I am a PHP programmer. I am new to Drupal. I want to become a Drupal developer. Should I start learning version 7 or 8.
Similar to the question "How do you eat an elephant" (answer: 1 byte at a time ...), I think you should try to have some plan (roadmap), which basically consists of 4 major phases:
What are the prereqs to start?
How could a training program look like?
How to gain more experience?
How to target the golden cradle?
(Many) More details on each of these phases are below ... I'm pretty sure it's an approach that works ... mostly because it is how I got started with Drupal myself ... though I'm still trying to finish my Drupal journey (to continue to gain even more Drupal experience).
Part 1 - What are the prereqs to start?
0. HTML, PHP, JS, CSS knowledge
If you already know HTML, PHP, JS, CSS, etc it will for sure help to get you going with Drupal.
But in my experience those skills are not the most important ones to get up to speed with Drupal. You can learn about them "on the fly (on the job?)". Specific to PHP, in the context of Drupal, you only need to know a subset of all the things you can do with PHP.
1. Required Infrastructure
Obviously you need a computer, and (at least occasionally) a working internet connection and an eMail ID. At least to download Drupal, contributed modules, etc to your own computer.
Later on, when you have a website that is ready to be shown to the world, you'll also need:
some hosting provider to host that Drupal site.
a domain name (DNS registration).
To actually be able to use a Drupal website on your own computer, you'll need the typical softwares that are like pre-requisites for Drupal. Here is a list of those so called 'stacks' (often referred to as WAMP, MAMP or LAMP also):
an operating system for your computer (Windows, Mac or the free Linux).
a web server (like the free Apache, ...).
a DBMS (like the free MySQL).
PHP (no other languages here, but ... free).
Some typical utility programs, such as:
something to unpack files in an archive format such as a .tar or .zip, since Drupal and its contributed modules are downloaded in these formats.
an text editor (like notepad, notepad++, your favorite editor, etc).
an FTP client, such as FileZilla (to upload your site frm your local environment to a live server)
Setting up the required pre-requisites (as in the previous bullet) can be a bit of work (and/or a challenge). However there are some great packages available to reduce the required effort (and required skills) quite a lot, such as (pick whatever option you prefer and/or fits for you, incomplete list!):
VirtualBox combined with QuickStart (bonus: comes with GIT, Drush, etc pre-installed).
XAMPP.
Part 2 - How could a training program look like?
2. Climb the Drupal ladder
When I'm asked the question about how to get started with Drupal, I always point to Climbing the Drupal ladder (from famous Dries ...). It's only 1 diagram, but there is so much information and value in it (a picture is worth more then 1000 words ...).
It's a great outline to be used during a "Getting started with Drupal" session. Anybody who's a bit familiar with Drupal should be able to explain most of the items mentioned on it also.
There are also these variations of it:
The DrupalLadder.org website, which contains (or links to) lessons and materials to help people learn about Drupal and contribute to Drupal. The site helps Drupal user groups develop and share and develop materials for learn sprints and issue sprints.
Drupal Ladder installation profile (alfa version only, and missing some security updates ...).
3. Get familiar with contributed modules and themes
These days, there are around 17K contributed modules and/or themes. There are tons (thousands ...) of great modules/themes, and a lot of hidden gems. So think twice (or 3 times?) before diving into writing custom modules/themes. Ask yourself the question "Who will maintain them in say a few years from now?".
However, quite often you'll run into more then just 1 contributed module or theme. Here is a sample: Which contributed module should you use to create a chart in Drupal? ... Make your choice, e.g via the Comparison of charting modules. But which module would you go for if you are looking for:
an image gallery, as in this question: Advise a Drupal Image gallery module with an option to put text nearby the image (for medical atlas)
a slideshow, as in this question: Slide through nodes from the same content-type?
a responsive theme?
That's when you'll need to have some criteria in place for selecting the most appropriate one, as illustrated in the "Maintenance scorecards" also (you can use them for many other Drupal topics, so not only just for charts).
4. Views / Flag / Rules / Message
It's rare to find sites that don't use the (amazing) Views module, which however isn't obvious to get started with (there is so much to learn about it). I learned a lot about this module via the great, and free, set of 30 video tutorials about the Views module.
