Drupal for Designers

Chapter 8. The Drupal Designer’s Coding Toolkit

By the end of the section that follows, you’ll understand basic command-line processes, know how to install a local development environment, including Drush and Git, and put all of this new information into practice by installing Drupal locally and using Drush to download key modules you’ll need for a basic implementation.

Wait, What? Why?

I realize the idea of learning how to use the command line, or how to set up a local development environment, isn’t as sexy as learning how to push the envelope of Drupal design. Trust me, I get it. But if there’s one thing that prevents Drupal designers from pushing that envelope, it’s this: site building in Drupal isn’t terribly efficient if you haven’t figured out at least a few of these tricks. Want to know why the same task that takes some developers only an hour or two takes some of us several hours of banging our heads against the computer? It’s because they know how to quickly update or download modules, or how to use version control (hallelujah!) to protect themselves from bonehead mistakes.

The goal of this section isn’t to show you everything you can possibly do to make development easier for you, or to provide a comprehensive guide to everything a given development tool can do; the list is entirely too long, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll get halfway down the list before you start wondering where your coffee is and forget you ever looked at it. My goal is simple: to help you figure ...