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Launching Drupal Training in Delhi, NCR (and free Workshop) via SlashNode.in

Submitted by ravisagar on Tue, 04/10/2012 - 03:29

Drupal Training
I am extremely happy and excited to announc that I have started providing Drupal Trainings in Delhi, NCR. At SlashNode.in we provide Drupal Training to people who want to create their own website. Currently we offer two courses. Our trainings can be taken online or at classroom. Read further to know more.

Why our Trainings are different?

1. Our trainings are for absolute beginners

This is our USP. We are totally focussed and determined to teach Drupal to anyone who can operate computers and has a passion to learn website development. When we say this we are making a bold statement here because even some developers find it difficult to learn Drupal. We want to break this myth and prove that anyone can learn Drupal. Yes anyone.

Come to us with a reason to make a website and we will teach you Drupal. We don’t expect you to have any programming background. We will use Drupal to teach you how to make an awesome website without writing a single line of code. Having some basic HTML won’t do any harm.

2. We will be with you always

Many people are not sure whether they should take a course or not because their main concern is the post training support. Many few training providers actually provide support!

Along with every training course we will provide you bonus free 5 session of one hour each of direct one to one session which you can consume within an year. We will be with you in your journey to success. We understand that you may have some difficulties when you are on your own and these free one to one sessions will ensure that you get all your doubts cleared.

3. Take classes at your convenience

We understand that you are busy with lot of stuff in your life and that is why we plan the training sessions as per your convenience. Before we start the training sessions the schedule will be discussed with you. If for any reason you can’t attend a particular session just inform us at least 3 days before and we will reschedule your session. Apart from face to face trainings we provide Online Trainings as well, so even if you are not in Delhi you can take these trainings.

Who should take these trainings?

1. People starting their own online Business

If you are a starting a new business or want to expand your business to reach new customers and markets then you really need a website to showcase your services and products. Getting a website developed by some vendor is not cheap and good services come at a price. If you have good understand of computers like if you can check your emails, browse the internet and you have good understanding of websites then you can develop your own website. It is so much fun to have full control over your website. It will save lots of your precious money too.

2. Students starting their career

In the past few year there has been steady growth in number of websites created in Drupal. It clearly indicates that Drupal is becoming one of top choice for creating a web portal. If you are in college or a fresher in the industry, then by not learning Drupal you are missing lots of job opportunities. Just go and search Drupal on any job portal and you will come to know that there is a huge requirement in the market.

Infact do you know that there is a shortage of skilled Drupal developers in the market? Yes there is absolutely no reason to not learn Drupal. In the beginning you might need to pay close attention to learn the basics but once you master that you can easily pick advanced Drupal topics like Views easily. To begin the learning process you don’t even need to understand PHP. As we have said before that you don’t need to learn PHP language for creating a great website in Drupal.

3. Web Developers interested in learning Drupal

Are you a web developer who works on PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, JSP? Then you are probably aware that creating a website from scratch in these technologies takes lot of time, plus scaling the website is a huge issue when you have developed a custom solution. You have to take care of all the best practices in writing and organizing your code. Drupal already has a well defined architecture. When you start developing your own Drupal Modules then you will really love writing code that fits so easily with the existing functionality. All this is possible because of strict coding practices implemented in Drupal code and its contributed modules.

The advantage of using Drupal is that you can easily create a website in very short time and there is a module for almost every functionality you can think of. Drupal is based on PHP and the designing is done using CSS, so if you have a programming background then you can easily understand it and start making amazing website in few days only. Adding Drupal to your skill set will surely be very helpful in your career. Many software companies are now using Drupal and the demand of Drupal Developers is increasing these days.

4. You do Freelancing and create websites

Are you a freelance website developer? If yes then you are probably aware that maintaining a website for a client all alone is very difficult when you are working on a custom solution. These days most of the websites are dynamic in nature and client ask for new features and changes every time. When you using Drupal for your client’s website then one thing you can easily manage is adding new features. Drupal has plugins known as modules that you can install and add new functionalities very easily. When you start learning Drupal you will realize that there is a module for almost everything you can think of. Whether your clients need a simple website for their company profile or a big portal with online forums, user registrations or an e-commerce website. The possibilities are endless. If you are in a situation where you can’t find the module you are looking for then it you write your own module that can extend the functionalities of your website. As a freelance web developer learning Drupal will expand your horizon.

5. You are a client looking to get a website developed by some vendor

Are you looking for a software vendor to get a website developed? If yes then probably it is a good idea to do some research about the web technologies. Most of the companies do extensive research before giving their project to a software vendor. After all companies will charge more for developing a Drupal website as compared to other CMS, although that extra money you spend will be worth thousands and will probably save lot of time in future but in any case you should do extensive research about the web technologies.

