Itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, but confused by the way it handles design challenges? This concise guide helps small teams and solo website designers understand how Drupal works by demonstrating the ways it outputs content. You’ll learn how to manage Drupal’s output, design around it, and then turn your design into a theme. In the second of three volumes on Drupal design, award-winning designer Dani Nordin takes you beyond basic site planning and teaches you key strategies for working with themes, layouts, and wireframes. Discover how to use Drupal to make your vision a reality, instead of getting distracted by the system’s project and code management details. Learn strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts Break down a Drupal layout to understand its basic components Understand Drupal’s theme layer, and what to look for in a base theme Work with the 960 grid system to facilitate efficient wireframing and theming Manage Drupal markup, including the code generated by the powerful Views module Use LessCSS to organize CSS and help you theme your site more efficiently

If you're a solo website designer or part of a small team itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, this concise guide will get you started. Drupal’s learning curve has thrown off many experienced designers, particularly the way it handles design challenges. This book shows you the lifecycle of a typical Drupal project, with emphasis on the early stages of site planning. Learn how to efficiently estimate and set up your own project, so you can focus on ways to make your vision a reality, rather than let project management details constantly distract you. Plan and estimate your project by discovering your client’s goals and audience perceptions Discover how Drupal works under the hood, and learn basic DrupalSpeak Frame the UX design challenge through a deeper understanding of your site’s intended users Get real content for your project as early as possible—before you start prototyping Choose the right modules for your project, and learn about several go-to modules Understand how to walk clients through the Drupal design and development process

Are you a solo web designer or part of a small team itching to build interesting projects with Drupal? This hands-on book provides the tools and techniques to get you going. Award-winning designer Dani Nordin guides you through site planning, teaches you how to create solid, user-centered design for the Drupal framework, and shows you tricks for using real, honest-to-goodness, developer Ninja Magick. This book is a compilation of three short guides—Planning Drupal Projects, Design and Prototyping for Drupal, and Drupal Development Tricks for Designers—plus exclusive "director’s material." If you’re familiar with HTML and CSS, but struggling with Drupal’s learning curve, this is the book you’ve been looking for. Get extra material, including an expanded Grids chapter, more recommended modules, and a Short Form Project plan Learn how to work user-centered design practices into Drupal projects Choose the right modules for your project, and discover several go-to modules Use strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts Manage Drupal’s markup, including code generated by the powerful Views module Learn how to work with Drupal on the command line Set up your development environment and collaborate with other designers and developers Learn the basics of Git, the free open source version control system

Take your Drupal skills even further with valuable tricks for making site building truly efficient. In this concise guide—the third in a series by award-winning designer Dani Nordin—you’ll learn how to set up your own development environment, quickly update your modules, and use version control to protect yourself from bonehead mistakes. Handle repetitive tasks with ease, avoid hours of frustration, and devote more time to pushing the envelope of Drupal design—just by picking up the basics of a few developer tools. It’s much more than simple coding; it’s real, honest-to-goodness developer Ninja Magick. Learn basic commands and use them in Drupal on the command line Set up your local development environment, and learn ways to collaborate on code with others Download modules, themes, libraries, and more with Drush, the Drupal shell Use Git, the free version control system, and create a GitHub account Pack content types, views, and other functionality you use often into a custom module with Features

A complete lifecycle guide to planning and building a site with Drupal Drupal allows you to quickly and easily build a wide variety of web sites, from very simple blog sites to extremely complex sites that integrate with other systems. In order to maximize what Drupal can do for you, you need to plan. Whether you are building with Drupal 6 or 7, this book details the steps necessary to plan your site so you can make informed decisions before you start to build. Explains how to define the scope of your project Shows you how to create a design plan taking into consideration how Drupal works Helps you make informed decisions regarding development methodologies, environments, standards, and site security Reviews ways to assess the use of existing and/or custom Drupal modules Teaches you how to avoid common pitfalls that can impact a successful site launch Walks you through preparing for post-launch site maintenance and management tasks Details incorporating the nature of open source systems into your management strategies Identifies ways to interact with members of the Drupal community The processes and techniques provided in this book will empower you to create a successful and sustainable site with Drupal.

