Reddit mentions of Using Drupal

It's true that many Drupal themes modify an existing theme, but it's done in a bit of a different way. The best way to do this is through the use of a sub-theme. The most popular theme to sub-theme from is probably Zen.

I personally have a heavily modified sub-theme of Zen that I start with for most clients. I use the 960 grid system with my own modifications as well. I use a sub-theme of this sub-theme to create the client's theme.

Why? Here's why:

• When Drupal is updated, it won't override the settings of Zen.
  
  
• When Zen is updated, it won't override the settings of the theme that I start from.
  
  
• When I update the theme from which I build other themes, I can push that update to the other client sites without affecting their theme. In this way I can extend the abilities of my themes, etc.
  
  
• Finally, the client's theme is then used and can be modified to meet the design and needs of the client.
  
  While it may be easier on some level to hack an existing theme, it is prone to break during an update and/or harder to extend in the future. Sub-theming is actually pretty easy and eliminates both of those problems.
  
  Best of luck learning Drupal. I love it. I sit on irc.freenode.net in #drupal and #drupal-support volunteering answering questions for whomever finds their way to the channel. I'd recommend that as the #1 resource (please search Drupal.org and Google for an answer first, obviously) but also this book was a huge benefit to me:
  
  
• Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition
  
  I actually bought it as an e-book so that I could copy/paste examples and use the search function to find my way around a lot easier when I needed to find a particular specification or help on a topic that the book was likely to have covered.
  
  This is the book that everyone else recommends:
  
  
• Using Drupal
  
  I haven't read it personally, but it does get a lot of support from the community. It was definitely written by some people that have a big role in what Drupal is. The authors are very helpful people.
  
  You might also consider attending a Drupalcon event. The next one is in Chicago in March 2011.

Spend a couple of bucks on the Lullabot videos. They are invaluable. Particularly Drupal Module Development and Advanced Theming for Drupal will be focused on someone with your skill set. For free, a lot of goodness can be found at DrupalCon 2009 DC where most of the sessions have video available for free.

Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition or Using Drupal are excellent books on the subject that are not too far dumbed down.

One of the problems for experienced developers coming into Drupal is that Drupal has been extremely successful at turning point and clickers into architects for some very robust sites. So, the community has a lot of voices speaking to that audience. Look for a local drupal group such as the one in Nashville, TN that I am a part of. I will say this, Drupal has one of the most friendly communities out there, and one of the biggest skills to acquire working with Drupal is knowing when to build it yourself, and when to use something that's already been built (and on top of that, which module to pick when doing the latter.)

For some of the stuff your discussing in your post, look into the Services module and of course Views 2 also, being new I would suggest getting into Features because that will give you a great understanding of how to work with CCK and even build custom modules for dealing with those content types.

Let me know if I can help, I'll do my best to get some eyes on this post as well.

This is fantastic advice, and pretty spot on to what I would suggest. There is a book called Using Drupal - http://www.amazon.com/Using-Drupal-Angela-Byron/dp/0596515804 - (you can find it as a pdf through google but it might be for Drupal 6)

I used to this to learn drupal and understand all of these modules.

I might also suggest the following as we use them on our site and it makes everyday updates super easy:

• Contexts
• Blocks
• Admin menu