[LBo] Drupal tutorial

[Ben]

In short, there isn't one.  How Drupal is used and worked with depends 
heavily on what you want to do with it and how you are able to get it 
done.  I use it for my personal site and as my business intranet site 
(nothing too fancy), and both of those applications are very different 
setups, taken from sites, forums, and blogs found over months of 
searching and experimenting.  Plus, depending on what you mean to do and 
what you know, you might be looking at using CSS, php, html, Drupal 
modules, a combination, or none of the above, most of which falls 
outside the scope of any Drupal tutorial.  You won't get past using 
basic Drupal themes and functions without some knowledge of php and 
CSS.  I forced myself to keep working with it, no matter how frustrated, 
for months before it actually came together and started to make a 
beautiful sort of sense in my head.  I now consider myself an advanced 
beginner.

There are some fledgling attempts at making How-tos or tutorials, but 
they are hampered by the nearly infinite possibilities with Drupal.   A 
good place to start, especially the forums, is www.drupal.org .
IBM did a incredible tutorial (even if they show you how to set it up 
with a Windows server XD) that's here:  
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/osource/implement.html  
Another basic intro is here:  
http://www.designer-info.com/Writing/drupal_tutorial.htm

A couple things I've learned (off the top of my head):
-The best thing to do is to download it, slap it into your web server 
and do your best to mess it up.  That's what I did.  A lot of the time I 
couldn't tell what was going on or whether my changes or fixes were 
taking effect until I had screwed it up or altered it so much that it 
was obvious. 
-Install phpmyadmin (if it's your server).  It'll help installing and 
making backups if you're not comfortable with the SQL command line. 
-Try to have a very strict, bare vision for the site and it's 
functionality.  I had a hard time with distraction and unnecessary 
clutter at first, what with all the flashy Javascript libraries, AJAX 
searches, voting APIs, organic groups...pick the bare minimum and stick 
with it until you get used to how it all goes together.  Use it out of 
the box at first, without adding modules or redoing anything. 
-Follow the directions that appear after a successful install and try to 
stay focused on what you are trying to accomplish.  They may seem 
sparse, but most of the complexity comes from not having the discipline 
of knowing what you want to do and just clicking around. 
-After you get used to it (the install, backup, and basic 
administration), and have found what will break it, write that stuff 
down.  I used this opportunity to make a basic journal site with my own 
notes on my experiments with Drupal as a way of getting used to working 
with it.
-And remember...Drupal is not blogging software.  It will make a clumsy 
but decent Blogger type site, but Blogger does it WAY better with 100 
times less work. Trust me. 

Here are my approximate steps after I install:
1. Add modules I need (not too many or it gets complicated quick)
2. Configure access control (adding roles and configuring what they have 
the ability to see/do)
3. Configure settings (in the admin menu - settings first, then the rest)
4. BACKUP (My least favorite part is the access control and module 
configuration, so I do backups here)
5. Configure the appearance and structure of the site (what do people 
see when they first visit...is it the front page, or a log-in screen? Is 
the front page an aggregator of all the site content (the Drupal 
default), or does the front page have its own content with teasers and 
links to different parts of the site? What blocks will be where, and for 
what kind of reader/visitor? What theme are you going to use, and how 
are the blocks for that theme arranged? etc)
6. Create users (for my intranet site...my blog is set to accept 
registrations)
7. And so on.

By the way...DON'T install Drupal via Fantastico or other installation 
script.  They create insecure, difficult to upgrade and non-working 
installs of Drupal.  It's very simple to install, and you really should 
learn how to do it...

Hope this helps, and I apologize for the length..