Drupal Training Experiences

My experience with Drupal started a few years ago when version 5 came out. At the time I was a newspaper/magazine photographer and was looking to branch out into freelance photograpy and knew I wanted a Content Managagement System to help keep my website up to date with new content. I explored several of CMS's including Joomla and WordPress, but eventually settled on Drupal because of the community. WordPress was popular for photographers, but I thought I would want to have more flexibility.

My first Drupal website was Drupal version 5.0. And then I started fresh with Drupal 6 when it came out a couple years later. The last build of  the freelance photographer site at http://www.timnormanphoto.com was for version 6.  I delved decently deep into Drupal 6 and wrote some small modules to help with the site. Nothing fancy though.

With so many photographers out of work and finding new jobs, I thought it might be a good idea to start in a new career as I could see my friends losing jobs and finding new careers.I've enjoyed Drupal and the Drupal community, so a Drupalling I would go.

The beginner and intermediate sections for learning Drupal 7 with Forcontu have been interesting. I've never taken an online course like this, but I thought it would help learn the differences between Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 as well as get my feet back into Drupal developing. Much of Drupal 7 is the same or similar to Drupal 6. The advance section for the course, which is coming up, will be where I'm going to enjoy sinking my teeth into. 

The overall experience has been challenging at times in juggling outside work and life while continuing with course work. You set your own schedule and pace which helps with how fast you are learning or how much you may already know. The moderator/teacher has been wonderfully helpful and forgiving when late nights on my job lead to sleepy nights while going thru the course work. 

I have learned about modules and sections of Drupal 7 that I didn't have experience with nor knew about. It is an educational course, and I've enjoyed the work. I'm about to start on the next section, the advance section, and that should provide a whole new challenge and learning level.

The knowledge I learn in this course should help me rebuild my current site and hopefully give me a basis to start a career as a junior Drupal developer.  If you know of someone looking for some extra help on a site or a job opening, please let me know.