What happens when you tickle a koala bear.
I’ve been steadily building up a collection of good background music for coding. If you’re interested, here are a few bands/artists I’d recommend:
@mcrittenden: “Mad Libs style forms increased conversion across the board by 25-40%” - http://SFW.im/1D
@mcrittenden: Everyone needs to go view the source of http://theoatmeal.com.
People seem to ask this question a lot. When you’re learning something, it’s comforting to know that you’re doing it correctly and efficiently and that you’re not learning the wrong way or the long way.
Therefore, once and for all, here’s my official 1 minute guide to learning Drupal.
As with most things programming related, the best way to get up and running is just to do it already. Download Drupal, install it somewhere, and build a blog just to learn the ropes. You’re going to see terms like “node”, “taxonomy”, “module”, all kinds of words you’re not familiar with. They key is to research stuff like this as you come across it, and make sense of it all as you go.
I’m completely against reading all about something and trying to learn it before actually doing anything with it yourself; it makes a lot more sense to start doing it yourself and use the resources to help you along the way.
If you’re still going to read something before you get started no matter what I say, then read What Is Drupal by Tim Millwood.
There are, in my opinion, four basic steps to becoming a Drupal expert. Those are:
Once you have a good hang of those four, then you can start cranking out some truly awesome stuff with Drupal.
As for some resources to help you along the way…
If you like books, there are two great ones to pick up.
If you’re like me, you’d much rather see something done than read about it. If that’s the case, then the following sites have some really good Drupal screencasts for you to get up and running with.
You’re no doubt going to have questions along the way. Whenever I have questions, here’s my typical process:
If, at the end of this process, you still don’t have the answer, then my advice is to go back into IRC and ask your question every 3 or 4 hours until someone answers it or points you in the right direction.
Drupal is what some have called a “wall” project. That means, some projects have learning curves, and Drupal has a learning “wall” that seems impossible until you all of a sudden jump it (i.e., the lightbulb moment) and it all makes sense. Just stick with it until it starts to make sense and you’ll be just fine.
An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a very narrow field.
— Niels Bohr
You maybe have heard of Hartija or perhaps even used it at some point. I use it all the time, but noticed that maintenance on it had pretty much halted.
Therefore, like I tend to do, I forked it into Priss.
If you’re looking for a best practices print stylesheet, Priss is the way to go. Feel free to give it a whirl.
By the way, the name is a cheesy mashup of “Print” and “CSS” …please pretend it was named something cooler.
As a dad to be, I’m more or less a trained expert on this now.
Aren’t you SO EXCITED?!?!
Sure, we’re excited. We’re also nervous and stressed and paranoid and freaking tired of people asking if we’re excited.
(To the mom) Oh, you’re feeling [insert some horrible pregnancy related condition here]? Well just try [insert stupid home remedy or food here]! It works wonders!
No it doesn’t. Go away.
Oh, you’re going to name it [insert name here]? Well, what about [insert completely different name here]? I like that a lot better.
Hey, great! Let’s drop the name we love and decided on in favor of a random name from a stranger!
[Person starts rubbing the mom’s belly]
Good idea! Here, let me pick your nose.
[Upon seeing a random kid misbehaving] You better get used to that now! You’ve got one on the way!
WTF! I do?! And you’re telling me kids are bad sometimes? I want out!
Were you trying or was it an accident?
Don’t know what to say about this one. It’s just really really awkward to be asked that.
Are you going to have another one?
We were kind of hoping to have this one first, and then decide. Is that ok?
Just a quick note that I put this site’s Chyrp theme up at GitHub. Visit it here.
It won’t be useful as an install-and-go theme since it’s customized for this site, but it could provide some good examples of how to style individual aggregates or feathers differently, or how to implement JS libraries such as Fancybox (although this should probably be done at the module level, in reality, that rarely happens).
