Drupal 7

Introducing Our New Drupal Training Program: DrupalTutor.com

Wayne Eaker — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 20:26:32 +0000

Introducing Our New Drupal Training Program: DrupalTutor.com

After months of hard work, I’m happy to announce the launch of our new Drupal training program: DrupalTutor.com. DrupalTutor.com combines the best of aspects of in-person and online training to make comprehensive Drupal training classes conviently accessible to more people at an affordable cost.

What’s wrong with existing Drupal training options?

Drupal training is currently offered in two basic formats:

Self-Teaching

This consists mainly of books and online videos, supplemented by a lot of Google searches and (hopefully) some visits to local Drupal user groups. This approach is common because it’s inexpensive and easy to get to started. However, it has a lot of drawbacks. Drupal is pretty complex, and it takes a long time to learn. It’s easy to get lost when following along with books or videos or to run into errors that you don’t know how to fix. Books and videos can get out-of-date fairly quickly, and don’t address all the possible ways to combine modules to accomplish various tasks. Students who follow this approach often tell me they know how to do a lot of individual tasks, but they can’t put it all together to get their site up and running.

Formal In-Person Classes

One of the best ways to get a comprehensive understanding of Drupal is with an in-person training class. These classes are offered by many development firms, ours included. With a formal class, you get the benefit of being able to ask questions and get help when you get stuck. However, we have found that they can be difficult for students to manage. First off, they’re expensive. A typical “site builder” level course costs $800 - $1200. Second, the classes are taught in a particular place at a particular time. Students wanting to take the classes often have to travel to neighboring cities, which is inconvienient. Finally, Drupal classes are often multi-day intensive programs, which can be too much, too fast. A typical site builder’s course is 12 − 15 hours, over two days. In my experience, that’s too much for a normal person to absorb.

Experimenting with Online Training Classes

Last fall, we ran a trial of an online, live course. I taught the same material as our normal in-person site builder’s course, but I delivered the training in evening sessions over GotoWebinar. (There were six 3-hour sessions.) This format far exceeded our expectations, and from the feedback we received, those of the students, as well. (see the reviews) The evening classes, accessible from home, were convenient, and the ability to ask questions and have me troubleshoot error messages was seamless. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and several of the students asked for more advanced classes to continue their progress.

The Next Iteration: DrupalTutor.com

Taking what we learned from last fall’s trial, we’ve designed a new approach to online Drupal training, DrupalTutor.com. Classes at DrupalTutor.com will be delivered as a hybrid of pre-recorded video, online assignments, and live lab sessions. For example, for the Building Websites with Drupal 7 course will consist of six weekly video lessons (2 to 2.5 hours each), a weekly online assignment, and six 1-hour live lab session. While the bulk of the instruction will be covered in the weekly videos, students will be able to use the live sessions to ask questions, get advice, and have the trainer troubleshoot errors they may have run into. Some students may also choose to work on the assignment during the lab session, so they can ask questions if they get stuck.

With this new approach, we expect to be able to deliver more classes than ever before, available more conveniently than ever before, at more afforable price than we’ve ever offered. Our first class will be Building Websites with Drupal 7, will start January 25 and costs $295. In late February, we plan to add PHP Bootcamp, followed by Drupal 7 Module Development. Drupal 7 Theme Development should be available in the Q2 of 2013.

To read more detailed information about our classes, see our course descriptions page on DrupalTutor.com.

Wayne EakerJanuary 2, 2013

Drupal Drupal 7 Training

The Week in Drupal: October 26, 2012

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 17:03:14 +0000

The Week in Drupal: October 26, 2012

A look back at interesting modules, articles and other Drupal news of the last week: October 19 - 26, 2012.

Drupal News

Dries Buytaert: Draft for Drupal Community Working Group charter

Registration is open for DrupalCamp Ohio 2012

Great Posts and Tutorials

Explaining the Drupal < 7.16 Installer vulnerability

So You Want to Build a Drupal Product…

Profile Builder: The Features module of Distribution development

An Introduction to the Imagefield Crop Module

Drupal not saving admin pages with large number of input fields

Testing Drupal distributions using Behat, Mink, Drupal Extension, and Travis CI

Rules won’t work properly when run during cron, if you use node access restrictions

Simple contact form per content item with Entityform

Remote entities in Drupal 7

Building Drupal Style Tiles using Foundation and SCSS

Interesting New Modules

ACL File Access - Adds the access control per user over individual file.

