Drupal Modules - What, Why and How? - A beginner's guide to using modules to solve problems.

This is a draft of our proposed talk, I'm open to suggestions. We are yautja_cetanu and rlmumford on drupal.org. This will be from a site builder's perspective but rob (my programmer) will be doing the anatomy of a module at the end and can answer more technical questions if required.

This might be too much for 40 minutes so try and a demo trial run and modify it a bit.

What and Why Modules
• Extend Drupal, Core does little on its own
• Types -
○ Provide developer tools -ctools,
○ Extend Drupal
§ Media Module
§ wyswyg
○ Provide increased site building function
§ Views, cck
§ Commerce
○ Provide solutions - Features
§ ???
• Interoperability and dependency (Comparison to Joomla Components)
How to find modules
• Drupal.org - Filters and related modules
• Drupalmodules + Google
• Be on top of what is going on
○ Read site building case studies
○ Drupal Planet, Drupal modules, Twitter, Subscribe to newly submitted modules
○ Hang out on IRC
How to evaluate modules
• Commit history / Issue Queues
• Usage
• Dev vs Release
• From your general Knowledge + community as above
How to install a Module
• D6 + D7
• Drush
How to use modules to solve a problem.
Anatomy of a Module
• Basic overview of what the files in a module do.