In this blog series, we’re taking a little time to spotlight just a few of the many, many Drupal training options available today. With an emphasis on people in the community advocating Drupal and putting together programs to expand the community, we’re spotlighting a few of the dozens-- if not hundreds-- of fantastic training options out there.

Companies aren’t the only ones getting involved in improving access to educational Drupal material, as it turns out. Developers Scott Tolinski and Ben Schaaf run a website called Level Up Tuts that is dedicated to providing access to training materials for individuals interested in learning Drupal, among other platforms, on their own.

After getting started with Drupal in 2011, Tolinski found that he enjoyed using the CMS, but was having to spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out a lot of problems for himself. Frustrated by the difficulty of finding reliable documentation on a number of projects, in March of 2012 Tolinski got together with Schaaf and began developing Level Up Tuts.

“We saw a huge opportunity to help the world with problems that we had already run into and solved or figured out ourselves,” said Tolinski. “It really started out as a way for us to document pitfalls in all sorts of web technologies and teach the basics all the way to advanced techniques. Being a big fan and user of Drupal, I decided to take on making a series of Drupal tutorials aimed at making Drupal easier to understand for beginners.”

A Labor of Love

Each of the more than 400 videos on Level Up Tuts is free to watch, while a paid model introduces added functionality for users who want to contribute financially to the project. Downloadable videos, source code, no ads on the site and more influence on what content Level Up Tuts produces are just a few of the features that paid users enjoy.

“Level Up Tuts has been a complete labor of love for me since 2012,” said Tolinski.

With more people becoming Drupal developers every day, the demands for Drupal websites will be more easily filled-- and the Drupal community will grow and benefit. Demand for Drupal developers is only increasing, and that trend is likely to continue with the release of Drupal 8.

A Valuable Skill

It bears pointing out that young graduates aren’t the only ones who will benefit from the variety of training programs that are springing up. For older workers who are unable to find work, or long-term unemployed individuals who find their skills are outdated, a crash-course in Drupal can be a great way to get back to work.

Open source software and the communities that support it have long shown that it is capable of changing lives for the better.

It’s clear that with more training opportunities and wider access to these programs, we can continue to help Drupal be bigger and better than ever before-- and make the world a better place in the process.

 

Do you have a great story about Drupal? Submit a story idea or contact Leigh to let the Drupal Association know about it!

Image credit to glen.h on Flickr.

Comments

MrPhilbert’s picture

Scott has the best tutorials on Responsive theming for Drupal I've ever seen. He uses the powerful new Omega 4 system and explains in terrific form and detail how to use SASS, Compass and the Singularity grid system.

This is quite advanced and he declares this at the start. To ramp up to this, he also has playlists on SASS, Compass and Drupal as well.

If you learn well by watching, you owe it to yourself to subscribe to his Youtube channel. 

I'm glad that he is being adopted by the Drupal community and look forward to more of his work.

Stolinski’s picture

Thank you for this great post. If anyone would like to learn more about Level Up Tuts, you can subscribe to our Youtube channel:

Level Up Tuts Youtube

or 

Check out our website at: http://leveluptuts.com/

on Twitter

on Facebook

 - Scott w/ Level Up Tuts