If you're a solo website designer or part of a small team itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, this concise guide will get you started. Drupal’s learning curve has thrown off many experienced designers, particularly the way it handles design challenges. This book shows you the lifecycle of a typical Drupal project, with emphasis on the early stages of site planning. Learn how to efficiently estimate and set up your own project, so you can focus on ways to make your vision a reality, rather than let project management details constantly distract you. Plan and estimate your project by discovering your client’s goals and audience perceptions Discover how Drupal works under the hood, and learn basic DrupalSpeak Frame the UX design challenge through a deeper understanding of your site’s intended users Get real content for your project as early as possible—before you start prototyping Choose the right modules for your project, and learn about several go-to modules Understand how to walk clients through the Drupal design and development process

The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 is the most comprehensive book for getting sites done using the powerful and extensible Drupal content management system. Written by a panel of expert authors, the book covers every aspect of Drupal, from planning a successful project all the way up to making a living from designing Drupal sites and to contributing to the Drupal community yourself. With this book you will: Follow practical approaches to solving many online communication needs with Drupal with real examples. Learn how to keep learning about Drupal: administration, development, theming, design, and architecture. Go beyond the code to engage with the Drupal community as a contributing member and to do Drupal sustainably as a business. The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 was written by the following team of expert Drupal authors: Benjamin Melançon, Jacine Luisi, Károly Négyesi, Greg Anderson, Bojhan Somers, Stéphane Corlosquet, Stefan Freudenberg, Michelle Lauer, Ed Carlevale, Florian Lorétan, Dani Nordin, Ryan Szrama, Susan Stewart, Jake Strawn, Brian Travis, Dan Hakimzadeh, Amye Scavarda, Albert Albala, Allie Micka, Robert Douglass, Robin Monks, Roy Scholten, Peter Wolanin, Kay VanValkenburgh, Greg Stout, Kasey Qynn Dolin, Mike Gifford, Claudina Sarahe, Sam Boyer, and Forest Mars, with contributions from George Cassie, Mike Ryan, Nathaniel Catchpole, and Dmitri Gaskin. For more information, check out the Drupaleasy podcast #63, in which author Benjamin Melançon discusses The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 in great detail: http://drupaleasy.com/podcast/2011/08/drupaleasy-podcast-63-epic

Itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, but confused by the way it handles design challenges? This concise guide helps small teams and solo website designers understand how Drupal works by demonstrating the ways it outputs content. You’ll learn how to manage Drupal’s output, design around it, and then turn your design into a theme. In the second of three volumes on Drupal design, award-winning designer Dani Nordin takes you beyond basic site planning and teaches you key strategies for working with themes, layouts, and wireframes. Discover how to use Drupal to make your vision a reality, instead of getting distracted by the system’s project and code management details. Learn strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts Break down a Drupal layout to understand its basic components Understand Drupal’s theme layer, and what to look for in a base theme Work with the 960 grid system to facilitate efficient wireframing and theming Manage Drupal markup, including the code generated by the powerful Views module Use LessCSS to organize CSS and help you theme your site more efficiently

A complete lifecycle guide to planning and building a site with Drupal Drupal allows you to quickly and easily build a wide variety of web sites, from very simple blog sites to extremely complex sites that integrate with other systems. In order to maximize what Drupal can do for you, you need to plan. Whether you are building with Drupal 6 or 7, this book details the steps necessary to plan your site so you can make informed decisions before you start to build. Explains how to define the scope of your project Shows you how to create a design plan taking into consideration how Drupal works Helps you make informed decisions regarding development methodologies, environments, standards, and site security Reviews ways to assess the use of existing and/or custom Drupal modules Teaches you how to avoid common pitfalls that can impact a successful site launch Walks you through preparing for post-launch site maintenance and management tasks Details incorporating the nature of open source systems into your management strategies Identifies ways to interact with members of the Drupal community The processes and techniques provided in this book will empower you to create a successful and sustainable site with Drupal.

Take your Drupal skills even further with valuable tricks for making site building truly efficient. In this concise guide—the third in a series by award-winning designer Dani Nordin—you’ll learn how to set up your own development environment, quickly update your modules, and use version control to protect yourself from bonehead mistakes. Handle repetitive tasks with ease, avoid hours of frustration, and devote more time to pushing the envelope of Drupal design—just by picking up the basics of a few developer tools. It’s much more than simple coding; it’s real, honest-to-goodness developer Ninja Magick. Learn basic commands and use them in Drupal on the command line Set up your local development environment, and learn ways to collaborate on code with others Download modules, themes, libraries, and more with Drush, the Drupal shell Use Git, the free version control system, and create a GitHub account Pack content types, views, and other functionality you use often into a custom module with Features

Successfully architect a Drupal 8 website that scales to meet project requirements of any size and scope. Starting with a one-chapter review of Drupal basics, you'll dive into deeper topics including software development processes, architecting a Drupal site, scaling Drupal, working effectively with themes, and more. In addition to a thorough discussion of custom module development and how to develop modules as building blocks, you'll also review many common ways of integrating Drupal with other 3rd party systems. Building and maintaining an enterprise-ready Drupal website presents a unique set of challenges and complexities. From development processes and content management to deployments, version control and more, all aspects of Drupal development are impacted when two or more developers are on a project. If you are involved in a Drupal project that requires frequent updates and long-term support from a team of developers, system administrators, and end-users, Enterprise Drupal 8 Development is for you. Whether you're an experienced Drupal developer looking to expand your skills, a systems administrator managing a Drupal project, or a PHP developer new to Drupal, Enterprise Drupal 8 Development will give you the knowledge and inspiration you need to manage large and complex projects. What You'll Learn Architect Drupal for development teams and apply best practices for large Drupal projects Integrate 3rd party applications with Drupal Manage content, code, and configuration across multiple staging environments Build a consistent user experience for administrators and content creators Who This Book Is For The primary audience is intermediate to advanced Drupal developers who are working on large-scale Drupal projects and advanced PHP developers new to Drupal The secondary audience is IT Professionals such as Systems Administrators managing Drupal projects

Award-winning designer Nordin guides readers through site planning, teaches how to create solid, user-centered design, and shows new tricks. Site builders and designers familiar with HTML and CSS get a compilation of three short guides on planning, design, and prototyping for Drupal.