At last I can announce the release of my new six-hour video series from Lynda.com, "Drupal 6: Online Presentation of Data", which you can check out with a free one-day pass. (Of course it's also available to anyone with a Lynda.com subscription, starting at $25/month for all-you-can-stand training in over 600 topics.)

I first talked about this course in January and was able to implement at least one suggestion from your comments (about creating calendars). There are also videos about mapping, charting, and preparing data for tabular export, all built on a foundation of CCK and Views.

Since Lynda.com's audience is mostly graphic designers, the course starts out with an in-depth description of data structure: As you know, data planning is at least as important as implementation! And it's an essential subject whose subtleties elude most beginners.

One wag in IRC questioned the need for such a course. "Presentation of Data?," he said. "Isn't that what Drupal does anyway?" He's right -- in the same way that a car is a tool for going shopping. But I believe that many people who would benefit from Drupal's data-presentation features simply don't know about them, because their knowledge of it stops at Stories, Pages, users, and blocks. They need a bit more information to make the leap, and could become fierce advocates for Drupal when they see all it can do in this area.

Extra bonus: For giggles, check out the Introduction video, which includes some live-action video of me looking goofy. :)

Thanks, as always, to the Drupal community for both helping me to understand these topics myself, and for making Drupal the Web development powerhouse it is.

Blog category: Drupal Planet