Drupal Book of the Year: Drupal 7 Explained

Writing a book is a long and painful process involving many hours crouched over a desk.

So when a writer finially emerges with a finished book, they just hope it’s well-received. We’ve been lucky with Drupal 7 Explained.

Drupal 7 Explained launched at DrupalCon Portland last spring. In the year since then, it’s become the best-selling and best-reviewed Drupal book.

Last week, it won “Drupal Book of the Year” at DrupalCon Austin.

The decision was part of the Blue Drop Awards.

About the Blue Drop Awards

The Blue Drop Awards was created by Volacci (a Drupal company in Austin) and is voted for by the Drupal Community.

Every year the community votes for awards in about 20 different Drupal websites in categories from Best Advocacy Site to Best Social Site.

You can see the full list of the 2014 winners here.

A Special Drupal 7 Explained Offer

As thank you to everyone who read the book over the last 12 months, we have a special offer.

The offer: If you buy Drupal 7 Explained, send us the receipt and we will give you 2 free months of OSTraining access (worth $50). This will give you access to about 30 full-length Drupal video classes.

How to enter: Email support@ostraining.com with proof of purchase and we’ll get you set up.

This special offer runs until the end of June.

What’s Different About Drupal 7 Explained?

If you haven’t picked up a copy of the book, this post will give you an overview of what makes it different.

In short, we think Drupal can be a confusing system and use a workflow to guide first-time Drupal users. The image below shows the Drupal workflow that we rely on:

Why do we do things in this order? Because each step follows logically on from the next:

• You definitely shouldn’t start to build a site before doing any planning
• You can’t add fields before you’ve created a content type
• You can’t add content until you have the content types and fields
• You can’t see what your theme will look like until you have content
• You can’t place blocks accurately until you have a theme
• You can create views if you haven’t added any content
• You can’t use layout modules if you haven’t any fields, content or views available
• You can’t apply user permissions fully until all of your modules are installed

With so many steps in the process, people were getting lost inside Drupal. We think that a workflow provides the guidance that many Drupal users need.