Are you a Drupal 6 developer that needs to learn Drupal 7?
"I love buildamodule.com and often recommend it to people who are trying to learn more or are just starting out with Drupal 7 development."
Build a Module.com has some of most comprehensive learning material available for developing in Drupal 7. Coming from a Drupal 6 background, you already have a great start and should feel instantly at home with a lot of the concepts and terminology used in the videos. A lot of what you know will carry over to Drupal 7, but there have also been some significant changes.
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For example, the Database API underwent a complete overhaul in 7, and now you can build dynamic queries that can be easily manipulated by other modules. Using Ajax for dynamic form building is actually a pleasure now, and you can easily swap out core jQuery libraries (at a small cost).
In our flagship video collection on Drupal development, called Drupal 7 Development Core Concepts, we walk you through the most commonly APIs, Drupal 7-style. We also talk about changes in coding standards, and how to working with with CSS and JavaScript in a module has changed. The collection is extensive - over 180 video and 12 hours of material, and each video is clear and to the point.
Because the collection is split up into small, bite-sized videos, you can walk through them, step-by-step, or just pull up the videos that will help you work through a particular project or problem you're working on.
Understanding the front-end changes and giving clients affordable training material
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While grasping the major API changes from Drupal 6 to 7 will take you a long way, you also might want to consider getting a guided tour of the front-end as well. As you already know from working with Drupal, sometimes you can save yourself a lot of development time by leveraging an existing module or functionality available through configuration.
The Build Your First Drupal 7 Web Site collection of over 200 videos (11 hours) walks the viewer through a practical site-building example, all the way from installing Drupal to building simple Views and working with menus and blocks. All of the major systems are touched on, explored and explained.
Because no coding is required, this collection is also great direct curious clients to. While the collection demonstrates one unified site building example, the individual videos are tremendously useful for explaining specific concepts (like Taxonomy or Views), outlining the functionality of certain site features (like permissions) or explaining why certain features (like Wysiwyg) are a challenge to integrate.
Beyond development and into theming
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Chances are you've done a bit of theming in Drupal 6 already - most developers can't get away with not doing a little here and there. But, if you're feeling ready to really hone your theming skills or see what's different with Drupal 7, the Drupal 7 Theming Essentials collection could be your ace in the hole. In it, we demonstrate how to build a theme from scratch while exploring the basic anatomy of a theme, and follow it up with practical techniques for sub-theming and theme cloning.
The collection contains a ton of techniques for practical modification of output at various points during Drupal's page loading process. And we explore how to extend a theme with custom theme settings, so there's one place for you or your clients to modify the look and feel of a site.
A comprehensive guide to file management in Drupal 7
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In Drupal 7, there were huge improvements to the file system. Now, you can have public and private files at the same time, you can track file usage in the database, and you can build stream wrappers to pull data streams from third parties like YouTube or Flickr.
The Working With Files in Drupal 7 collection is a comprehensive set of videos that walk you through how to work with file management in Drupal 7, building on a number of the concepts and techniques demonstrated in Drupal 7 Development Core Concepts. Specially, we cover how to deal with uploaded files, how to track file usage in a database, how to use the private file system to restrict usage to certain files, and how stream wrappers work.
To demonstrate these concepts, we build a simple image gallery with both managed and unmanaged files (if you don't know what those are, you will after you watch the videos!). If you're going to be building modules or components that deal with files, this is a critical collection to review.
A membership is an affordable way to get access to the entire video library, streaming on the Build a Module.com site. You get access both to the existing video tutorials and new ones as they come out, and new videos are usually added every week.
As a member, you also get access to other resources, including:
- Automatically tracking which videos you've completed
- Downloadable source code to follow along
- The ability to build playlists of videos you want to track
Memberships start at just $23 / month.
If you'd like to view the videos offline or want to view them at a higher resolution than you see on the site, then purchasing a download is a great option. Downloads can be imported into any media management software, like iTunes, to sync with tablets (they look great on an iPad) and other mobile devices.
Downloads come in Standard and High Definition formats. The Standard format is what you see streaming on the site. It's a perfect resolution (960 x 600) for mobile devices. The High Definition format is recorded at full resolution (1280 x 800) and at a much smoother frame rate, so it's nicer when using a computer monitor to view.
DVDs contain both the Standard and High Definition formats of the videos, so you can use them freely on mobile devices AND high-resolution monitors. They also include the resource pack on-disk (with free upgrades available on the site) so they're an all-in-one package. A DVD is also nice for a hands-on library, since you can easily stack it next to your other reference material.
If you have a slow or unreliable internet connection, a DVD can also save you some trouble since the downloads can be rather large.
DVDs are also shipped for FREE worldwide!
