Learning Drupal

I’m taking the plunge and learning Drupal because:

• Many companies are using it and it’ll be an extra tool under my belt.
• I am a fan of Composer and Symfony2 (incl. Twig). I’ve been intrigued with D8 since it has modernized itself and is now integrated with these technologies.
• I have some projects in mind where a CMF will be more useful than a plain ol’ CMS.

I’m writing and updating this post as I go along to give my take on it from a May 2016’s perspective on it all. So far I’ve learned the basics as a Drupal Admin user.

Whenever I learn a new dev technology I find it useful to watch some intro videos then layout the resources to read up on and try.  If you’re interested in taking a similar path here they are, I’ll update this list as I find more useful resources.

1. [done] Drupal installation Options:
   1. On your local environment.
   2. Create a local VM this article and this listing (Note: Some VMs listed are outdated and/or had dependancy issues and did not fully run as they should. I was able to get drupal-vm working after having to revert Virtual Box back to v4 from v5. I may have a crack at it).
   3. Or SymplyTest.Me for a free D8 sandbox.
2. Theming Guide, Theming Best Practices
3. Dev Best Practices
   1. Glance over Ultimate Guide to Drupal 8
   2. Read in detail: Official Drupal Dev Doc
   3. Read in detail: CSS & Testing
   4. [done] Glance over 5 Common Mistakes
   5. Config Deployment for a Drupal workflow
4. Module Development resource
5. Custom Content Types dev resource
6. Securing Drupal
7. [done] I’ve checked out Pantheon, PagodaBox, and Acquia, they all have their perks as production environments. My pref would be for Pantheon, especially if I were an agency.
8. Going deeper:
   1. [done] Understanding Drupal 8 and its relationship with Symfony2
   2. Core Modules/APIs for when something really customized is required.

Let’s see where this rabbit hole takes me.

Factoid: Drupal has been around since 2000. Three years older than WP!