Combined with the Flag, Rules and Message modules, a lot of site functionality can be delivered already. To get started with Rules, checkout the 32 (!!!) great, and free, video tutorials Learn the Rules framework, organized in 7 chapters. There is a similar set of 8 video tutorials about the Flag module.
So make sure to have a good knowledge/understanding of all the amazing things you can do with only those "magic 4", in virtually any site. A few samples:
How can I allow anonymous visitors to submit content?
How to implement a nomination process for nodes?
How to change fields permission using some action in the Rules module?
Redirect after login for specific role on specific day using Rule.
How to publish nodes 3 times a day?
Content access based on the content author's role.
How to change my homepage based on the time of day?
5. Study available documentation
Documentation about Drupal and many of the contributed modules is available in various formats, such as:
The Readme.txt file that comes with contributed modules.
The Community documentation available for many modules, which can typically be found via the "Read documentation" link on a module's project page (not all modules have one however, though they should).
The Advanced Help documentation that comes with selected modules, and which you can access from within your site if you have the Advanced Help module installed.
The impressive set of (great) questions and (great) answers at Drupal Answers.
6. Learn to use the issue queue(s) on Drupal.org.
Each contributed module on Drupal.org has a "project page" located at something like https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/abc, whereas abc is the "namespace" of the module (not always exactly the same as the title of the project page). Multiple links to its corresponding "Issue queue" can be found on the project page, or just use an URL like https://www.drupal.org/project/issues/abc.
The issue queue (search results of issues) offers various search features and/or filters. Even if you're not "searching" for a specific issue, but just browsing around in these issues, you can learn a lot by reviewing these issues. Often times there is important (crucial) information contained in "some" issue that didn't make it (yet) to the documentation related to the module.
In my case, when I first started using Forena, I kept iterating over its issue queue, and occasionally posted new issues.
As a module (co-)maintainer, I try to point module users to such interesting issues, via a list of 'issues' mentioned (hyperlinked) in these Community documentation pages: Charts HowTos, Forena HowTos, Chart HowTos. Note: later on I started adding similar links to interesting question on Drupal.SE also ...
7. Learn from podcasts about Drupal
There are some interesting podcasts dedicated to Drupal, which also have a great website with all sorts of hyperlinks to topics covered in each of them. Though there are quite a few, here are my favorite ones (+ links to answers about topics I learned about via them):
Talking Drupal
Example: How can I make a gallery of “boxes” of content consisting of an image and some text?
Drupal Easy
Example: Can I move distribution profile modules from profile folder to sites/all/modules?
FYI: I "learn from these podcasts" (+ get ideas) while ... walking my dog. You could do so too while commuting, exercising, cutting the grass, preparing a meal, etc.
8. Learn about Drush
Learn to walk before you want to try to fly ... So start building / maintaining Drupal sites using the typical Admin interface (UI). Such as:
install/enable modules.
clearing the cache(s).
updating site information.
typical modules you keep using in most of the sites you build.
etc.
However, when you feel you have enough experience, and start to know and understand Drupal well enough, you should invest in learning about Drush. After you do, you'll wonder "How could I do work in Drupal without Drush?". For each of the bullets above (and many more bullets), there is a way to do it with Drush.
9. Learn about GIT
A Drupal site mostly consist of 2 major parts: a database (typically in MySQL), and code (mostly PHP, also JavaScript, CSS, etc). Drupal core, it's contributed modules, and also custom modules are all in "code". Git is used for the "Software Change Management" (SCM) part of that code.
It is highly recommended to start using GIT "as soon as you can" (after you do, you'll wonder "how would I do work in Drupal without it?"). Git is typically used for topics/tasks such as:
Building a Drupal site with Git.
Sharing code between developers, and for maintaining modules on Drupal.org.
Part 3 - How to gain more experience?
10. Pick an area to grow
Drupal is big, actually huge. Nobody (even not Dries) can do/know everything in Drupal. So try to find an area (or a few areas) you're interested in. If you can, look for something you also have experience with already in other (none-Drupal) domains already.
