Wylbur and I talked last week about planning a very basic "Intro to Drupal" track of sessions for DrupalCamp Twin Cities. The idea is to reach those people who may only have an inkling of what Drupal is or are just getting started using it (or, a very important segment, those who have inherited a Drupal site from somebody else and need guidance.) Below is essentially a brain dump I did last night of potential topics and material for such a track.
The other part of the process, of course, is to identify possible presenters. I'd be happy to plan on taking two sessions to start, perhaps a third if needed.
What I'd like for input is:
- Suggestions for other sessions targeting this audience
- Improvements/additions to the list below
- Presenters (just put your name next to the title)
Once this list firms up a bit, I'll make them official session proposals over on the DrupalCamp TC web site.
Beginner Drupal Sessions
Drupal, the Super Basic Intro
Explanation of what Drupal is at its most basic, including terminology.
- Nodes
- Menus
- Users
- Roles
- Access control/permissions
- Taxonomy
- Content types/fields
- Modules
- Themes
- Views
- Feeds and aggregation
- Demonstration of basic theming within a contrib or core theme - color picker, upload custom logo.
- Demonstration of a quick site build with D7 core.
- Demonstration of cross-content-type associations using taxonomy.
- Maybe demonstrate a custom content type?
Choosing Modules and Themes
Approaches to selecting modules and themes for your site.
- Differing approaches: Perfect fit for use case vs. extensible "legos"
- Custom "tweak" modules
- Using the issue queue, usage stats, developer reputation to help guide selection
- Theme analog: Base themes and subthemes
Theming 101
Explanation of theming - basic overview and examples.
- Browsing contrib, installing, configuring
- Using the issue queue, usage stats, developer reputation to help guide selection
- "smart" themes (dynamic sidebars)
- Base themes and subthemes
- Hacking a "starter" theme vs extending a base theme
- Building a subtheme using 960gs?
We need a new site. Where does Drupal fit in?
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Drupal is not the first step. Figure out communications needs and goals, what you want to provide, and to whom you want to provide it. Tool selection and configuration comes much later.
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Maybe make this a more general workshop, save Drupal until the very end?
Not-quite-Core: Modules that (nearly) everybody needs
- Views
- CCK (d6)/References (d7)
- filefield/filefield_sources
- Date and Calendar
- googleanalytics
- Token
- Pathauto
- Webform
- Workflow
- Workbench?
- Menu Item Container/Menu Position/Megamenu
- Image display - sliders/thickbox,etc
Drupal 7: Is it ready?
- Knowing your needs, watching the relevant modules.
Help!
Where to find help and information in the Drupal community.
- What? There's a "community"?
- D.O.
- Handbook
- Modules/Themes
- Issue Queues
- Forums
- Books/Videos (Drupalize.me, learn by the drop, dev seed, GotDrupal.com)
- IRC - #drupal, #tcdrupal
- Drupal User Group
- Local pros/Lab Hours
- Embedded help