Learning Drupal in a Day
Nowadays, many people are looking for alternatives to develop their web projects. Thanks to this need, there are websites like www.wix.com where good results can be achieved but their services are limited by some cost.
There are also open source alternatives like Drupal that give full control to the user.
One thing needs to be made clear: if an application is open source, it does not mean that it is vulnerable. In fact, Drupal is characterized by having high security standards and also has constant support, which always guarantees the best version.
At this point you must be wondering what is Drupal? Drupal is a multipurpose Content Management System (CMS) that allows the creation and publication of web content such as images, articles, files, forums, surveys, blogs among others, it offers sufficient tools to be able to add content of any type and customize it according to our needs.
It has an Administrator interface where you can manage each of these functions in an orderly and comfortable way, that is, Drupal has a Menu where we can configure the design, content and other functions of our website.
It is not necessary to be an expert in web programming, to create a site with Drupal you just need to know the interface and interact with it to understand its functions.
How much is it worth?...It has no cost, since it is a free and open source tool which makes it available to anyone who wants to use it.
Why use Drupal? Because of its flexibility.
In contrast to other content managers, it allows you to easily add new elements without needing to know about databases or programming, which makes it quite intuitive.
Typically, a website developed with Drupal can have a good positioning in search engines, with a little more work you can meet all the necessary configurations of an SEO strategy, at a high level and also promote its use, for example, we find sites like:
http://appdeveloper.intel.com/en-us/,
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/,
http://www.missionmetallica.com/ , http://community.michaeljackson.com/us/home, among others that confirm its popularity on the web.
The use of Drupal by large entities demonstrates the reliability, security and level of customization that is also within our reach.
Drupal has an active community where we can contact them on sites such as:
Drupal.org https://drupal.org/ ,
Drupal Hispano http://drupal.org.es/ ,
Drupal.cat http://drupal.cat/ ,
Spanish Drupal Association http://asociaciondrupal.es/ , all committed to solving errors or other types of support; Apart from this, there are other teams such as Security Team or Security Advisories that are dedicated to reinforcing the creation of security patches that make it open source software with high reliability standards.
Personally, before starting a training program, I decided to carry out my project without knowing anything about how Drupal works, taking the risk of trying and exploring different tools. I started to create a gallery to show on my website; searching, I found a video tutorial on how to make this gallery, but at that moment I didn't know what a module was, much less how to install it.
Following the tutorial on how to create a gallery and finishing the process, the result was ERRORS and as I didn't know enough about Drupal I didn't know how to solve them to be able to see my gallery working correctly. At that point I gave up and stopped developing my project; still waiting to find out what the problem was, I discovered that it was necessary to install a few modules to be able to view the gallery and add some plugins so that the images didn't lose their quality, which is not easy to understand when you only search in forums.
Learning Drupal becomes much more practical and easier when you have a guide to show you the way. At Seed EM there is a Drupal training plan that goes from the most basic concepts and can be taken by anyone, from developers, designers or of infrastructure, these workshops are available both for those of us who are part of the company and for those who want to take them with an instructor for other companies or groups of people. If you are interested, you can request more information in the contact form .
In my case I started with the most basic level which is called Drupal in a Day, following the step-by-step guide I realized that it was a quick and complete introduction to Drupal, from the basic concepts to the development of a website which It is quite useful when you don't even know where to start.
I decided to read and practice with this guide, there I realized the mistakes I had made in my first attempt with Drupal and how I should solve them.
That's how I learned the benefits of this guide for Jr. developers like me. Before entering the development environment, we should focus on asking ourselves the following questions: how does it work? What is it for? What does it need? Where does it work? Should it be located?, among others…
This experience of creating my project step by step with this guide was very satisfying. At the beginning I found a series of questions that I didn't know how to answer, but little by little, I began to understand how Drupal works and managed to find the answers.
The satisfaction of creating my first web project in Drupal was very high. With Drupal in a Day I learned in a practical way the functions of each tool, how, when and where to execute functions, install modules, themes, among others...
This guide sparked my curiosity and interest in continuing to learn in order to create complex projects and become a good Drupal developer.
Step by step I am acquiring more knowledge about web development, for now there is nothing left but to continue with all the willingness and care to complement them, a task that works day by day with the advance of technologies.
From my point of view, Drupal is innovation, knowledge and many other qualities; it offers a number of possibilities for the development of our projects in a comfortable and customizable way.
By: Cesar Duran
Drupal Jr Developer
Seed EM