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The DA Board set the direction, the staff, of which has been cut down to bare minimum, execute. Well, the Executive Director executes what the Directors direct. The 'At Large' did help set the direction for a couple of years however in a podcast interview the Exec Director said this 'At Large' role was not for setting direction but to assist the DA staff in implementing the already set direction.

ATEOTD it's an 'Association' as in an association of businesses. Not a 'bad' thing as such, that's how industry works. Except F/LOSS is not just industry, it's a whole lot more than that and IMHO as a community we have a responsibility to support the community as a whole. One of the now-ex Directors of the DA recommended a book to me "Boards That Make A Difference" by John Carver:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boards-That-Make-Difference-Organizations/dp/0787976164

...which I duly purchased and read, which I can tell you was a task as my brain puts me to sleep if given too much intense stuff like that book so took a while but it's great stuff. He says about going back to the mission, which in the DA's case is/was/whatever to support the community and the project as a whole. Then you look at what they are doing to achieve that and consider whether those activities are indeed achieving that. I say they're not. The DA grew because Dries needed some official body to look after the money for events and the drupal.org site. Of course the drupal.org site doesn't make money but costs money, and anything invested in it is a cost (unless of course people are paying for sponsorship, ads, etc.). Then you have the events, and the profitable DrupalCon. So, no surprise DrupalCon grew. But does that really support the whole community? When I go to DrupalCons and meet people who go because they have given up trying to figure out their problems and have to travel, take time off work, all the costs etc. then I say a bigger review of the whole activities needs to be done. Of course we love conferences and all that, but IMO there needs to be a balance, and because the business side grew up by providing profitable support, the 'tools of the trade', i.e. *.drupal.org has been woefully neglected, for example forums which people have been campaigning for years to get some TLC but keep getting knocked back. So we end up fragmenting support across different channels, people using proprietary platforms like Slack etc. and a patching system that feels like something from the days of punchcards. Then because all the companies need their product, all the effort is going to teach people how to 'contribute', so all the work goes upstream.

When I mentioned the book to another board member I was poo-pooed with them saying "oh the Carver way, yeah, well some people subscribe to that". I just found whatever I said was shot down straight away whereas the opposite is what I find on the community/code side where 'generally' your points are taken as good intention to start and we discuss things.

Again, I'm not saying anyone has but the best intentions, they may, they may not, I'm just proposing that we haven't grown a system which supports the community that has been admirably grown, and when others like myself do suggest other, already proven in different industries, approaches we have little support. At first I thought this was my lack of communication skills but as time went on I realised it was more that I was trying to change the status quo - everyone's happily making money so who cares? But the effect of that is we end up with situations like this, where too much control is centralised and community support is sporadic across the world, generally gravitating to where it's best to do business. Which is not the whole story. We can, and I believe will, do better.

I guess I'd better stop ranting now ;)

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.

For those who need a bit of context, here goes. But please keep this thread general, it's less about me (actually, not at all about me) than it is about Drupal 8!

So, personally, the road so far:

I've just begun to learn Drupal 8 (been waiting on that official release to rely on a feature-freezed core).

I took a simple YouTube "Beginner Tutorial" from OSTraining in 62 small parts that most of you must be aware of. So now I have a rookie understanding of some the basic jargon ─ content type, fields, views, vocabularies and so on ─ and skimmed quickly through very basic features. Not a clue about the file structure, though.

As for books I can't seem to find much:

• the Apress series (Beginning Drupal 8 and Enterprise Drupal 8 Development)
  
  
• and the O'Reilly Programmer's Guide to Drupal.
  
  Re-edited in Nov 2015 so I assume it's Drupal-8 compliant.
  
  I also tried many times to learn on Drupal.org's documentation but I must say I find it hard to digest, let alone put the pieces together. This is not just criticism, in a constructive perspective I'm actually thinking of offering my writing skills for said documentation of the project, once I get a good grasp of what I'd call the "Drupal Core System".
  
  So what are your recommendations? My specific goals are the usual:
  
  
• Extensive understanding of the Drupal Core "main feats" (I feel I currently have a basic understanding of said main features).
  
