Preface

If you’re reading this book, you’re probably a web designer who has heard of Drupal, wants to get started with it, and may have even tried it out a couple of times. And you might be frustrated because even if you’re used to code, Drupal has thrown you a major learning curve that you hadn’t expected. And just when you think you’ve gotten a basic site together, now you have to figure out how to make it look right—and the whole process starts over again.

Yep, I’ve been there too. That’s why I wrote this book.

This book is for the solo site builder or small team that’s itching to do interesting things with Drupal, but needs a bit of help understanding how to set up a successful Drupal project. It’s for the designer who knows HTML and CSS, but doesn’t want to have to learn how to speak developer in order to parse Drupal documentation. Most importantly, this book is for those who want to use Drupal to make their vision a reality, but need help working their minds around the way that Drupal handles design challenges.

P.1. Contents of This Book

What I present here are not recipes for specific use cases; although recipes can be useful, experience has shown there’s rarely just one way to accomplish an objective in Drupal. Rather, what I’m offering is context: a way of understanding what Drupal is and how it works, so that you can get over the hump and start figuring things out on your own.

This book, Planning and Managing Drupal Projects, is part of a three-part series (look for Design and Prototyping for Drupal and Development Tricks for Drupal Designers, coming soon). Over the course of this series, collectively titled Drupal for Designers, I’ll help you understand:

• How to plan and manage Drupal projects successfully (in the Planning and Managing guide);

• How to more effectively create visual design for Drupal by understanding what Drupal is spitting out (in Design and Prototyping);

• How to break down your design layouts to turn them into Drupal themes (in Design and Prototyping);

• How to get started with version control, Drush, and other ninja-developer Drupal Magick that can make your life much easier working with Drupal (in Development Tricks for Drupal Designers).

In this first volume, Planning and Managing Drupal Projects, we’ll look at the typical lifecycle of a Drupal project, with a focus on the early stages of planning a site. You will learn:

• How to understand what Drupal is doing “under the hood,” including some basic terms you should know;

• The lifecycle of a typical Drupal project;

• How to get the information you need to effectively plan, estimate and manage a Drupal project;

• Techniques for framing the design challenge and dealing with the User Experience layer;

• Why you should always get real content for the project as early as possible;

• How to choose the right modules for your project (along with some of my favorite modules);

• How to walk clients through the Drupal design and development process.

P.2. A Caveat

The goal of this guide isn’t to teach specific project management techniques. Every Drupal team and site builder has their own approach to creating projects, and it’s hard to pin down one “right” way to create in Drupal. The key to appropriate planning, then, is:

In the last chapter, I share some of the client documentation I’ve developed over six years of running a design studio and estimating Drupal projects. The content is available under Creative Commons, so you are free to use and adapt it as you like.

P.3. Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic

Indicates file names, directories, new terms, URLs, clickable items in the interface such as menu items and buttons, and emphasized text.

Constant width

Indicates parts of code, contents of files, commands, and output from commands.

Constant width italic

Indicates user input.

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Note:

This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.

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Warning:

This icon indicates a warning or caution.

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P.4. Using Code Examples

This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission.

We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Planning and Managing Drupal Projects by Dani Nordin. Copyright 2011 O’Reilly Media, Inc., 978-1-449-30548-2.”

If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at permissions@oreilly.com.

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P.6. How to Contact Us

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P.7. Acknowledgments

To be honest, I’m still amazed at being given the chance to write these books. It had been swirling around in my mind for a while, and I consider it one of life’s happier coincidences that I happened to get the opportunity to write about Drupal in not one, but two major book projects this year.

A brief list of thanks to the folks who have helped me in various capacities to help this book see the light of day:

My intrepid editors, Julie Steele and Meghan Blanchette, for giving me the opportunity to write the book, and for helping me make sense of O’Reilly’s lengthy style guide. Also thanks to Laurel Ruma for making the introduction to Julie so I could actually sell this crazy idea.

Todd Nienkerk of Four Kitchens (fourkitchens.com) helped me understand how the ideas I’ve used in really tiny teams apply to the work of larger teams; his feedback as a reviewer (as indicated by the many times I quote him throughout this text), was invaluable.

Tricia Okin of Papercut (papercutny.com) was instrumental in helping me deconstruct what my readers would need. She also provided a tremendous real-world example for the book in the form of the Urban Homesteaders Unite project. Her commentary throughout this process, as well as her wicked sense of humor and willingness to actually learn Drupal, has been a constant source of awesome.

Various colleagues and professional acquaintances, in and out of the Drupal community, who were kind enough to let me interview them: Greg Segall of OnePica, Richard Banfield of Fresh Tilled Soil, David Rondeau of inContext Design, Todd Nienkerk, Jason Pamental, Amy Seals, Mike Rohde, Ryan Parsley, Leisa Reichelt and Andrew Burcin.

Claudio Luis Vera, for introducing me to Drupal, and being a mentor, collaborator, and commiserator for the last several years. Also, Ben Buckman of New Leaf Digital, who has been one of the guiding forces behind my passion to bring Drupally knowledge—particularly Drush, Git and other stuff—to my fellow designers.

Finally, I want to thank the niecelet, Patience Marie Nordin, for giving me someone to be a role model to, and my husband, Nicolas Malyska, for being the most supportive partner anyone can hope for.

P.8. About the Author

Dani Nordin is an independent user experience designer and strategist who specializes in smart, human-friendly design for progressive brands. She discovered design purely by accident as a Theatre student at Rhode Island College in 1995, and has been doing some combination of design, public speaking and writing ever since.

Dani is a regular feature at Boston’s Drupal meetup, and is a regular speaker at Boston’s Design for Drupal Camp. In 2011, she was one of several contributors to The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 (Apress); the Drupal for Designers series is her second book project. You can check out some of her work at tzk-design.com. She also blogs almost regularly at daninordin.com.

Dani lives in Watertown, MA with her husband Nick, and Persephone, a 14-pound giant ball of black furry love cat. Both are infinite sources of comedic gold.

P.9. About the Reviewers

Todd Ross Nienkerk, Four Kitchens co-founder, has been involved in the web design and publishing industries since 1996. As an active member of the Drupal community, Todd regularly speaks at Drupal events and participates in code sprints all over the world. (In the last three years, he has spoken at 20 conferences and attended five code sprints in seven countries.) Todd is a member of the Drupal Documentation Team and recently co-chaired the Professional Drupal Services track for DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010 and chaired the Design/UX track for DrupalCon Chicago 2011. As a member of the Drupal.org Redesign Team, Todd helped spearhead the effort to redesign Drupal.org and communicate a fresher, more effective Drupal brand.

Tricia Okin is a designer based and working in Brooklyn since 2001 and founded papercut in 2004. papercut was resurrected in early 2009 by Tricia after realizing she wanted to make good work with tangibility and purpose. She also realized she couldn’t and would rather not do it alone in a design vacuum. From there, Tricia called on the best resources she could find and mustered up a gang of wily collaborators with as much passion for being their own bosses as she has.