Drupal Learning Journal 1. Past, Present, Future

I mentioned in the previous post that my goal of becoming a proficient Drupal developer and that I will document the journey of getting there. Here is where I am now. I know

1. how Drupal 6 is structured
2. how to to handle routine tasks within Drupal 6
3. how to set up up anything that is within the core capabilities
4. how to find, install and configure most modules

I am in the process of figuring out

5. how to integrate more complex modules with each other
6. how to configure the advanced options of more complex modules
7. how to set up an e-commerce website

I am learning #5-6 by transporting and revamping my socrelig.com site to Drupal 6. I am doing #7 in the context of working on a client’s site. None of these sites assumes or requires a user community, so I will have to learn the practicalities of Drupal’s aspects related to the integration of more social features elsewhere. If I get a client project requiring it I will learn the social aspects in the context of that. If I won’t, then I will do that by revamping my filmandreligion.com site and making it a Drupal site to be actively used by a community of users.
The rest of my Drupal related learning plan includes the following steps, in this order:

8. learn CSS (which defines how the look and feel of modern websites are composed)
9. learn Drupal theming (which defines how the look and feel of Drupal sites is composed. This presumes knowledge of CSS and PHP, of which I only know the latter)
10. learn about Drupal 7, including
a. how is it structured (i.e. where to find things I know in Drupal 6)
b. how to do routine tasks
c. what’s new in it (i.e. what capabilities have been integrated into the core)
11. learn module development, if necessary