Workshop Report

We held the Drupal workshop yesterday, and it went well. After a few technical issues we got started a little late. Luckily the crowd was technically competent, and grasped the ideas very quickly.

For those who would like to see what was covered, here is the PDF file/handout I prepared for the workshop. This copy of the file has had one minor modification - the database creation commands have been changed so they can simply be cut and paste (responding to a comment from John).

I have to say that if you ever plan a workshop or presentation, you can fully expect that something will go wrong - Murphy's Law will prevail. In this case there were three issues. First was a mix up in what room we were supposed to be in. We were slotted for room 216, but were put into room 208. 208 didn't have the usual presentation podium (hookup to the projector, power, network, etc.). We eventually moved to room 201 where everything was in place, except the air conditioning was set to HIGH through out the day. It's funny that it can be 30+ degrees outside, but folks are needing to put on jackets and extra layers to stay warm INSIDE.

The second issue was VMWare. Some of the attendees had problems getting VMWare working properly, or had never used it before. While we could have gotten by without VMWare, the participants wouldn't have their own work area they could take home with them to experiment with more. We eventually got around this though.

The last problem was that my laptop refused to send signals to the projector via my VGA port. I tried for some time while folks were fixing up their VMWare installs. Eventually, we ended up using a different laptop that Kin prepared for this. This worked well, as we were all networked together, and I could just point my browser at my own laptop for the rest of the day.

After the technical issues, the workshop itself got underway. The installation of Drupal is rather straight forward, once you understand what is happening and are comfortable with the couple of MySQL commands that are needed. (assuming one is not using PHPMyAdmin to manage their databases).

From there, we explored how a typical user would interact with Drupal, and moved into a quick review of all the core administration areas. This administration process took the longest part of the day, only because Drupal offers so much out of the box.

We then explored how to install other themes and modules and configure them. The modules needing a little more details, of course.

At this point, we should have created a typical business and community site. But due to the issues encountered in the morning, we were running late. So we talked briefly about the differences between these two types of sites, and how the elements of each could be combined to create other types of sites.

We talked briefly about where resources could be found for building custom modules, but decided to not delve into this topic deeply. We would have been there for a couple days if we did...

Finally, we did a very brief sample of how to create a custom theme.

Overall, the comments have been good, and I think the participants will be using Drupal more often.