  
• Should probably include full knowledge/control over CSS/JS-y (Ajax etc.) theming, especially for a wanabee frontend dev like me.
  
  
• Quick but comprehensive overview of everything in Drupal Core. Notably interested in Drupal internal (admin) references, such as the use of <front> to reference a page here, or now to reference today's date, etc.
  
  (I'm thinking a good starter book should cover both the above)
  
  
• Module development. If I understand correctly, this is how one should properly extend Core functionality in order to meet a client's needs. I'm all for OSS so I figure why confine developed stuff to myself when I can share and eventually get help and mentorship on how to do it the right way.
  
  I assume it's mostly done in PHP but are there popular alternatives? I'd really like to work on something else than PHP (mostly because it's easy and not structuring enough for a beginner like me, or so I've heard. I like to learn the hard way, too).
  
  
• Enterprise integration. I'm approaching this self-training from a career change and entreprenarial perspective, so everything that bridges a typical business environment to a Drupal website (intranet, B2B or public) is clearly among my priorities.
  
  Thanks a lot for any answer specific to my needs, but again, I don't wish this thread to be limited to this. :)

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.

I came to Drupal from the ground-up, rather than top-down. After I got past the Drupal learning curve, I discovered a lot of flexibility and reusable components... and lots of anti-patterns. With that said, especially for the more popular extensions, there's a reason for their popularity. Just because it's different from what you're used to doesn't mean it's bad.

Do look for modules. Don't just install every module you find; figure out the functional requirements are and test critically.

Yes, there may be a module for it, but is it supported? How many people downloaded it? Is it actively developed? Does it even work? Does it conflict with anything?

If you can grok the 5 lines of code that you need from a throwaway contrib module to perform a task and add it cleanly as part of your custom code, just do it - comment to cite and move on.

Yes, there are plenty of UIs, and some of them are pretty horrid. First thing I do is disable overlay, for example. You don't have to use them.

There's drush, which is a fantastic CLI interface, which facilitates a lot of back-end tasks. I strongly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1430231351 is a great book for getting started with Drupal 7 development, not "site building".

Hang out in IRC, #drupal-contrib and #pantheon on freenode for example if you want to talk shop.

If you've got $45 to spare, I think your best bet is to sign up for a month of the Drupalize.me site. It's run by the guys and gals at Lullabot (one of the top Drupal dev shops) who have contributed in many ways back to the community. Lots of good tutes at the link above.

If you think it will be a permanent "position" so to speak, it can't hurt buying the books. The Bible for Drupal is the [Pro Drupal Development] (http://www.amazon.com/Pro-Drupal-Development-Second-Edition/dp/1430209895/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332828253&sr=1-3) series. Note that link is for Drupal 6, there is also a D7 version available but I haven't perused it quite yet.

As far as needing an understanding, I think as long as you have a basic concept of the following, you should have a good start:

• nodes
  
  
• Views (views.module)
  
  
• "Hooks" (a programming concept)
  
  
• how to Alter stuff (hook_form_alter, various node hooks)
  
  
• Drush will make life easy, if you're familiar with command line interfaces
  
  
• The learning curve may seem daunting at first, but once you get the "Ah ha!" moment of working with Drupal, the rest will fall into place.
  
  
• And finally, "When in doubt, clear the cache"
  
  Hopefully that will get you started. If I think of anything else I'll edit this post. Good luck!

Welcome aboard! Looks like you've got some reading to do.

• Using Drupal a guide to quickly start you on getting ramped up with general usage and site administration tasks.
  
• Pro Drupal 7 Development is an excellent resource for beginning developers with some PHP knowledge trying to get a handle on how to write Drupal modules.
  
• The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 when you're ready, this book will fill in a lot of the gaps left by Pro Drupal 7 Development.
  
• If you're also going to be handling front end development (styling the site and the like) you will want to get your hands on some reference material on Drupal site theming. I don't have a specific recommendation here so I'm hoping a themer will chime in.
  
  
  You might also consider installing Drush in your site hosting and development environments. It provides commandline tools to automate common tasks and is a great thing to have in your toolbox.
  