Commerce Coupon by Terms - Allows coupons to apply to products tagged with specific taxonomy terms.

apachesolr_csv - Takes the search results from an ApacheSolr search and uses them to generate a CSV file

Site issue tracker - Aimed at making development of a site simpler by listing page-specific issues of a webpage on the page (above the content)

Nodewords Twitter - Support module for nodewords that allows creation of meta tags used by Twitter as detailed here: https://dev.twitter.com/docs/cards

Bootstrap optimizer - Speeds up Drupal bootstrap process. See the module page forma description of how.

Entity Translation Tabs - Gives site editors an edit tab for each language that your site supports.

Message-subscribe - Provide a subscription system built on Flag 2.x and Message-notify 2.x.

RGraph Thermometer - Fundraiser thermometer.

Panels, Why so slow? - Shows you how many milliseconds each pane takes to render.

User Search to People Administration - Moves user search into the user admin area.

APC Flush - An APC opcode cache flush automator for high performance Drupal-setups.

Wayne EakerOctober 26, 2012

Behavior Driven Development Drupal Drupal 7 Drupal Commerce Drupal Community Entity API FieldAPI High Performance Imagefield module Install Profiles Panels module Rules module Search Security Solr Testing Theming

The Week in Drupal: October 19, 2012

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 17:08:10 +0000

The Week in Drupal: October 19, 2012

A look back at interesting modules, articles and other Drupal news of the last week: October 12 - 19, 2012.

Drupal News

Drupal 7.16 released

SA-CORE-2012-003 - Drupal core - Arbitrary PHP code execution and Information disclosure

Drupal core announcements: Proposal: Unify anonymous and authenticated users by separating accounts from users

Drupal core announcements: WYSIWYG in core and consequent filter system changes

Great Posts and Tutorials

Module Monday: Views Data Export

Angie Byron on Drupal core and Spark (Podcast)

Creating Specialized Layouts with Panelizer

Field API - Creating your own field formatters

How to Pass Multiple Values through an Exposed Filter in Drupal Views

What was that query?

Fast, Parallel MySQL Backups and Imports with Mydumper

Interesting New Modules

Standard Search Result Display - Overrides the core styles and templates for search so they closely match the UI of Google, Bing and Yahoo.

CkEditor Plugin: Google Doc embedded iframe

User Pic Kit - Allow users to choose a picture from multiple providers. Includes integration with Gravatar, Robohash, and Drupal core picture uploads.

Geckoboard Push - For developers who want to show custom statistics on a Geckoboard dashboard using the Geckoboard Push API.

Wayne EakerOctober 19, 2012

Drupal Drupal 7 Drupal 8 Drupal Community FieldAPI MySQL Panels module Search Security Theming Views module WYSIWYG module

Online Drupal Training, Coming in November

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 17:09:52 +0000

Online Drupal Training, Coming in November

I’m excited to announce our live, online Drupal training class, coming in November. The class will be taught through WebEx, in the evenings, for three weeks starting November 5.

Course Overview

In this course, you will learn everything you need to know to build and maintain your own Drupal website, from simple blogs to more complex database applications. The training will consist of live online video sessions and offline assignments. During the course, you will build your own complete Drupal site, with custom content types, dynamic pages and forms, and e-commerce integration.

Who is it for?

Anyone who wants to build a Drupal website for their organization or business.
Web designers and developers looking to use Drupal with their clients.
Website administrators tasked with maintaining and enhancing their existing Drupal sites.

This class is designed for people who have never worked with Drupal, but it’s also appropriate for those with some experience who want to build more complex applications. A basic understanding of content management systems is helpful, but knowledge of HTML, CSS and programming experience is not required.

For more details, visit the training page here: https://zengenuity.com/drupal-training

Wayne EakerOctober 12, 2012

Drupal 7 Training

The Week in Drupal: May 13, 2011

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 13 May 2011 11:00:00 +0000

The Week in Drupal: May 13, 2011

A look back at interesting modules, articles and other Drupal news of May 6 - 13, 2011.