If you are comparing Drupal with some other CMS then it is indeed very important that you understand what Drupal is and its capabilities. You can read our book now to know more about it. Probably it is a good idea to check out our website www.slashnode.in where we have lots of videos, articles and podcasts on managing content on a Drupal website. It will surely help you to make a wise decision!

6. Anyone who wants to create a website for any reason in this world

We can give you many reason to learn Drupal. It is simple, if you have any reason for creating a website then we can teach you how to make it.

Personal one to one counselling before the course

We will not enroll you without knowing your needs and a reason to learn website development. We would like to have a personal one to one session with you where we will understand your requirements. We highly recommend you to contact us now and we will schedule a meeting with you over phone or skype.

Course Material and Content

1. Free e-book written by our team
2. Direct access to our videos tutorials

Course Delivery and System Requirements for Online Trainings

1. Desktop Computer/Laptop with Mic and Speakers
2. Skype installed on your machine
3. TeamViewer installed on your machine

For face to face trainings you just need to come to our center, you are also welcome to bring your Laptop with you.

Get your own Domain and Space to practice Drupal

We will give you a free Domain and Space where you can practice Drupal. It will include the following stuff.

1. Domain of your choice
2. 1 GB Space
3. 1 MySQL database

We will use this domain for practicing and we will ask you to complete the assignments that we give you on this domain. After the training is over you can keep the domain if you wish too for your business. Sexy isn’t it?

Though we provide a Domain name to you, in the training we will not build a website for you :) I hope you can understand it. The purpose of this Domain is for training only and to give you real life experience of creating your live site. When you create a site on your local machine, you may not get as excited as you would if you have a real domain, a website of your own.

So you must have guessed by now that we are determined to teach you Drupal.


Courses offered right now

At the moment we are offering the following courses. Should you have any doubts or questions, feel free to contact me or send me an email directly at ravi [at] slashnode [dot] in

1. The Essentials - Beginning Drupal (12 hours Course)
2. Instant Gratification - Launch your website(2 hour Course)

The details of these courses is given below.


Course 1: The Essentials - Beginning Drupal

Total Duration: 12 hours
Free Bonus Sessions: 5 hours
Course Pre-requisite: Passion to create a website, Good to have basic HTML knowledge
Course Fee: Rs. 10,000 for Indian and $200 for foreign students

Level I (Start creating your own websites from Day 1)
Day 1 (2 hour)

1. Setup environment - WampServer (15 mins)
2. Drupal Introduction and Advantages of using it (15 mins)
3. Installation and Initial Configuration (15 mins)
4. Drupal Basics (15 mins)
5. Exercise (1 hour)

Assignment 1

Day 2 (2 hour)

1. Installing Modules and Themes
2. Creating Menus
3. Block Management
4. Category Management - Taxonomy
5. Everything is Node
6. Introduction to Content Types
7. Creating Content - Pages
8. Revisions
9. Promote content to front page
10. Teaser and Full Node View
11. Front Page
12. Contact Form
13. Introduction to Users and Roles
14. Exercise
15. Comment Management

Assignment 2

Level II (Add more power to your websites)

Day 3 (2 hour)

1. Creating User in Drupal
2. User roles in Drupal
3. User Access Control
4. User profile
5. Additional User modules
6. User Permissions
7. Create Custom Content using CCK

Assignment 3

Day 4 (2 hour)

1. Add more fields in custom content
2. Add Image fields to custom content
3. Add Date fields to custom content
4. Create Page View
5. Create Block View

Assignment 4

Level III (Jazz up your site)

Day 5 (2 hour)

1. Basic CSS
2. Change your theme using CSS
3. Change Block Background
4. Insert Website Background Images
5. Change size, color of various items

Assignment 5

Level IV (Power of Social Networking)

Day 6 (2 hour)

1. Create cool image sliders
2. How to add a blog with tags
3. Publish your blogs to twitter and Facebook
4. Integrate feedburner for Email subscription
5. Comment Management
6. Forums

Assignment 6

Back to Course Menu


Course 2: Instant Gratification - Launch your Website

Total Duration: 2 hours
Free Bonus Sessions: 1 hour
Course Pre-requisite: The Essentials - Beginning Drupal
Course Fee: Rs. 2500 for Indian and $50 for foreign students

Level I

Day 1 (2 hour)

1. Understanding the Basics of Hosting
2. Buying Hosting (on Dreamhost)
3. Configure your website on Hosting Provider
4. Create a MySQL database
5. Upload your files and database to the server
6. Test your new website

Back to Course Menu

Please Note

1. Since this is a technical training, we expect you to have just a little bit of understanding of web. Even if you have no programming background you can still create your own website using Drupal.

2. During the training we will setup the development environment on your PC/Laptop. So that you can practice it on your machine.

