6 Tips: In the Know

I'll go ahead and warn the readers that this article won't have any fancy code snippets or super dark magic to turn your site into ten billion dollars of reoccurring ad revenue. What it WILL do is give you some great pointers in ramping up your Drupal knowledge as you begin to take over the world...one Drupal site at a time.

Muahahahahahaha....but I digress.

1.) Stay on the channels

While you probably need some clout to get anything answered or explained in #drupal, #drupal-support is where the n00bies flock...and flock often. Although I wouldn't consider myself any type of <air quote> expert </air quote>, I can say that I have learned a lot by seeing some of the questions float through the channel. If you've got something interesting to add, be sure to speak up and give your support. The Open Source world is live and let live, so if you're on, say hi! I'm caramelson, btw.

Other channels to check out are #drupal-dojo and #drupal-themes (for the themers in the house).

Note: For those that don't know what I mean by <air quote>channels</ air quote>, I'm talking about IRC.

2.) Groups

Drupal groups is a cool thing. I've played with other CMS platforms before (Plone, Wordpress), and I can say that groups.drupal.org is a great bonus to this particular CMS community! You can find discussions tailored to just about anything. From local meetups to other Drupalers looking to make the next Facebook, you learn a lot from the ideas being tossed around. Some of the n00bie groups include Drupal Dojo and Drupal for Evil (semi-n00bie), and often have neat websites that have a host of tutorials, screencasts, and podcasts.

3.) Lullabot

This kind of goes without saying, but Lullabot is what we in the business call 'that fire'. Podcasts, video casts, teaching sessions, and a neat company mascot. What else is there?

4.) Conferences

Everyone probably knows about the grandaddy conference coming up in Boston, but don't forget to peruse the feeds for local ones! Even if you can't make it out, beg the crap out of someone who has some pull in organizing to stream it live on ustream.tv, perhaps even to post videos of the presentations. I'm hoping Crell comes through for me this year with Drupalcon 2008 since I'm not cool enough to go this year. :-(

5.) Drupal Planet Feed

Speaking of feeds, the mother of all feeds is that of Drupal Planet. Aggregating pretty much all of the 'it' list of Drupalers in one ginormous feed, it may be a good idea to stick that puppy in your Google reader. I will admit, some of it can be a little dense. But hey, no one ever said that genius was always entertaining. Alas, drupal.org/planet is where it's at.

6.) Certs and Skillset

This last one could go either way, but I've always believed that technology moves so fast that you can't simply believe that learning a language in 1998 is adequate enough to do some real damage in 2008. Stay current and don't be afraid to learn new functions and features. The list of applications at gophp5.org aren't coincidental. The Drupal community will continue to pump out new versions, use obscure built-in PHP functions like 'stream_filter_append', and n00bies will continue to live in ignorant bliss of all the new functionality hotness. I say no more! Bonus: look at getting a Zend certification.