Drupal News

Submit Your Session Proposals For DrupalCon London 2011 - Proposal deadline is May 15.

Training at DrupalCon London Announced

Great Posts and Tutorials This Week

Drupal Javascripting

To Drupal 7 or Not Drupal 7

Learning the Flag Module (Video Tutorial)

Real Time Push Notifications with Node.js (Podcast)

Building an Admin/Editor Dashboard for Drupal

Building Custom Graphs with Raphael

Interesting New Modules and Themes

Maxlength JS - Use javascript to limit your textareas to a specific number of characters. Has a "characters left" display, like Twitter.

Feeds: LDAP - Import LDAP users with the Feeds module.

Path Redirect Menu Item - Use redirected paths as menu items.

Google Adwords Remarketing - Tag site users so you can target them in Google's display network with ads for your products/services.

Smart Breadcrumb - Walks up the URL path to determine parent breadcrumb titles automatically.

Views Slideshow: Roundabout - Yet another type of display for Views Slideshow.

Mask Input - Help users enter data in a field in a particular format.

Comment Anonymizer - Allows authenticated users to optional make their comment anonymous.

Wayne EakerMay 13, 2011

Drupal Drupal 7 DrupalCon London Flag module Google Adwords Javascript LDAP Node.js Views module

The Week in Drupal: April 22, 2011

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:00:00 +0000

The Week in Drupal: April 22, 2011

A look back at interesting modules, articles and other Drupal news of April 15 - 22, 2011.

Drupal News

Design for Drupal 8

Great Posts and Tutorials This Week

Simplify Your Code with Drupal 7's Database API

Drupal 7 Tutorial: Creating Custom Formatters with the Field API

Filtering a View by a List of Nodes with Checkboxes

Using Image Fields in Drupal 7

Interesting New Modules and Themes

CiviCRM 3.4 and 4.0 Released - Read the release notes for what's new.

Webform Hints - Integrates the Form Hints jQuery plugin with Webform. Replaces labels with hints inside the text boxes.

jQuery Waypoints - Allows you to execute javascript when a user scrolls to a specific element.

Sticky Errors - Move form error messages next to the form elements they are about.

CiviCRM Contact Form Integration - Have your contact form requests automatically added to CiviCRM

Google Analytics Reports - Get Google Analytics as a dashboard widget for admins on your Drupal site.

Individual Rotate - Rotate individual Imagefield images on the node form.

320 and up - A theme that automatically adapts to different screen sizes for mobile devices and desktops.

Wayne EakerApril 22, 2011

CiviCRM Drupal Drupal 7 Imagefield module jQuery Views module Webform module

The Week in Drupal: February 11, 2011

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 11:00:00 +0000

The Week in Drupal: February 11, 2011

A look at interesting new modules, articles and other Drupal news from February 4 - 11, 2011.

Drupal News

Drupal Gets the GRAMMYs Again

Great Posts and Tutorials This Week

Importing CSV Files with Feeds - Screencast and Tutorial

Handling Non-Local Files (e.g. Amazon S3-hosted files) with Drupal 6

Upgrading Modules to Drupal 7

Interesting New Modules

CSS Watch - This thing is a AWESOME! Automatically updates your CSS without a browser refresh. For use when you are creating a custom theme. This is going to save so much time. Watch the screencast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSDxm50_obI&hd=1

Ideation Feature for Open Atrium - Allow users to submit ideas and vote on them.

Simpleshare - Allow users to post a link to their Drupal content on Facebook or Twitter with a simple interface that appears saving a node.

UC Order Clone - Make duplicates of orders in Ubercart.

Privatemsg Bulkmail - Send messages to all your users with the Privatemsg module.

jQuery Pause - Easily add pauses to jQuery events, like the ones from Views Slideshow.

Book Chapters - Add automatically-numbered chapters to your content with the Book module.

Wayne EakerFebruary 11, 2011

Drupal Drupal 7 Facebook Import jQuery Open Atrium Theming Twitter Ubercart

The Week in Drupal: January 7, 2011

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 11:00:00 +0000

The Week in Drupal: January 7, 2011

A look at interesting new modules, articles and other Drupal news from January 1 - 7, 2011.