In my case it was (is) Software Change Management and also Business Intelligence (reporting). That's what explains the contributed modules I'm now 'involved' in (Charting, Reporting, etc) ... and my interest in the upcoming "Configuration Management Initiative".
11. Learn from experience ... and mistakes
Another important aspect to come up to speed with Drupal, is that you have time to learn "from experience", and "from making mistakes". Starting as a site builder seems the most obvious starting point.
From there you can move / evolve into roles like a Drupal Developer (back-end), Drupal Themer (front-end) or Drupal all rounder. That's also what seems to be compliant with recent Drupal certification programs.
Remark: how to get started in any of these roles, seems to be out-of-scope for this question.
12. Get in touch with other Drupal-fans
You must have seen this before: "Come for the software, stay for the community". If not, have you ever visited www.drupal.org? See it in the upper left of the homepage? If you're new to Drupal you probably wonder what that really means. Here are some suggestions to experience it:
Participate in Drupal Groups.
Join the Drupal community on IRC.
13. ...
This bullet is intentionally left blank ... because of its "number" ... Did you notice the numbering started at 0? ... to compensate for this missing number ...
14. Attend Drupal conferences and meetings
Meeting in person with other Drupal peers takes more effort (and is more expensive), but you will get a lot in return. Here are some options to pick from:
Attend Drupal Cons, these are big conferences, about 1 in every continent every year, relatively expensive (travel, hotel, registration). Common language is English (though there are exceptions like in Latin America I believe it's in Spanish). Next one coming up is in Barcelona, sept 21-25, 2015 (I'm registered ...). If you can't make it (or missed some of the sessions while there and busy doing networking, etc.), go find the videos about dozens of sessions.
Attend Drupal Camps, which are more local and (way) smaller. They are typically by country and/or state, in your own language.
Attend Drupal Sprints, where you wil not only be contributing (= giving back to the community), but where you will find others willing to help, guide and mentor you where needed.
Part 4 - How to target the golden cradle?
15. Don't wait for George, just be like George
George#Drupal.org was (at least to me) first introduced at DrupalCon 2014 in Amsterdam during the Keynote (from Dries) (on slide 76/198). Review those slides, and watch the movie to understand what that George is all about.
Then stop "waiting for George", and instead start acting like George. Even if it's something challenging (difficult, major effort, etc). When you're done, you'll for sure have learned something, and probably AlotMORE ...
If you're looking for inspiration about what could be good examples of this, then stop wondering "When will D8 be released?". And instead, "Get involved in contributing to the release of D8" .... And continu using D7 for building websites until D8 is ready (and mature enough).
16. Start contributing as a novice
Apart from what's detailed in the Novice code contribution guide (which is about creating patches to contribute "code" to Drupal), there is also a lot of community documentation that needs work, and can be done by novice users (typically tagged with "novice").
Same for modules that need better/more documentation. That's actually how I got 'promoted' from being a Drupal user/admin to becoming a module co-maintainer and module owner. Refer to HELP Reports reorganization (which is 'just' 1 issue ...) for an illustration of how I got started in doing so.
Such contributions will help to "Build your reputation", and might resolve the chicken/egg issue to get started with Drupal (most jobs in Drupal require knowledge / experience in specific Drupal areas).
17. Learn to manage Drupal configuration
Any Drupal site consist of 2 major parts:
Code downloaded from Drupal.org, such as Drupal core and contributed modules or custom modules.
Configuration which is stored in the Drupal database (typically anything you do using the Drupal administration screens).
Managing code (such as migrating or synching between 2 or more environments) is relatively easy. All sorts of tools (such as GIT, etc) are available to actually do so.
However you also need to manage the configuration of a Drupal site. A site without any configuration is like a site for which you have not even ran the install.php script. Here are some examples of what configuration is about:
As soon as you start running the install.php script, you start entering configuration data about your Drupal site (Site name, site slogan, etc.).
Anything to content types, permissions, roles, rules, users, taxonomies, filters, custom views, etc. (none of this is stored in "code", and you can't just download it from somewhere).
Modules and/or themes that are enabled (just unpacking a contributed module that you download from Drupal.org will not enable it).
Options to configure specific modules and/or themes.
So whenever something about such configuration items changes, or needs to be migrated to another site, you need to correctly manage (and secure?) all this. Otherwise there is a chance that (parts of) your site breaks.
