Jacob M. Roufa

Have you ever wanted to get more involved with the Drupal community, but not known exactly how or where you should start? After talking with a couple people, I realized that a general notion is that Drupal (or any CMS for that matter) is just something you download to create websites.

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Drupal is a living, breathing, active and vibrant community. Drupal is a way to communicate that is easy if you don't complicate things, pleasant if you would like it to be, and damn near foolproof if you just want to post some content on the intarwebs. Drupal is becoming more like an API that just happens to have a pretty good (and getting better daily) CMS built on top of it. Drupal, and what it represents, is putting power back in the hands of the people.

Download it! Trust me, this is the absolute first step. How are you supposed to get more involved if you haven't even touched the thing? Well, I'll tell you. You can't. Plain and simple. First step - get it.

So now that I've downloaded this, how do I use it?

• If you have an online hosting account somewhere already, you can create a new subdomain to install it in. Make sure your host meets all the requirements, then following the Instructions seen here you should be up and running.
• If you don't have an online hosting provider, you can always install it locally. The steps are the same as seen in Lullabot's great videocast, but you have to do a tiny bit more work. Basically you need to set up a server on your computer with Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Here are the instructions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

But that's not what this blog entry is about, is it??

No, unfortunately not. There are plenty of great articles out there that deal with installing Drupal locally or on a web host and working with an Apache, PHP, and MySQL stack. That was just a precursor. This article is really about getting more involved with Drupal. I want to tell you that it's OK to ask questions, and let you know how and where you can do so.

Where do I ask questions?

First, I have to say that it is important to read any, all, or as much as possible about what you want to learn. It is essential that you study this so you have some frame of reference to pose a question.

There are several places online to ask for help or pick someone's brain:

• Drupal Groups is a community forum where people go to discuss anything Drupal related. Groups are sectioned off into relevant categories and if there isn't an applicable category you're more than free to make one! You can log on using your Drupal.org user credentials, or create a new account.
• Planet Drupal is a feed aggregator of a good number of blogs writing Drupal related posts. This is a great source of information, especially about upcoming events/projects/happenings.
• I have found Drupal Dojo to be a great resource for learning more about anything that is Drupal.
  

  "Drupal dojo was founded by Josh_k with the intent to gather a few Drupal ninjas and a couple dozen eager ninjannabees that would eventually form a series of training sessions."

  My personal recommendation is to go through all the lessons starting from the beginning. It might take you some time, but I guarantee that you'll learn something useful in the process.

• My personal favorite though, is to use IRC to learn more about Drupal. You can read more about this here at How to effectively use IRC and also here at this wonderful how-to put together by Walt Esquivel. Those two articles complement each other quite nicely.

So now what??

Go and learn. Make a website. Pump up those creative juices. Do something that no one else has. If nothing else, know that this guy right here writing this started where you are right now. I took a bit of time, read a bunch, bugged some people online. Now I would consider myself comfortable with Drupal. I am by no means a "ninja" or a developer. But I'm learning, and one day I may be.