look forward to more all-new content before long.

As always, please let me know of any corrections or improvements to be made to the content. If those pages do appear up to snuff, please send any newbie Drupal administrators to EDAM for an easy guide to simple site admin and content creation.

The Easy Drupal Admin Manual (EDAM) is a manual for a class of user that gets overlooked by most documentation: the non-technical administrator or editor who isn't setting up a Drupal site, but just wants to create content and perform simple configuration on an existing site. 

EDAM is finally getting a long-overdue updating for Drupal 6, too. So far, the changes are mostly tweaks to details of administration forms and some terminology; where simple admin and editing are concerned, the differences between Drupal 5 and 6 aren't great.

I did take the chance to clean up a spotty and repetitive few pages on using text editors and image editors, such as FCKeditor and IMCE. Those are now condensed into one page, Using Text and Image Editors. The overview there also tries to be general, rather than looking specifically at FCKeditor or TinyMCE alone; it's not possible to address in detail the infinite configurations of text editors and image editors and file browsers, and all possible versions there of, that might pop up on a Drupal site. 

The updating is still in progress, reaching only the Organizing Your Content page so far. It should all be completed soon, after which new manual pages can come on board. If that'd be useful, please say so! And if you know any newcomers to Drupal who can make use of a fairly simple end-user manual, send them to EDAM. 

A shocking discovery for many a newcomer to Drupal is that a fresh installation offers no controls for styling text in node bodies, comments, or wherever else you might like to drop a boldface or a header.

Most of those stunned beginners eventually realize that this makes sense: Some users want no such text styling, or prefer the complete control of manual HTML tags. And for those who do want word processor-style editing controls, there is no universally-loved solution; there are many editor solutions floating about, each with its own strengths and fans. Drupal lets the administrator choose and install any of many favorites, including FCKeditor and Tiny Tiny MCE. That still irks some who want a built-in solution, but it's a good state of affairs for anyone not afraid of a little hands-on work installing a module and setting up WYSIWYG editing.