That's why at first these kinds of contributed modules were introduced:
The Features module.
The Configuration management module.
Even though those modules add a lot of value in the area of managing configuration, they also have weaknesses. That's why the Configuration Management Initiative (=CMI) was introduced. CMI is planned to be released as part of Drupal 8.
Part 5 - Appendix
The above list is incomplete (still ...). Other topics that might be added here:
How could a training program look like?
Become familiar with other modules, at least with the ones with a
high ranking, but also search for hidden gems.
Learn about contributed modules to display content, such as Display Suite and/or Panels. Then check if you can answer questions such as "Panels Mini-Panels vs Block Regions vs Display Suite vs Stylizer vs Page Manager vs Theme". A great resource for learning about Panels is the (free) video training about Learn Page manager. Panels uses 'Page manager', which is one of the sub-modules of Chaos tool suite (ctools).
Become familiar with building multilanguage sites (using i18n).
Learn about using "Base themes", such as Zen, Omega or Bootstrap (most of them support HTML5, are responsive, have a lot of configuration options, etc). And also explore the various "Sub-themes" related to them (also available for download from Drupal.org).
Increase some of your technical skills such as SQL and Regular Expressions.
Review and learn from dissecting Drupal distributions.
How to gain more experience?
Find a Drupal mentor (+ accept invites from others to become theirs ...).
Chat with the Drupal Community on IRC.
Participate in sprints.
Learn about Drupal deployments (dev, stage, QA, prod).
How to target the golden cradle?
Workflow automation.
Automated testing.
Apply software reuse (Features, drush make, installation profiles, etc).
Get ready for D8 (Symphony, Twig, OOP, CMI, server prereqs, ...).
As an expert Drupal developer, I recommend you watching Drupalize Me and follow Getting Started - Background & Prerequisites (Drupal 8) will you much. of course, watching and reading is never enough to got expert and you should practice a lot, write some custom modules, use Drupal API and etc.
Also tracking The Weekly Drop could you a lot. I always check their posts.
Drupal 7 is kinda similar to Drupal 6. On other hand Drupal 8 looks like Drupal 7 at back-end, but under the hood difference is significant. D8 is based on symfony, more object oriented, probably better (cleaner) written but also more resource hungry.
Drupal 7 is really mature version and you have wide range of well tested modules for all kind of needs. It also works fine od PHP 5.x, but on PHP 7.x some modules can refuse to work - I don't advise running Drupal 7 sites on PHP 7.x.
Drupal 8 is not that mature, many modules from D7 are still missing for D8 or they are in beta state. PHP 7.x is much better supported by D8.
So, it's up to you to decide. If you need stable CMS, with lot of modules available to use it right now and you don't care about PHP 7.x then D7 is for you.
But if you are planning to use it for a long time, on PHP 7.x, want some future proof solution then better go for D8. Have in mind that lot of hosting companies are planning to keep only PHP 7.x and revoke support for PHP 5.x
TL/DR: Drupal 8 is the better choice by far!
Definitely go for Drupal 8!
Drupal 7 is still used, but I think most people are switching to 8 now. Nearly all contrib modules are now available for 8.
The only thing that I can think of that I MIGHT (but probably won't) use D7 for is a commerce website (webshop). Last time I checked those modules had not all been completely ported to D8, but most of it is available.
1) Figure out how to install DrupalVM on your computer, or get a webhosting that supports Drupal with composer & drush.
2) Set up a site on your drupalvm or webhosting and experiment, basic site building in Drupal is pretty easy
3) Find some premade (free) themes and install them, you can create your own there from there or just edit the existing themes
4) A lot of stuff already exists, pretty much any basic functionality you can think of in the form of contributed modules, use them!
5) If you want to create your own website layouts, start learning CSS, SCSS, Twig, JavaScript, ...
6) If you want to create your own modules for advanced custom functionality on your website, start learning PHP
You can create great and good looking Drupal websites without having to program.
If you want to learn programming, you're way better of learning something like Laravel or CakePHP or any of the similar frameworks.
Although you can do a lot of custom programming in Drupal too.
