Drupal is awesome. Drupal is flexible. But Drupal is also hard.

If you’re just starting off developing with Drupal or have gone through a handful Drupal projects, it’s OK to feel lost. We’ve all been there.

The stages to getting through the difficult times with Drupal are remarkably similar to the well-known Kubler-Ross model for dealing with grief.

Does that mean that Drupal is the same as grief? Not necessarily. While actual grief of a loved one is a serious matter, sometimes fighting through initial challenges yields rewards far exceeding your expectations.

Even more, the similarities for dealing with the complexities of Drupal development and for dealing with grief are uncanny.

The tips I’ll share with you are aimed at web developers interested in becoming professionally proficient with Drupal.

Stage 1: Shock and Denial

The Drupal learning curve is often regarded as difficult, and rightfully so. Your first challenge is to get over your denial and accept this reality.

Source: Learning Curve for Popular CMS

One shock for developers comes from the vast Drupal glossary of terms that you must understand to do a lot of the complex tasks.

Stage 2: Pain and Guilt

Once you’ve committed to developing on Drupal, certain aspects may seem a bit over your head.

Never fear, however, as our trusty friend Google can often get us out of traps.

While a good amount of quality answers from search results point to StackOverflow or StackExchange, the best resource for dealing with the pain is the robust Drupal API documentation.

If you’re more of a visual learner, the excellent Drupalize.me series by Lullabot is a gold mine.

Stage 3: Anger and Bargaining

So you’ve resolved yourself to conquering Drupal, and the complexity of it is slowly revealing itself.

The "Drupal way" begins to dominate your lexicon as you balance between solving a problem with a quick solution or solving a problem with the most flexible solution.

The Drupal framework, like most web development frameworks, almost always offers ten ways of completing one task.

At first glance, this choice and flexibility seems awesome. In reality, analysis paralysis sets in as we are presented with too many options.

Stage 4: Depression and Reflection

As you get really good at implementing solutions to simpler problems, the chaining of methods to conquer more complex issues starts to introduce doubt within you.

You look at your code, your comments, and your TODO notes and give an exasperated chuckle.

While the feeling is normal, you may begin to stare off into space while holding your Pro Drupal Development book in your hands, a book which you have probably already purchased by this stage.

If you can hold on for a little while longer and have a bit of faith, your "aha" moment is just around the corner.

Stage 5: The Upward Turn

Nothing worth doing is easy.

The rhythm of explaining the inner workings of the entity infrastructure, the menu system, and the various permissions schemes yields positive results from clients.

Even more, you’ve bookmarked the Drupal 7 API in your browser and begin to find really helpful functions that save you a ton of time.

Beautiful designs in custom themes begin to play nicely with unique features in custom modules.

Stage 6:  Reconstruction

Now that you have two feet firmly planted under you, the question of "What’s next?" prompts a smile.

The revelation of the true beauty of Drupal is in its community.

It offers opportunities to contribute to Drupal documentation, help other developers going through their 7 stages of Drupal’s learning curve, or contribute code back to the Drupal ecosystem in the form of a contributed module or theme.

You feel comfortable sharing your triumphs and failures while also encouraging others to stick with it.

Stage 7: Acceptance and Hope

The death star of doubt has been destroyed!

As you hold hands with your project team basking in your awesome accomplishment, you suddenly realize that it wasn’t so bad.

Even more, you take pride in sticking with it.

Drupal is hard, but Drupal is awesome.

Conclusion

While the Drupal 7 mountain may have your flag planted on its summit, never forget that it’s about the journey, not the destination.

In that vein, take a deep breath because Drupal 8 could use your help!

For more in-depth analysis of these stages and to see code examples, check out my slides from Twin Cities Drupalcamp.

Related Content

• Getting Started with Drupal: A Comprehensive Hands-On Guide
• 22 Excellent Tips for New Drupal Developers
• 4 Steps to Building a Portfolio Website Using Drupal
• Related categories: Web Development and Web Technology

About the Author

Fredric Mitchell is the Web Development Manager of Orbit Media, a web design company in Chicago. You can find Fredric on Drupal.org and Twitter.

The post The 7 Stages of Drupal’s Learning Curve appeared first on Six Revisions.

Finding the right elements for a project can significantly improve the quality of the final product, especially if your deadline’s too tight to build these things yourself.

Quality is essential if you’re to maintain a professional finish. Fortunately the quality of the resources available to us continues to rise and premium standard resources are everywhere. Here’s a collection of some of our current favorites:

Mmenu

This jQuery plugin creates slick, app-like sliding menus for mobile sites.

Fabric textures

These 5 cloth textures are free to download as JPGs.

Fitgrd

This is a lightweight and cool looking responsive grid.

Horizontal menu

This is a horizontal slide-out menu with a grid based submenu.

Upload form

This is a mini Ajax upload form.

Minimalistic (free for personal use)

Minimalistic is a minimal WordPress theme with nice brushstroke patterns.

Mobile application UI kit

This mobile application UI kit is downloadable as a PSD.

Flat icon set

Who can have too many flat icon sets?

Flatilicious icons

Seriously, who can have too many?

Fries

Create an Android-like UI with HTML, CSS and JavaScript

Linecons

48 fully scaleable vector icons.

Windows

A jQuery plugin for fullscreen scrolling windows.

Slider

A useful free slider with gliding backgrounds.

Transit

Super smooth CSS transitions and transforms for jQuery.

FastCache

The fastest PHP object caching system ever, apparently.

Beag

A set of useful mobile app UI elements.

Mixitup

A CSS3 and jQuery filter and sort plugin.

Pricing table

A minimal pricing table for designers and developers.

