What Is Drupal?
FreeTo learn more about how to get started with Drupal, also see our Introduction to Drupal guide.
In this lesson we take a look at Drupal, the open source Content Management System. We learn about the major components of a Drupal site and the library of constantly evolving tools available for working with Drupal. We find out how to see who uses it, by looking at DrupalShowcase.com and Drupal case studies on Drupal.org, among others. We look at Drupal's major features, such as Modules.
With this overview we have some context as we move forward into the series.
Additional resources
Before we jump into building our first Drupal 7 site, we should also take a look at the great resources you have out there to help you on your journey. Being an open source project, Drupal has an amazing community of people who have paved this road before you. In this lesson we're going to look at the free community resources that you can use to not only find answers to your questions, but also connect with thousands of people around the world who are working in the same space you are. -- We are going to take a tour of the communtiy documentation, various Drupal forums, project issue queues, where you can glean a lot of useful information and help, Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, for real-time collaboration, and getting in touch with user groups of like-minded people around the world.
Additional resources
Drupal.org Troubleshooting Guide
Drupal Answers on Stack Exchange
Drupal Groups Site (groups.drupal.org)
Drupal 7 co-maintainer Angie Byron gives a overview of some of the new Drupal 7 features, themes and user interface. She is joined by Nate Haug, Jeff Robbins, Jeff Eaton and Kent Bye who also provide a lot of insights through dynamic conversation, questions, and a fast-paced, hands-on tour of the major highlights of the new Drupal 7 release.
By far, the best way to keep up-to-date on which modules are the most useful, and to ensure that those modules do what you need, is to actually get directly involved and help. The Drupal community offers a myriad of ways for everyone, from the person who just installed Drupal for the first time yesterday to the person who has been coding since she was in diapers, to give something back. In this tutorial we'll look at all of these options and explain how you can dive in.
Additional resources
An overview of some of our favorite Drupal documentation resources.
Do you want to know how to contribute translations to Drupal core or other contributed modules and themes? Have you ever wondered how translations are managed in Drupal? It all happens in the community at localize.drupal.org. This tutorial gives a tour of localize.drupal.org and then teaches you how to join translation groups and contribute translated strings back to the Drupal community.
Additional resources
Patches are used to describe modifications made to one or more code files, and can be used to share those changes.
Contributing to Drupal
TopicAs an open source project, Drupal depends on community contributions in many forms including documentation, code, translation, speaking, organizing events, mentoring others, and even donating money.
The Drupal Community
TopicDrupal has an amazing community of people who create the software and help each other make the best use of it. This is one of the main benefits of using Drupal — and everyone should take advantage of that.
This tutorial teaches you everything you need to know about using the tutorials on Drupalize.Me.