[consulting] Drupal Primer Course

[Sami Khan]

Added to wiki (drupaltutorials.com), I personally like Angela's plan. It
seems pretty intutive. Work off of that as a base I guess.



>> Does anyone have any input on this ? What should we be teaching people
>> getting into drupal?
>
> Awesome initiative.
>
> Here's how I would do break it down:
>
> Lesson 1: Overview
> - What is Drupal?
> - How can Drupal help me build sites faster?
> - Showcase some example sites
> - Take them on a tour of Drupal.org; where the handbook is, where the
> module
> downloads are, where the issue queues for those modules are, API
> Documentation,
> IRC, what the various support options are, etc.
>
> Lesson 2: Drupal Vocabulary
> - What is a Node?
> - What is Taxonomy?
> - What is a Hook?
> - What is a Theme/Theme Engine?
> - What is <fill in some other term that gives newbies problems>
>
> Lesson 3: Building a Basic Brochureware Site
> - How to install Drupal
> - How to configure Drupal
> - How to do basic theming
> - Exercise: Give students a set of requirements, perhaps similar to
> http://drupal.org/node/31896, and have them dink around in Drupal and
> figure out
> how to do it.
>
> Lesson 4: Theming Exposed
> - In-depth overview of theming system
> - Discuss variables available on pages
> - Using phptemplate.php
> - Discuss how to override theme functions
> - Defining your own Regions
>
> Lesson 5: Modules
> - In-depth overview of hook system
> - In-depth overview of forms API
> - In-depth overview of menu system
> - In-depth overview of ???
> - Might also need to teach some CVS/patch stuff here; I was fluent in
> PHP/SQL/HTML/CSS but Drupal was the first time I ever used CVS/patching.
>
> Lesson 6: More Modules
> - Analyze existing module: Story
> - Exercise: Add a few fields and maybe some hook_nodeapi and other stuff
> to
> story module (basically, showing how to extend an existing module, which
> is a
> common use case)
> - Basically, follow Karoly's outline here.
>
> Final "Capstone" project:
> - Students are to gather up a set of requirements for a site they want to
> build;
> for example, an e-commerce site, an online community, etc.
> - Students must research existing modules and experiment and choose from
> them
> ones which will help
> - Students must also mockup a design in Photoshop or what have you, and
> implement it using theming
> - Students must also create at least one custom module which adds
> functionality
> in some way that is missing from existing ones (and maybe collate the best
> of
> these for contribution back to CVS?).
>
> Just an idea. I'm sure there's a lot missing, but that's my 5 minute take.
> And
> no, this would not be a one day course. :P Could maybe be covered in 3
> very
> intense days, though, if they were given extra time to turn in the final
> project.
>
> -Angie
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