Cesium

This is a JavaScript library for creating 3D globes in a web browser.

Bootstrap magic

Use this to create your own Twitter Bootstrap theme.

Map icons designer

Icons for Google maps, suitable for map applications.

Transparent UI kit

This is a layered UI kit in a PSD.

Topcoat

A CSS kit for lightweight web apps.

Controls settings

A useful PSD flat control panel.

CSS modal

A modal builder in pure CSS.

Sassaparilla

This is a quick way to jump-start responsive design projects.

Beach UI

A minimal UI kit in the form of a PSD.

Retina-ready menu

This is a responsive, touch-friendly menu with three layouts for different browsers.

Flexisel

A responsive carousel jQuery plugin.

W2UI library

As set of connected jQuery plugins designed for front end use.

Dark Accordion

A stylish navigation menu in a PSD.

Skel.js

A frontend framework for building responsive sites.

Magnific Popup

A responsive jQuery lightbox plugin.

Nice Less buttons

A set of buttons made in CSS.

Multipurpose website template

A beautifully designed PSD for any purpose.

Two.js

A 2D drawing API.

Flat UI login form

A trendy login and register form.

Ecommerce flat

A flat ecommerce UI kit in PSD format.

Brand identity

A layered PSD for presenting logo and identity design.

Animation fill code

An app to fill in the necessary code for CSS3 keyframe animations.

Countable.js

This script adds live paragraph, word, and character counting to an html element.

Github Archiveroom

Explore your Github archive in 3D.

iPhone 5 flat

A flat iPhone 5 mockup.

HoverMenu

An easily accessible menu anywhere on your page.

SLY

A JavaScript library for one-directional scrolling.

Flatstrap

A bootstrap skin using flat design techniques.

Packery

A JavaScript plugin for bin-packing layouts.

Snaps theme

A free portfolio theme for WordPress.

Easy responsive tabs

A jQuery plugin that optimises horizontal or vertical tabs.

CSS social share button

A flat social tooltip button.

Knockout

Use Knockout to simplify dynamic JavaScript UIs using the MVVM pattern.

Magazine mockup

A PSD template ideal for showcasing your projects.

Weather icons

A great set of weather icons in PSD format.

Flat icons set

Another set of icons, this time delivered as .png files.

Social media icon set

A free set of social media icons.

Simple icons

Another set of free icons.

Icon hover effects

Round icon hover effects, this time with CSS transitions.

Percentage bars

Flat style percentage bars built with CSS.

Twitter UI

A Twitter client UI built in CSS and HTML.

Music widget

A flat widget music player with simple animations.

Have you used any of these resources? Have we missed any of your favorites? Let us know in the comments.

The App Design HandBook – only $19!

Wordpress gets yet another impressive array of themes to add to the already massive list of available themes and options for the popular blogging software as SMThemes and Arvixe team up to provide a host of new hosting options and site themes.

In advance of Labor Day, UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller writes in his latest Baltimore Sun column that despite increased productivity, U.S. workers have less access to vacation time and lower pay than their international peers.

Schaller references a study released earlier this year by the International Labor Organization, which found American workers are the most productive in the world, producing $63,885 of wealth annually on average. However, he notes, citing a recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “the United States is the only nation that doesn’t guarantee every worker a certain number of days of paid vacation. Although we have 10 official federal holidays, none are guaranteed paid vacation days — a commonplace legal right in most other industrialized nations…[and] almost a quarter of all Americans…get no paid vacation time whatsoever.”

Read the full column at The Baltimore Sun.

Inventive Labs launched today their software-based media server, Voice Elements Platform 5, with support for WebRTC. Built right into the media server, and accessible through a proven .NET API, Voice Elements Platform apps can now integrate voice right into HTML5 web pages.

Student Business Services (SBS) would like to take this opportunity to express our excitement about partnering with you and your student this academic year!

SBS prepares tuition bills, processes tuition payments, issues student refunds and manages the Monthly Payment Plan. We can answer all of your billing questions! Feel free to contact us Monday through Friday between 8:30am and 4:30pm. 

Here are a few friendly reminders

•  Bills are electronic and can be viewed online on myUMBC( Billing & Personal Finances topic, Payments & Billing). The First Fall ‘13 e-bill (for students registered through 7/31) was available for viewing as of August 1st, and was due on August 20th.  Note that late fees will be assessed on August 25^th. “Pending aid for Fall ’13” should be deducted from “Total Due” for Fall ’13 (on e-bill) Any portion not covered by pending aid, should be paid prior to 8/25 to avoid late fees.

•  Financial aid for Fall ’13 posted for the first time on 8/20. Please ask your student to review his Account Inquiry on myUMBC to view aid that paid against charges.

• There is still time to sign-up for the Monthly Payment Plan for Fall ’13 and divide tuition and fees in two installments, one in September and one in October. Learn more about the plan by going to www.umbc.edu/sbs and selecting Monthly Payment Plan.

•  By this time, your student should have received the e-refund card in a bright green envelope. Please be sure that he/she has gone online as per the instructions enclosed with the card, and selected a refund preference. If the student does not select a preference, it will delay the student’s refund. If your student did not receive the e-refund card, or lost or misplaced the card, please contact our office immediately.

• So that you can have full access to your student’s financial information, the student must complete a Disclosure of Information form (available on www.umbc.edu/sbs) and grant you a Parent Pin.  The Disclosure form authorizes the parent to receive information on the phone and by e-mail and it should be forwarded to the SBS office. Students request a Parent PIN on myUMBC to allow the parent online access toe-bills, payment plans, and to make payments online on their behalf. Additional information can be found by visiting us online at www.umbc.edu/sbs.