Yesterday I spent an hour teaching a woman whose nonprofit wants improvements to their current Drupal setup, especially around content approval workflow and localization. She wanted to understand more about how Drupal works so that she can understand the potential problems and solutions better, and be a better partner to her technical colleagues.

I talked with her a little about those specific questions, but most of what I taught her would be appropriate to any knowledge worker who wants to learn more about an open source web application. I pointed her to some resources and figured they were worth mentioning here as well.

 

• The Felder-Silverman engineering learning styles questionnaire. You knew I would do this. I am such a pusher. Whenever I hear someone talk about the frustrations they've had in learning how to bend software to their will, especially if they get self-blamey or overwhelmed with approaches and resources, I suggest they take this quiz. It's helped me and other people reduce self-blame and get more strategic.
• The English Wikipedia page about Drupal. Sometimes open source projects' websites are not, to use the church jargon, "seeker-sensitive." In those cases, Wikipedia often has good summaries to answer questions like "What's the latest stable version?" and "What are key terms I need to understand to look up more help?"
• The Freenode webchat service, so you can join an Internet Relay Chat channel without having to install new software. Most open source projects have live chat channels, where you can ask questions, on the Freenode IRC network. You can make up a nickname -- it's not permanent -- and join, for instance, the channel drupal-support (guide to using IRC politely). Thanks to eevensen and ciss in that channel yesterday for tips:

   

  [15:31] nyplguest: I'm starting to get into using Drupal - what's the best intro glossary/document to help me understand the vocab, like blocks and views? (I'm used to another system)
  [15:34] eevensen: @nyplguest I recommend https://drupalize.me/videos/what-drupal?p=1350 or https://drupalize.me/videos/case-study-mom-and-pop-inc?p=1252 (videos)
  [15:35] ciss: nyplguest: https://www.drupal.org/glossary
  [15:36] nyplguest: Thank you ciss!
  [15:37] nyplguest: Thank you eevensen as well!

• The NYC Drupal group, which in the past has run a Drupal Ladder series of events to teach and train new contributors. (I know of Drupal Ladder mostly because my pal Fureigh led Drupal Ladder in NYC and gave an Open Source Bridge talk about it.)
• The new Wikimedia content translation tool that makes it easier for you to translate articles. Maybe your website can do something similar.
• The "workflow" Drupal group, which looks like a place you can ask how to set up the workflow and content approval process you want.
• Some things I learned about domain names and hosting, and things I learned about Drupal. This included discussion of:
• "The Five Stages of Hosting" (e.g., dorm room versus condo). Such a useful analogy. [Edited 21 March 2023: available in the Wayback Machine.]
• DigitalOcean, the "dorm room"-type provider I use. It's been a good deal for what I've needed, namely, a test server that I can blow away at the slightest provocation. https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=82e7b02dea11 is a referral link to get a $10 credit at signup (that's 2 months' worth of service at the $5/month plan).

Since she may end up with a test server so she can play with Drupal modules and configuration, I also talked with her a bit about what it means to ssh into a server, the fact that she will probably have to install new software (a console or terminal application) on her Windows computer in order to do that, and the basics of how public key infrastructure and SSH keypairs work, and why they're more secure than just using a username and password. I did this without notes or links, so I don't have any to offer here; perhaps you have a favorite explanation you'll share in the comments?

Overall in these kinds of conversations I refrain from saying "do this" or "do that", but I did share these two bits of wisdom:

 

1. When you generate a keypair, the .pub file is the one to give other people, and the other one you keep to yourself.
2. Make an effort to remember that passphrase. Otherwise you will be unable to use your key, and you have to have a slightly embarrassing conversation where you say "here's the new .pub because I forgot my passphrase for the old one," and it delays whatever you were going to do. But I showed her my ~/.ssh directory with all those old keys I can no longer access, and told her that if she does end up needing to make a new keypair, she is in good company, and basically everyone with an SSH key has gone through this at least once.

We talked about getting her a community of practice so she could have more people to learn from. She now knows of the local Drupal group and of some get-togethers of technologists in her professional community. And she has some starting points so she can ask more productive questions of the technologists within her org.

And this stuff is frustrating, and if you feel that way, that's okay; lots of other people feel that way too, and maybe it just means you need to try a new approach.