[consulting] Best way to set up Drupal exercise files?

[Tom Geller]

Hey, gang. I'm hoping you can help me figure this one out.

I did two Drupal instructional video series for Lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com/home/ViewCourses.aspx?lpk1=197) and am currently planning a few more for Drupal 7. They like to offer "Exercise files" for all their courses so folks can jump into the course in the middle. In other words, someone could start at Chapter 5 by loading the Chapter 5 exercise file, which would make the site appear as though all the exercises from Chapters 1-4 were already done.

This has proven very difficult in Drupal. In Drupal Essential Training we included a .sql file at every step, but the assets weren't in place. We included graphics where they first appeared, but that meant a user would have to go through all previous chapters to find the assets and load them up -- and it wouldn't address the issue of modules and themes that we'd added in the meantime.

An ideal exercise file would put assets (such as graphics) in the correct folder; grab, install, and enable the latest versions of specific modules; and configure it all. 

I've heard of Patterns (drupal.org/project/patterns) and Demo (drupal.org/project/demo), but never tried them. An installation profile might be the way to go, but (again) I've never tried to create one.

Any ideas? I'm not technical enough to write custom PHP, and it needs to be a solution that can be widely distributed.

Thanks!

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          Tom Geller  *  Oberlin, Ohio  *  415-317-1805
             Writer/Editor * http://www.tomgeller.com
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