FFW, the mega digital agency, is offering a free, two-hour course for business technology and marketing decision makers who want a compressed intro to Drupal with the added benefit of a live instructor.

The class focuses on Drupal's core concepts so organizations can get the most out of the platform and avoid common mistakes. It's designed to help smooth Drupal adoption by companies and organizations.

It's coming up on Thursday, December 08, 2016, from 1 PM to 3 PM EST.

The focus of the course is on the value of the “assembled web,” where sites are largely made up of pre-built components that are combined and configured -- not custom-coded. Attendees will receive a PDF manual that outlines step-by-step activities to learn Drupal 8 site building.

Although this course may be below the geek-level of many readers of the Acquia Developer Center, we're featuring it because it could be useful as an intro for team members unfamiliar with Drupal and Drupal 8 in particular. The full version of the course usually costs $799. (FFW is suggesting that those who take the course make a donation to the Drupal Association. A membership is only $15.)

And it's a good companion to the Free Acquia Academy Drupal 8 courses.

Ray Saltini, Director, FFW Center of Excellence, is running the course. Ray told us that he'll be using content from an ebook he recently wrote: 10 Drupal Project Pitfalls to Avoid.

“Essentially I'm taking those 10 topics and explaining how they factor into site-building,” Ray explained.

It's a mash-up! Ten Project Pitfalls to Avoid + an intro to Drupal 8 site building.

Want more specifics before you commit your Thursday lunch hour?

Here are the ten pitfalls from Ray's ebook:

1. Planning without performing a thorough discovery
2. Neglecting the content audit
3. Adding to feature creep
4. Not defining user stories
5. Skipping or skimping on testing
6. Forgetting to budget for Project Management
7. Not exercising extreme care when planning your 'multi-site' project
8. Skipping the specialists
9. Neglecting to plan continuous development policies, tools and workflows
10. Adopting Drupal without engaging with the awesome community.

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And here are the general site building topics Ray is relating them to:

• Drupal project planning
• Drupal's inherent tools and subsystems
• Custom content types
• Views
• Taxonomy
• URL aliasing
• Module selection
• Customized site administration

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Interested? Sign up here.