  One thing I would stress is to not be in a hurry to write code when just getting started. If you're new to Drupal you may be surprised with how much you can accomplish without writing any code, especially if you use the right combination of contributed modules for the task at hand.

A couple references regarding the history of how matriarchal groups around the world slowly were transformed into patriarchal groups - severe drought for centuries and extreme lack of resources led to more peaceful groups becoming raiding nomadic groups who then fought or took over the remaining peaceful groups. The matriarchal groups either died out as the raiders took their property, or they became more warrior like themselves, mimicing the raiders patriarchal militant ways, in order to resist the raiders, or they were incorporated into the raiding groups when they took over the property and land. World history book: http://saharasia.org/

A research paper discussing the the control of feminine sexuality compares competing theories about how or why men might be controlling female sexuality versus how and why women might be. http://www.austin-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Cultural-Suppression-of-Female-Sexuality.pdf

Adding the background history from the Saharasia book suggests there is more to the male theory than the paper includes -- and that both theories are correct. I've seen that at least one University is offering a class in "Toxic Masculinity" - and we really need it to be a class on Toxic Masculinity & Toxic Femininity. Both sexes are involved in the patriarchal suppression of children's autonomy and female sexuality. By breaking the spirit of children it was easier for the ancient cultures to transition from freedom in matriarchy to "bride price" and having your spouse chosen for you because of money or family connections. Freedom to choose your own spouse was common in matriarchy and became very uncommon in patriarchy. The severe drought and lack of resources likely made it more difficult to feed and care for children. And the increase in violent raiding tribes would have limited the freedom of weaker children and women to move about as safely, so protecting weaker members of a group may have become more critical than supporting independent thinking and growth of natural autonomy in children.

The modern issue of inequal pay for women of equal skill and job role and limited numbers of women in leadership [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/opinion/sunday/for-women-its-not-just-the-oreilly-problem.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0] positions may have some basis in patriarchy-

-man is the breadwinner and needs to provide for his family - the woman stays at home and isn't seen - and isn't supposed to expect to be paid for her care-giving or other work, that would diminish the love to grasping commercialism and other bad labels and possibly ostracism - in patriarchy she is expected to be a selfless faithful lover/mother/cook/nanny/washer up of anything icky involving bodily fluids, and to not complain about any of it and to enforce the same expectations on her daughters & any other females she may know -

"A mother is a person who seeing there are only 4 pieces of pie for 5 people, announces she never did care for pie." - Tenneva Jordan

-but the inequality of female pay & leadership also likely involves basic primitive instincts that promote individual and group survival and which have some major differences in the roles & communication styles of males and females. Research involving groups of animals in their natural habitats revealed some consistent patterns of behavior across many species from more advanced reptiles up to mammals-including humans. Research with humans has shown that we have some similar habits to those observed in various groups of animals. [see reference & list of behavior patterns below.]

This information is being used in advertising. Successful advertising triggers subtle deep-seated fears or desires - and unfortunately the negative triggers - fear, disgust, shame, guilt, may be more powerful in achieving action and therefore are being used frequently throughout advertising and other forms of media. The accumulative effect of frequent small reminders of fear & other negative emotions may be adding to our group and individual stress levels. The constant drip, drip of thoughts such as "is my deodorant working?", "did I pick the right power-suit to wear today?", "I chipped my nailpolish, what will people think?" can leave us with less energy to be calm and think clearly when asked something or when we need to keep our cool because something upsetting just occurred - the mind is so busy keeping track of little worries that our patience is used up. Reducing sexual harassment and violence and harassment in general may require being more positive with ourselves and others throughout our lives and work day.