This book is a step-by-step guide and a hands-on co-piloted experience for those trying to make Drupal powered websites work for them, and for their clients. Much more than a "tutorial", what is needed is a nuts-and-bolts living mentor and guide which really shows the reader how to do the things really required for bringing it all together in a site which works. This will be the only book covering all the difficult components of Drupal: views, panels, themes, content creation, etc. The book will cover: How to upgrade your hopelessly outdated and obsolete-software dependent site and bring it into the Drupal mainstream and future How to become a great Drupal themer and make "non-Drupal" looking sites How to really customize Drupal for your real needs How to start using best practices in Drupal web application development How to work like the pro Drupal shops and be ready for big projects - and small ones Learn by example (code samples, theme samples, videos) at every step

The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 is the most comprehensive book for getting sites done using the powerful and extensible Drupal content management system. Written by a panel of expert authors, the book covers every aspect of Drupal, from planning a successful project all the way up to making a living from designing Drupal sites and to contributing to the Drupal community yourself. With this book you will: Follow practical approaches to solving many online communication needs with Drupal with real examples. Learn how to keep learning about Drupal: administration, development, theming, design, and architecture. Go beyond the code to engage with the Drupal community as a contributing member and to do Drupal sustainably as a business. The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 was written by the following team of expert Drupal authors: Benjamin Melançon, Jacine Luisi, Károly Négyesi, Greg Anderson, Bojhan Somers, Stéphane Corlosquet, Stefan Freudenberg, Michelle Lauer, Ed Carlevale, Florian Lorétan, Dani Nordin, Ryan Szrama, Susan Stewart, Jake Strawn, Brian Travis, Dan Hakimzadeh, Amye Scavarda, Albert Albala, Allie Micka, Robert Douglass, Robin Monks, Roy Scholten, Peter Wolanin, Kay VanValkenburgh, Greg Stout, Kasey Qynn Dolin, Mike Gifford, Claudina Sarahe, Sam Boyer, and Forest Mars, with contributions from George Cassie, Mike Ryan, Nathaniel Catchpole, and Dmitri Gaskin. For more information, check out the Drupaleasy podcast #63, in which author Benjamin Melançon discusses The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 in great detail: http://drupaleasy.com/podcast/2011/08/drupaleasy-podcast-63-epic

It's well known that identifying and fixing problems in design is easier and cheaper if it can be done earlier in the process of design and build. That's because as the fidelity of the project we're working on increases, the effort involved in making changes increases. If we can test out early ideas to see if they work, in small chunks, then we can identify whether those ideas are going to work. To do this, we need to build prototypes. With easy-to-follow, practical advice, this book will show you how to use a number of different prototyping techniques to improve UX. It covers: The prototyping process Paper prototyping Interactive wireframing tools, such as Balsamiq and Axure Dedicated prototyping tools, including Marvel, Invision, and Adobe XD HTML prototypes How to use prototypes in your project workflow

Demystifying one of the most popular content management systems in use today, Drupal Web Profiles offers a complete introduction to the installation, configuration, and administration of Drupal versions 6 and 7. Filled with worked examples, step-by-step instructions, and hands-on projects, it provides readers with the tools to develop effective business web solutions using Drupal. The book supplies easy-to-follow instruction on the primary aspects of the Drupal framework-from basic installation, configuration, and administration to creating new functionality with custom modules and themes. Defining key Drupal terminology in a way that users and developers can easily understand, this project-based guide explains how to: Create an installation environment for Drupal as well as how to carry out the actual installation Build web applications using Drupal builds and profiles Add new content to a Drupal site and describe, classify, and organize content using the Taxonomy module Optimize Drupal performance with automatic throttling, bandwidth optimization, and page caching Customize Drupal themes and create, install, and debug modules The first five chapters describe how to install, configure, and administer a basic site using Drupal version 6 or 7. The next five chapters introduce Drupal profiles and explain how to get them set up and running. Supplying in-depth treatment of web analytics, including Google analytics, parsing Web logs, and node tagging, the book arms you with time-tested advice on how to monitor, analyze, and optimize the performance of your Drupal installation.

Want to build Facebook applications that truly stand out among the thousands already available? In addition to providing easy-to-follow recipes that offer practical ways to design and build scalable applications using the Facebook Platform and its new profile design, this Cookbook also explains proven strategies for attracting users in this highly competitive environment. With plenty of examples and practical solutions, Facebook Cookbook answers some of the hardest questions Facebook application developers contend with -- including how and where to get started. This Cookbook will help you: Learn to build an application that scales to accommodate a sudden influx of users Explore changes from Facebook's old profile design to the new look and feel Take advantage of new integration points in the new profile design Get tips for designing applications with hosting and deployment costs in mind Discover which widgets and controls to use for building the most attractive user interface design Learn the differences between standard HTML, JavaScript, and SQL, and the versions used on the Facebook Platform Target large, defined groups on Facebook, including those who want to find jobs, hire employees, market a business, advertise, and more If you can build simple web applications with HTML, Facebook Cookbook will help you build applications with the potential to reach millions of users around the globe. Learn what it takes to design applications that stand above the rest.