thinkdrop

ThinkDrop has already launched a couple of Drupal Gardens sites for our friends. Getting accustomed to Drupal 7 and the Theme Builder took some poking and prodding, but eventually I upgraded my brain from the Drupal 6 model and started really digging in to see what it could do.

First Impressions
The first site I put up was for my 11 year old cousin, Quentin. We changed the colors until they "looked cool" and simplified what was there to give him a place to post funny pictures. In the 30 minutes I spent setting it up and the 15 to 20 minutes showing him how it works, he was able to understand how to create content and upload images to his own website. By this point, I thought Drupal Gardens was decent, but still needed some tweaking and polish. I wasn't ready yet to use it for a site professionally.

It was easy to forgive the early bugs and (impatiently) wait for improvements. At the time, Drupal 7 was barely past the first Alpha release. The fact that Acquia is building an entire web-service on alpha software is a bold move; at the same time, it is immensely helping move the Drupal 7 project forward.

I built my next Drupal Gardens site for my friend Rachelle, aka Sweet Tallulah. Sweet Tallulah is a baking business based out of Brooklyn, NY, specializing in gluten-free goods. Rachelle has been working to grow her business. We'd been talking about setting up a site, but I wasn't sure how to approach it. I needed to keep my limited time and her limited budget in check.

Getting back on the horse
One afternoon I had heard that Drupal Gardens team upgraded the Theme Builder and made a number of other improvements. So, I decided to give it another shot. In a few hours, we had setup and themed http://sweet-tallulah.com. And in only a few more hours, I taught her how to login, edit and maintain her new site. Keep in mind, she had just received the first computer she ever owned a month before.

Now, I was impressed. Drupal 7 is a vast improvement over Drupal 6, this I already knew. I became familiar with it when I built our website, thinkdrop.net. Building content types, terms, and users with fields and configuring how they display is simple yet flexible. The overlays and "Contextual Links" make editing and reconfiguring everything so much easier. The list goes on, the amount of improvements is extensive.

Drupal Gardens, however, takes Drupal 7 to an entirely new level. Acquia quietly rolled common features together in their Drupal 7 platform in a way that leverages core without making it more complex. The Theme Builder elegantly implements CSS cascading principles. You can select anything in the DOM hierarchy and apply the most used style properties on the fly in real time to any class or ID selector you want. I want Theme Builder to theme to all my sites. Badly.

Simplified Process, Activated Learning
I was most impressed by the shared experiences I had with my friend and cousin. They were able to watch and participate throughout the entire website building process. Because we could easily create and manipulate the site together, they were quickly able to understand Drupal concepts like nodes, fields, and views. It was an active learning experience for everyone.

The fact that I didn't have to work hours ahead of time to get the server setup, install and configure Drupal until it was friendly enough to show them, made this process productive and engaging. The amount of time wasted on pre-building a project when you are teaching someone makes the whole process exhausting and can be daunting to watch for any first timer. Drupal Gardens is providing an entry level to Drupal and has made teaching Drupal fun.

Drupal Gardens: An on-ramp for learning
Drupal Gardens is a fantastic tool to get people engaged in Drupal that have no prior experience in web development and a great way to introduce the concepts of web development. By creating a simple way to build out sites, you can really get your hands dirty as you learn.

By removing the requirement to setup your own server, they remove the requirement to know how to use FTP or SSH, Linux file systems and permissions, databases, and at least enough PHP to edit a settings file. Drupal Gardens significantly lowers the intellectual and financial barriers of entry for individuals for anyone interested in how the internet works. It is a great tool for those who want to start a web development career or just want a website and have enough time and initiative to learn to do it themselves.

Learning Progressively
Anyone can be shown how to create a website in Drupal Gardens. Anyone can be taught how to blog. Anyone can be taught what a "Theme" is. With some more training and they can learn the Theme Builder and the basic concepts of CSS. Give them Firebug and show them the Advanced CSS editor, and they're really on their way. Once they've exhausted all of the flexibility of Drupal Gardens and they want to stake out on their own and learn server management, they can Export their website and take it to the next level.

By reshaping the learning curve for Drupal, we can lower the barriers for people around the world to get into the industry. This is important because the internet is a global industry. No matter where you are, no matter how rich or poor your country is, everyone benefits from utilizing technology and building web tools to help solve problems.

Drupal Gardens: A Tool for Teaching Drupal
ThinkDrop looks forward to the growth and maturity Drupal Gardens is bound to experience, and plan to use it for our small business clients, training, and education programs, including the MACILE Pilot Program in the Dominican Republic this summer.