Drupal tutorial: Master Drupal in 7 hours with Symphony

Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 04:45

Before you read

This tutorial is for Drupal 6 only. We are in progress of making the D7 version and it will be available soon.

Now let's start

Alot questions might get to your head now:

  • Are you kidding? I know Drupal is great, but it is hard to learn.
  • 7 hours to master Drupal is a joke
  • No way! Bullshit! *&^*#^&% and so on

First thing to say, we can NOT be a Drupal developer to build great Drupal sites in 7 hours. That is just impossible!

During a couple of years working with my Symphony team, I still want to build a Drupal package, that a newbie like me, can actually launch a Drupal site in less than a day. I heard alot about Drupal design is not good enough, Drupal has high learning curve, Drupal is for developers only. But if we can lower the barrier, more people can join the Drupal community, and there will be no more myths like that. 

One day, I came up with an idea of an out-of-the-box Drupal package with a tutorial, which within 7 hours, a Drupal newbie can build a good Drupal site. Why 7 hours but not any other numbers? It is just an easy to remember number. Just to show that Drupal can be easier than most people thought. I discussed with my team, we came up with some solutions and we said "Yes, it is possible".

So together with my Symphony team, we have built some out-of-the-box Drupal packages, and the tutorial "Master Drupal in 7 hours". This is what I intend to do in this tutorial, to show you how to master a ready completed Drupal site, in 7 hours.  

Who this tutorial is for

Maybe you are a business owner who want to quickly build a Drupal site. Maybe you are a Drupal novice struggling with learning Drupal. You hold in your hands three free out-of-the-box Drupal packages that have thousands downloads from the community, and the knowledge that could master your Drupal site in less than a working day.  

What this tutorial cover

We provide you three free out-of-the-box Drupal packages. You can pick one of those to download and install. 

  • For blog or magazine style: Alphorn 
  • For organization or non-profit style: Conch
  • For business or corporate style: Octavin

Then follow this tutorial "Master Drupal in 7 hours"

  1. Hour 1: Hosting requirement, covers all requirements that you need to run Drupal sites in a hosting.
  2. Hour 2: Installation, explains how to set up a Drupal site from our out-of-the-box packages. It comes with the wizard, so you can setup the site by just clicks.
  3. Hour 3: Basic customization, covers all steps to upload your own content to the site. After that, you can launch it to public. 
  4. Hour 4: Advanced customization, presents more advanced techniques if you want to further customize the site.
  5. Hour 5: SEO, explores some basic rules before doing SEO and then Drupal SEO techniques.
  6. Hour 6: Ongoing administration, gives you neccessary routine work to keep your site healthy.
  7. Hour 7: Upgrade site, shows how to upgrade your site when the Drupal core or modules release new versions.

After these 7 guides, you can now master a Drupal site with confident. We wrote this tutorial using our best practices when working with many customers. 

About author

This tutorial is made by the Symphony team. We need your comments to make it better. We are appreciated your feedbacks to info@symphonythemes.com.