"under chronic stress, the triggers of rage are more likely to misfire." - http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-we-are-prone-to-sudden-snaps-of-rage-and-what-we-can-do-to-control-them-a6847426.html

Paul D. MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions, (Plenum Press, 1990, New York) National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, “written by the author in his capacity as an employee of the United States Government and is thus considered a work of the United States Government.” https://www.amazon.com/The-Triune-Brain-Evolution-Paleocerebral/dp/0306431688

Non-verbal behavior patterns that may be based in activity from the brainstem area are listed on page 100, (This area of the brain is rich in the neurotransmitter dopamine so conditions, substances, or stages of life that affect dopamine levels may also affect the likelihood of these behaviors occurring.) Table 6-1. Special Forms of Basic Behavior

24 Flocking. This is an instinctual behavior pattern that may be involved in everyone wanting to go to the new restaurant all on opening day just so they can talk about it the next day at the office water cooler - or something like that. The instinct may be seen in group movements for religious reasons or for those who always go the same summer music festival where they see their summer music festival buddies once a year - or all along the tour route throughout the summer - for those with more income and time available. The instinct may be involved in things "going viral" online. Everyone wants to see what everyone else is talking about as soon as it happens - to be part of the group perhaps, part of the insiders club instead of being an outsider.

We do have an innate instinct to prefer people who resemble ourselves - seen as early as infancy.

So to try to overcome some of these natural instincts, first simply admitting they do exist is necessary instead of suggesting that saying we are "equal" truly makes us equal.

Starting now to educate the next generation differently would be the biggest help in the long run. Children who are allowed to play freely with mixed gender groups are the least prone to issues with expecting people stay within narrow gender roles as adults.

In the short run, more day to day strategies that simply bypass some of the instincts might help. Within animal groups and reinforced by social research on human behavior, there is a tendency among males to work together well as a larger team and to naturally select and listen to one main leader. Dominance is achieved largely through displays of aggression and physical prowess rather than actual fighting. If the leader is challenged by a more aggressive junior male then one of the two is more likely to leave without ever fighting.

Females are more likely to listen to the male leader that was selected by the group and to her own mate. Within a group of females it is more likely that a few more dominant females will work together with the group towards consensus agreements and if one dominant female tries to stand out alone she is likely to be treated aggressively by the others.

Research with humans has found that ideas presented by a female to a group are less likely to be used by the group than ideas presented as the idea of a male. Women in business settings have been found to have less total speaking time in comparison to males in a business meeting. - And yet better decisions, less problems seem to be generated by teams that include women and men. Women may be better at negotiating for a win/win solution that helps more varied goals rather than a male who is more likely to seek an "I win/you lose" solution.

So in the short run, bypassing these instincts might be possible with more "Suggestion Box" style meetings where new ideas are presented in a standardized format by a third party without revealing who submitted the idea until later stages of idea development occur. More equal speaking time in meetings might be achieved by having a moderator simply point/ask individuals to offer their opinion or input regarding an idea or to go around the table in turn or have a "Talking Stick" that is passed to people as they volunteer to speak. (Talking Stick - no one interrupts except to repeat/clarify what the person is saying until both agree that they understand what point the person is trying to make.)

Having more women in leadership roles doesn't mean just hiring more, it means the team and shareholders all have to be willing to listen to the women and not sabotage and undermine their work because of a instinctual distrust or sense of competition - roughly, no female can be in a position of leadership more dominant than any male in the instinctual world shared by many species where the size of the average male is significantly larger than the average female. -- Raising our children to play in mixed gender groups so that they all can see that the other gender are just people too is the long term solution to that problem. Raising children in separate gender groups tends to reinforce difficulty working together as adults.

High Performance Drupal was a very good resource for me.

Granted, the book is a little more high performance oriented than high availability, but it does deal with creating a high traffic website specifically for Drupal which requires some redundancy. It will likely give you some valuable insight into how to create your architecture. If nothing else, it may save you from having to throw extra hardware at a performance problem.

The videos available from Drupalize.me and BuildAModule.com cover a lot of stuff from beginner to deep-dive. (But have a price associated with them.)

NodeOne have a pretty extensive collection of (free) videos as well. Some of that stuff was used to put together the book Drupal 7: The Essentials which I thought was pretty good.

https://www.getpantheon.com/

You can start practicing there, for free. I used this book as a guide: http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-7-David-Mercer-ebook/dp/B005BR2IY8/

Some of the steps or screenshots no longer apply but I was never lost or anything like that. It's accurate enough. I'd recommend it as an introduction.

