Good beginners material/advice on Drupal

Question

I'm learning Drupal and whould like to ask you about some good material for a beginner on this subject. Any book, website or article is welcome.

I whould like to hear to any good advice for someone like me, which is just starting to know Drupal and CMSs in general.

Currently, I'm using as my basic source the official website of the project.

Answer 1

I started with this book on Drupal administration: Drupal 6: Site builders solutions . I liked it and from there I moved on to the following books for module development and advanced usage:

• Building powerful robust sites using Drupal
• Using Drupal
• Pro Drupal development

All 3 books have a good mix of module development, the theme layer and the API.

Answer 2

As all above are true and many ways to learn Drupal, I would like to suggest beginners can learn Drupal from Video Tutorials addition to above links user can learn from Code Karate : http://codekarate.com/

And use Examples modules by installing Drupal setup as per your requirement (like D6,D7 or D8). It has good set of practice examples to proceed with your way.

User can refer Drupal.org themeing documentation, API Documentation, use IRC chat for quick queries.

Answer 3

Well I will advice the following for core understanding of Drupal

• drupal.org documentation (read about Drupal Api)
• drupalize.me
• lullabot.com

Hope it helps

Answer 4

You can use Drupal for a lot of things and in a lot of ways, so it's hard to say which is the best for you.

If your aim is to use Drupal as a developer, I would say that you should use/get:

1. Pro Drupal Development, this was probably the single biggest help for me to learn how to develop with Drupal.
2. The Drupal API, to become a good developer, you must learn how to use the API. Drupal has a good online resource, where you can look up functions, view their source, see comments from other developers and more.

If you want to learn how to make Drupal look pretty, what we call to theme drupal you should:

1. Learn how to use starter themes a good place to start is the zen theme
2. Front End Drupal is an excellent book, and from it you can learn quite a bit about Drupal theming.
3. The theme guide on drupal.org is the official drupal resource for themers.

If you just want to learn how to use the CMS as an administration:

1. Using Drupal by the lullabot team is a great place to start. It will take you through the most basic things, and show what you can do with drupal without coding.
2. Lullabot.com is a good place for any drupal resource really, but they focus mostly on teaching stuff on different techniques for the most known modules.

Answer 5

Check out Learn Drupal CMS.

Answer 6

To Learn Drupal, videos will prove to be your best friend. Its have been quite a time since I am using Drupal for site building, I find these videos very useful. Here is the list of some websites, which you should add to Favorites Bar.

1. http://www.lullabot.com/
2. http://gotdrupal.com/
3. http://mydrupal.com/drupal-beginner-videos-basics
4. http://usingdrupal.com/
5. www.drupaltutorials.org

If you use Twitter, You can contact these people for your drupal Queries.

Happy Drupaling :)