I am trying to work out what is the best way to upgrade www.edocr.com, which is built on Drupal 5 to Drupal 7. We are more than a mere website.
If the answer is, start new with Drupal 7 and then import content, this also opens up another question, i.e. should we ditch Drupal completely and use a php framework such as http://www.yiiframework.com/, which would of course be a costly exercise. Could we achieve the same level of performance that a framework such as yii could offer through Drupal 7?
Many thanks in advance.
I've had to do upgrades from 5 to 7 and this is my experience. Upgrade everything, piecemeal to 6, then to 7. The schema changes between 5 and 7 are huge and you don't want to miss anything. That is going to be a cost to you.
If you have a content specialist, create a separate Drupal 7 site and then have the specialist recreate the content in 7 from scratch. This has the added benefit of everything being clean in 7 and you don't have to worry about schema changes during upgrades...this is a cost to your client.
As far as frameworks versus Drupal, it is a wash either way. Drupal is free, but the time for supporting it is not. You spend more time figuring out how to do things in Drupal than developing. Whereas with custom frameworks, you get the benefit of doing it yourself the way you want, but at a longterm cost of having to support the code over the course of its lifetime.
I'd say, if your client is happy with the modules, they can accomplish what they want in Drupal, and there is nothing prohibiting you from getting your messsage across, stick with Drupal. But if the system is coming up short in lots of areas, definitely weigh the cost of developing and supporting custom code to time spent customizing Drupal....remember, free software is only free at the outset...not longterm.
The general way of updating a Drupal site for a major Drupal release is to:
Upgrade Drupal core
Upgrade contributed modules.
Upgrade theme / create new theme
In your case you need to do 1-2 twice and 3 once. It also becomes a bit tricky since, you might be missing modules from D5 -> D6 and D6 -> D7. You will need to do some investigating as some modules are merged in new Drupal releases, while others just disappear.
You can try out doing the 1-2, 1-2 a few times a see what happens. It might give you an indication of how much work is needed to actually get your site upgraded.
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if i create a new web application tomorrow, should i use Drupal 6 or 7?
i have never used drupal before so i have to start learning it first (very familiar with PHP) so i can understand the basics and how to extend it.
my concerns for using 7:
no modules contributed yet? so i dont have all the fancy stuff i can add like in Drupal 6?
no good documentation and lack of web tutorials? how could i learn about it if there is not that much support?
too early in the development process? it's not stable enough?
i would like to use 7 cause i dont want to relearn everything and 7 is indeed just around the corner. but im afraid that it lacks all other stuff version 6 has.
could someone guide me into right direction?
thanks
For a new project version 6 would perhaps be better suited.
When a new version of a framework is released you usually test it properly to see that it fits your expectations when it comes to functionality, stability and compatibility. And of course if it is even worth converting, sometimes the earlier version still has all you could possibly ask for.
But since you are going from scratch, you don't have much to compare to if you choose version 7 since you haven't used drupal 6. And as you said there's not much support or modules for drupal 7 yet so you'd be pretty much in the dark until the rest of the community with previous drupal experience catches up.
On the other hand if you feel comfortable writing your own extentions and taking the risk that drupal 7 could have one or more issues then go for it, it's a tougher road but you'd get a headstart if you put some effort into it and won't have to deal with converting later on.
But most important I think is that you research if there are any major differences between drupal 6 and drupal 7. It is very well possible that most of what you can learn about drupal 6 also applies for drupal 7.
Unless you are a veteran Drupal developer, it is way too early to adopt Drupal 7 for new projects. With previous major releases the sweet spot for adopting the new version has typically been three to six months after the official release, at which time lots of the most important add-on modules have been ported to the new release and life is good.
Just my two cents based on almost 5 years of experience with Drupal.
You should write modules for the currently maintained stable version. These are D6 and D5. D7 is in alpha and thus might be unstable and might change a lot before an actual release (ie, your module might work in D7 alpha, but be completely broken in D7 beta and further). D7 is there for testing, not for production sites, so don't expect your module to be used before D7 is stable (and D5 maintenance is terminated).
In short: better start with Drupal 6.
fayer, go with Drupal 6. Many live sites are still even using Drupal 5, so don't bother putting your project at risk using unstable technology.