Drupal News

Drupal 7 Released!

Session Selections Announced for DrupalCon Chicago

Great Posts and Tutorials This Week

8 New Drupal 7 Changes to Love

Your guide rocking your Drupal 7 Release Party

A List of Drupal 7 Release Party Locations

Interesting New Modules and Themes

Advanced Form - Make Drupal node forms simple by hiding administrative or other fields until an "Advanced" button is pressed. This could be handy.

jEditable - Inline editing for CCK fields.

SheetNode 1.5 Released: Now without the Java - Spreadsheet editing for your site.

Code Per Node - Inject javascript or CSS on a per-node basis.

Wayne EakerJanuary 7, 2011

CCK module Drupal Drupal 7 DrupalCon Chicago High Performance Javascript

The Week in Drupal: December 31, 2010

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:46:03 +0000

The Week in Drupal: December 31, 2010

A look at interesting new modules, articles and other Drupal news of the past two weeks.

Drupal News

Drupal 7.0 RC4 is released - 0 critical bugs!

Great Posts and Tutorials This Week

Using hook_init() to Include CSS and JS files

A Case Study in Converting from openCommerce/phpBB/Wordpress to a single Drupal/Ubercart site

An improved Webform user interface for Drupal

The Drupal Christmas Song

Plan your local Drupal 7 release party! - A guide

Drupal 7 Release Party List

Interesting New Modules and Themes

Node Gallery jCarousel - Use jCarousel to page through your Node Gallery image galleries.

FlowPlayer Playlist - Integrates FlowPlayer playlist functionality with the Views module.

Ubercart Disable Store - Turn off Ubercart based on certain conditions, like user role.

Wordpress XML for Feeds - Import your Wordpress WXR files with the Feeds module!

Signature Field - Sweet! An HTML5 canvas-based signature CCK field. Works with the Webform module, as well.

Blue Masters - A beautiful theme. Not too many of these on drupal.org.

HeadJS - Speeds up the downloading of javascript on your site by allowing parallel downloads.

iTweak Links - Remove some node links, or turn them into dropdown menus.

Webform MySQL Views - This module creates MySQL views that flatten the data collected by the Webform module. If you've ever tried to extract Webform data from the database directly, you know what a nightmare it is. This is much needed.

Netbeans Templates for Drupal Development

Wayne EakerDecember 31, 2010

Drupal Drupal 7 High Performance HTML5 Image Galleries Ubercart Video Views module Webform module Wordpress

The Week in Drupal: December 10, 2010

Wayne Eaker — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 15:28:12 +0000

The Week in Drupal: December 10, 2010

A look at interesting new modules, articles and other Drupal news of this week.

Drupal News

Drupal 7 Release Candidate 2 (RC2) is Out!

DrupalCon Chicago Session Voting is Now Open

Great Posts and Tutorials This Week

Improve Javascript Loading with Head JS - Includes code for Drupal 6 and 7. (D6 code in comments)

7 Ways to Scale the Learning Brick Wall of Drupal - A good list of resources. We also do Drupal Training in Michigan, in addition to the trainers listed.

Interesting New Modules

Media: Facebook - Embed Facebook images into content.

Botcha Spam Prevention - Adds extra hidden fields to forms that trick spam bots into to filling them out, at which point they are blocked.

SlideDeck for Views - SlideDeck is a slick accordion-style slideshow jQuery plugin. This module integrates it with Views.

Feeds: Youtube - Import Youtube videos to your site with the Feeds module.

Production Check and Production Monitor - Like a pre-launch checklist. Checks SEO, error logging and other important settings to make sure they are ready to go live.

Field Injector - Display CCK fields inside other fields, like putting an Imagefield image after the first paragraph. (Drupal 7 only)

Ubercart Option Categories - Group your Ubercart dropdown attributes into categories.

Comment Registration - Register new users inline with adding their first comment.

Panels Regions - Remove certain regions in specific Panels variants.

Wayne EakerDecember 10, 2010

CCK module Comment module Drupal Drupal 7 DrupalCon Chicago Facebook Feeds module jQuery Panels module Spam Ubercart Views module