Getting Drupal off the Ground

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Format: Online

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Fee: $75 for those in the California library community and Infopeople Partners, $150 for all others.

(An Infopeople Online Learning Course)
Tuesday June 1, 2010 – Monday June 28, 2010

You’ve installed Drupal—now what? Learn what crucial steps you need to take to make your new content management system functional. Understand the basics of how to add new functionality and change the look of your website. Learn how to add and configure different content regions, create accounts with different permissions, and more.

As a result of this course, you will be able to:

  • Customize your Drupal installation with blocks, modules, and themes
  • Get help configuring Drupal to meet your library’s needs
  • Understand what Drupal core modules do and which are right for your library
  • Create custom content types to hold specialized information
  • Understand how to create custom displays of your data without any code

Join instructor Laura Solomon, who has worked on both small and large scale Drupal installations, to learn how to use Drupal to create the library website you have always wanted.

Course Description: This four-week online course will provide guided instruction in implementing and configuring the Drupal content management system. Through assignments and discussions, you will create a complete, configured Drupal installation with both contributed modules and themes. The instructor will provide resources, best practices, and useful tips and techniques that can be applied immediately. During the course, you will be doing hands-on assignments with your Drupal installation and participating in discussion forums. Weekly online meetings (on Thursdays, June 3, 10, 17, and 24, at 1 p.m. Pacific time) will feature demonstrations and Q&A.

Preliminary Course Outline: Using your web browser and your Internet connection, you will log in to the Infopeople online learning site and complete the following learning modules:

  • Week 1: Background of Drupal and Post-Installation Configuration
    • History of Drupal
    • Specifications for Drupal
    • The Drupal Community
    • Basic configuration of Drupal after installation (including permissions and roles)
    • Creating/enabling blocks
  • Week 2: Major Core Modules and Theming
    • Differences between core and optional core modules
    • Potential pitfalls of some core optional modules
    • Sources of third-party themes
    • Descriptions of all core modules
  • Week 3: Third-Party Contributed Modules
    • Where third-party modules come from
    • Module versioning
    • Compatibility issues
  • Week 4: Creating Views and Custom Content Types
    • The purpose of Views and Content Construction Kit (CCK) modules
    • Understanding the different parts of the Views configuration
    • How to create a custom content type using CCK

Pre-workshop assignment: Drupal should be installed before the course commences. Learners will need to complete an online survey, to assess existing technical ability, before beginning the course.

Time required: To complete this course, you can expect to spend 3 to 3½ hours per week. You can work on each module at your own pace, at any hour of the day or night. However, it is recommended that you complete each week’s assignments within that week to stay in sync with other learners.

Who Should Take This Course: Library technology staff, including network administrators, webmasters, system staff, or others responsible for technology implementation in their libraries. This is not an introductory level course. It is targeted to those running or planning to implement Drupal version 6.x.

To be successful in this course, you should be comfortable with the following:

  • FTP
  • MySQL via PHPMyAdmin

You will also be required to have:

  • Clean install of Drupal 6.x with no additional third-party modules or themes installed
  • Access to the MySQL database for your Drupal installation via phpMyAdmin
  • FTP client in order to upload files to your Drupal installation

Online Learning Details and System Requirements may be found at
http://www.infopeople.org/training/learning_details.html.

Course Start: This 4-week-long online learning course starts on Tuesday, June 1, 2010. (Instructor's personal needs made it necesary to delay class from April to June.)

Because of hands-on assignments, enrollment for this course is limited. Please enroll promptly to avoid disappointment.

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Available for contracting: 
No