However, while developing using D6, ensure that the modules you are using also show some early D7 snapshots. Try to avoid modules which don't seem to be well maintained. Also, in some cases it might be that Drupal 7 has core support for things you have to do with modules in D6. Try to get aware of such problems to make upgrade later possible.
In general, an upgrade makes only sense if you are actively developing the site. For example, if you don't extend the site with new functionality but just add new content, there is probably no reason to upgrade it to D7 anytime soon.
I'm planning to install Drupal. Is there any reason not to install the latest 6.x version as opposed to the 5.x branch? Are there any really good modules that are 5.x only?
Unless you have a 5.x module that you can't do without, and that you know is being worked on to upgrade to 6.x, just use 6.x. i.e. Only start with 5.x now if you know you have a upgrade path with your site to 6.x (and then 7.x). If the module isn't being actively worked on, it mean you'll be unsupported when 7.x rolls around, so you might as well solve the problem of doing without that module with 6.x now rather than wait till your site is developed and up and running.
I've found enough modules to happily run my site on Drupal 6.x I think the only 5.x module I miss is one that did very easy Google ad integration, and that may have been updated I just haven't checked recently. I don't get enough traffic to make the ads worth the time in setting them up, so I just use the search part of the ad campaign.
Drupal 7.x is under development now, so I would expect that anything that hasn't been moved from 5.x to 6.x is just not being developed anymore, and is probably not really that needed.
Ultimately, take a look at what modules you may need. With an account on Drupal's site, you can filter by install type. I found that 6.x is much easier to work with in some regards (managing and upgrading modules) and overall I've had a much easier time maintaining my site under Drupal 6.x than I did under 4.x or 5.x.
I also think that 6.x runs much faster.
My bosses were insistent on making Drupal 6 sites for clients as soon as it was released. This was a headache, because views and CCK were not done, as well as many other modules. Their rational was that we'd have to eventually upgrade to 6, and we wouldn't want to go back and redo these sites. It ended up that we had so many workarounds while using the development versions of modules that it was a pain every time we upgraded modules or core itself.
Thankfully, this is no longer the case. Views, CCK, and most other modules are now ready and stable for 6. The only module we use that hasn't been upgraded is eCommerce, and it doesn't look like it will be, since ubercart is pretty much the Drupal standard for commerce functionality.
We asked ourselves the same question several months ago (just before Drupal 6 was finalized & released)
Our office has limited development resources, and we had released a couple of D5 sites, and a D5 sales app.
We went with Drupal 6.
The decision came after considering the core of what we were interacting with. CCK & Views are the only die-hard critical components for anything besides a default Drupal install, and the level of participation and vitality of the projects was very encouraging.
The stuff that really, really matters, has been/is being ported over to D6, and the wow, this would be nice, p2 stuff is hit & miss.
If you're doing any module development, D6 is a winner.
If you're already very comfortable with D5, then stick with it.
I hope this helps.
The one significant CCK-related module that's not D6 production ready is filefield. This may not be an issue if you're not doing anything substantial with images and media, but might be worth considering if you're going to do any serious DAM. Otherwise, I think we're (finally!) to the point where it's making more sense to go with D6 than D5. Either way, it's definitely worth the time to architect the site according to your specific needs, figure out what modules you'll need and find out if any of them have yet to be updated.
The asset module is not available for D6 yet, not even in a development branch. I've heard a lot about its benefits as a single way to manage all kinds of media files, but most sites can probably happily do without it.
If you haven't been running Drupal before you could find that version 6 has the modules you need. Besides, modules gets ported and created every day so your missing modules could very well be on the way.
For me, the lack of a protx payment module was a deal breaker when choosing which version to use.
The best thing to do is get a full list of requirements before you start, and make sure it's all available in 6.
As a module developer, I feel that Drupal 6's API is more mature then version 5.
So even if you decide to choose 6, and then finds a module is missing, it will be easy to develop it to 6.
Now that I've used Views 2, I ain't ever going back (unless it's to revisit old projects).
I think now, all modules and themes that are of any worth have been migrated and now I'm seeing a trend of new (actually good themes) are drupal 6 only as are quite a few of the must have modules.