Are you a web designer who needs to theme in Drupal?
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As a web designer, you already have the skills to create a design that matches up with the requirements and constraints of a particular site. Theming in Drupal is the next step, where you split that design up into components that can be used by developers.
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Theming in Drupal requires that you be comfortable on the design side (which you probably are already) but it also requires a good understanding of how the theming layer in Drupal works. And that requires a bit of code.
The Drupal 7 Theming Essentials collection takes you gently through the theming layer, step-by-step. We talk about various strategies for manipulating the output in Drupal and how to organize files within a theme. We build a theme from scratch so you can get a feel for the various pieces that make up a theme, and then introduce more practical techniques such as sub-theming (a great way to save time and sanity) and theme cloning.
This 80-hour, 80-video collection is full of practical tips and techniques for manipulating Drupal output.
What about the coding part of theming?
While we talk you through the code used in the Drupal 7 Theming Essentials collection, you may need a little more background in PHP to really feel comfortable. There are a couple of videos in the Drupal 6 Development and Tools collection in particular that will be helpful for learning how to work with PHP arrays and how to work with PHP functions.
If you start to really get interested in the coding side and want to further extend your knowledge to leverage Drupal's APIs, you may want to take a look at the Drupal 7 Development Core Concepts collection, which takes you through building a set of practical modules, exploring the core Drupal API's and utilities along the way. This is our core collection for Drupal developers, and assumes a basic understanding of PHP, but sometimes the best way to learn is to just jump in.
What about building a Drupal site from scratch?
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As you may have discovered already, Drupal is fairly deep, even from the front-end. Because Drupal solves so many of the problems that site builders of all levels face, it means there is a lot of functionality to get familiar with, and a lot of moving pieces that all connect in unique ways.
A great way to begin to understand Drupal is to just dive in and start building a site, clicking around and trying to figure out how everything works. But an even better way is to look over the shoulder of an experienced site builder and watch them accomplish common tasks like building a contact form, adding new menu items or adding new fields to a content type.
The Build Your First Drupal 7 Web Site collection allows you do to just that (but it's even better because you can rewind!). The collection is carefully crafted to cover the most important concepts and techniques you need as a Drupal site builder. Even though the entire collection is 11 hours long, no time is wasted. Each bite-sized video is highly focused, and by the time you're done, you'll be able to do any of the following and a lot, lot more:
- Install Drupal in minutes without having to set up a local server
- Evaluate and install modules
- Create and repair Views (Views are lists of content)
- Create content type structures and link them up with references
- Build vocabularies and use terms to aggregate content
- Dynamically modify user-uploaded images
- Create meaningful and search-engine friendly paths for your content, and modify them later
- Adjust the look and feel of any page
- Create and modify menus and blocks
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!