Two honestly self-promotional recommendations:

Aimed squarely at beginners, we've 100s of Drupal videos at http://ostraining.com/courses/categories/drupal and what's been the best selling Drupal book over the last 6 months: http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Explained-Step---Step-Guide/dp/0133124231/

The Drupal 7 Visual Quick Start Guide (http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-7-Visual-QuickStart-Guide/dp/0321619218/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322959794&sr=8-1) book from Peachpit Press helped me start learning very nicely. I borrowed mine from the library and was finished with it before it was due for return.

I also found installing VMWare Player and the Bitnami Drupal virtual appliance helped save a lot of time in getting started. With this, you don't have to install anything - the LAMP stack and Drupal come pre-isntalled and cofigured. Just start VMWare and open a browser. You're in!

I wrote a blog post once upon a time about this: http://drupalconnect.com/blog/how-learn-drupal

That said, I think it depends on how your mind works. Do you like to learn by doing? Or do you prefer to learn by reading and researching?

If by doing, just pick a site and start building it and ask questions in IRC or drupal.stackexchange.com or here as you go. You don't really need any prior info--just google "installing drupal" to get started, then click around for a bit and see how far you can get by doing that and googling things as you go.

If by reading, check out https://drupal.org/node/1576418 (free) and http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920010890.do as a start, then move on to http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Module-Development-Matt-Butcher/dp/1849511160 when you're ready to start building custom modules.

And as always, feel free to ask questions here as you go, especially in this weekly thread. :) Hope that helps. I know it's a somewhat vague answer but I think it's a little difficult to nail down this topic since everybody's so different.

For drupal 6

For drupal 7

Both of these books (depending on which version of drupal you want to run) have great insight on how to properly build a module and what kinds of things to look out for.

I would recommend Matt Glaman’s Drupal 8 Development Cookbook. I found it to be a useful resource and also touches on the development process in Drupal 8.

https://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Development-Cookbook-Matt-Glaman/dp/1785881477

Videos and books to get you started:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYSucV1_9w&list=PLtaXuX0nEZk9MKY_ClWcPkGtOEGyLTyCO

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtaXuX0nEZk-Mer_a_P1sp0mroJGVs6TK

https://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Explained-Step-Step-Guide/dp/152099026X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Videos and books on development:

https://www.ostraining.com/classes/drupal-8-development/

https://www.ostraining.com/class/d8-themes/

https://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Development-Cookbook-Matt-Glaman/dp/1785881477/

https://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Theming-Twig-Chaz-Chumley/dp/1782168737/

It might be worth reading the Acquia Exam materials to help guide your learning: https://training.acquia.com/study-guides

Using Drupal maybe?

If you have a lynda.com account, they have some Drupal tutorials (haven't used those in particular but they generally do good work)

Johan Falks book on how to learn Drupal 7 is also a good place to start.
http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-7-Essentials-Johan-Falk/dp/1463659717

My recommendation would be http://smile.amazon.com/Using-Drupal-2nd-Angela-Byron/dp/1449390528/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426873439&sr=8-1&keywords=using+drupal

That and working with your developers to have proper documentation for how the site is implemented, and how the end-user should be working with it. Every drupal site is different, just like every wordpress site is different.

this is book I am waiting for:

http://www.amazon.com/Using-Drupal-Angela-Byron/dp/1449390528/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332872342&sr=1-6

Not out yet, but if you go to the o'reilly website, you can order an advanced copy from them though.

Besides that, the only books I have read was when I was just starting out and I quickly outgrew them. I wouldn't recommend either I have.

Go here for more book info: http://drupal.org/books. And since you want to build modules, take a look at api.drupal.org.

http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Development-Experts-Voice-Source/dp/1430228385/ref=dp_ob_title_bk This book served me well

The non-helpful answer: Drupal has a crazy learning curve.
I'd highly recommend getting "Drupal 7 Module Development" by PACKT http://amzn.com/1849511160 and actually reading it... Do some work, then read over related chapters again. I come from a OOP background and structure a lot of my work in classes too. Drupal 8 is very MVC and OOP orientated

After I read "The Yellow Book" my Drupal skills were at a whole new level.

I found this very useful: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drupal-Module-Development-Matt-Butcher/dp/1849511160