beginner

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!

How-to guide for a community site

Drupal 6 Ultimate Community Site Guide is an inexpensive (€5.5), 133-page ebook by Drupal enthusiast Dorien Herremans. It aims to help moderately new Drupal users bring community-oriented features to a site, via a book-length case study: the Drupal Fun site, where you'll find the book offered.

Drupal Fun's community features include basic member functionality (login, profiles), showcases, forums, shared AdSense, newsletter, user tags, user search, and content voting. It doesn't boast the shiny appearance of one of the fancier sites out there, so it's not surprise that the book doesn't delve into creation of awesome themes. Likewise, Drupal Fun's functionality comes mostly from commonly-used modules, with only a splash of manual code in blocks or elsewhere, not groundbreaking new features via heavy custom coding. But that simplicity makes the site valuable as a case study for users who want to enable those same community features despite still-modest Drupal skills.

Click here and read more!

Welcome to Drupal!

Hi, Drupal beginner! Welcome to the world's most powerful, flexible, open-source content management system. Even if you have a stellar background in web design, programming, or other tech, you'll probably hit a few minor roadblocks as you start picking up Drupal. And if you aren't a techie, there'll be plenty to learn.

But contrary to things you may have heard, Drupal is getting easier to use all the time, and even the non-techie can create and manage a site with this powerful stuff. Here are some notes on what to expect, and ways to make progress faster, from a fellow user who's probably not far (if at all) beyond you on the learning scale.

I posted a new page titled Drupal for Beginners. It's a broad "What's Drupal" overview, with answers to some of the most basic beginner questions I see on the Drupal.org forums, and pointers to important resources that beginners should check out.

Please take a look and let me know whether this is of use. Thank you!