3. There will be not more than 2 classes per week. Weekend preferred or as per mutual convenient timings.

4. We will not train any programming language in this training, except basic HTML/CSS. Drupal is a CMS based framework and you can create website without writing any code.

Let me know if you have any doubts/questions. Write to me at ravi [at] slashnode [dot] in or write to us.

Last but not the least, if you are still thinking whether or not to join our training classes then no problem at all. You should take your time and think about it. However if you really want to learn Drupal then you can find lot of learning stuff on site www.slashnode.in We regularly update our Blog where we not only write about Drupal but also produce Audio and Video Podcast. When you subscribe to our Newsletter, one thing is assured - You will also be updated with whats latest in Drupal.

Go to www.slashnode.in and enter your email address to subscribe to the newsletter.

[Day 6 & 7: Very very hectic]

Submitted by ravisagar on Wed, 03/07/2012 - 16:17

No no things are not working. Not good. My Wake up score is 3/7. What a shame. Yesterday and today I was working on some critical activity and I stayed up almost all night. Work is done now but challenge is failing. Tomorrow is Holi, I hope things will get on track.

Good Night!

[Day 5: Failed but worked hard whole day]

Submitted by ravisagar on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 13:51

So today I did not wake up on time. The count so far is 3Days out of 5. Bad. Very Bad.

Though I didn't get up on time but I managed to work hard whole day. Except from waking up on time I was able to do everything I planned.

[Day 3 & 4: Failure and Success]: Mughal Garden was a disappointment

Submitted by ravisagar on Sun, 03/04/2012 - 15:19

Yesterday I posted one blog from my mobile but it didn't get posted. So the news is that yesterday I didn't wake up on time but I managed to work effectively whole day.

Today I got up on time.

So far my score is 3 out of 4 days.

Today I went to Mughal Garden with my wife. I was excited but I did a little research on the net and found out that cameras are not allowed. That's disappointment but I understand that it is security measure.

I thought I will go somewhere after visiting Mughal Garden so I carried my camera and left it in the car. When I entered inside the security guard refused to allow me. Why? because my car keys have the central locking remote and any remote trigger were not allowed. Ok I understand this one too, remote triggers right.

Then I stood in the long long line and deposited my car keys.

Ok I entered inside.

I have been to Mughal Garden when I was little child and I remember I saw beautiful flowers and I loved it back then but this time most of the flowers were dried and there was nothing special really there. Just usual stuff.

It is my personal opinion. I didnt enjoy going there today, I went there because it is Rashtriya Bhawan, the Presidential palace's garden.

Overall it is not worth going there. I think you should go there only when you have absolutely nothing to do. If you are visiting Delhi then think twice before going there. You might be disappointed as well. If you just want to see the Rashtriya Bhawan then just see it from the outside and click pictures but if you go inside and you will have to walk like a robot. The guards won't allow you to stop and appreciate the flowers.

I don't know the reason for opening Rashtriya Bhawan. It is just a garden, a very normal garden.

[Day 2: On time but little tired]

Submitted by ravisagar on Fri, 03/02/2012 - 00:03

Hey I am up today as well on time. I slept nicely last night and was in deep sleep. The alarm clock woke me up at 3:55 AM, for few seconds I felt that I should sleep for some more time, but I wanted to see the clock as it turned 4'o clock. Today I felt little tired, I don't know, may be because I worked out extra yesterday, so that's another point to remember that there is no need to overdo exercise or anything for that matter. If we work out more then body will take more time to recover and that might disturb the schedule.

So today is 2nd Day of my Wake up on time challenge, I pledged that I will wake up on time throughout this month without failing a single day. That doesn't mean that I will not get up on time after that. I have always been early riser but for some time I was struggling to get back into this good habit. Few days back I decided that I need to take control over it and I took this personal challenge. 30 Days - 4 AM. I read something somewhere that it takes 45 Days to develop a new habit. For me 30 Days are enough and I feel that it should help me to get back into this habit.

I have become Fan of Steve Pavlina's blog posts on Sleep. Anyone who wants to wake up on time to improve their life should read his blog posts on sleep.

So thats it for today. If you want to Wake up on time then I suggest you to susbscribe to my newsletter.

[Day 1: Success]

Submitted by ravisagar on Thu, 03/01/2012 - 00:20

Today is 1st March and I got ut on time today. Yesterday I pledged that I will wake up on time everyday this month. The alarm woke me up at 3:55 AM. Today I was able to get out of the bed easily as I slept nicely and felt refreshed. That's because yesterday night I was in bed by 9:30PM and it was difficult to fall asleep initially but eventually I slept at around 10:15 I guess. As I mentioned yesterday that I also slept during the day for 30 mins. Why am I doing all this? I have taken up a challenge to wake up on time throughout this month. Though I have been early riser all my life but lately I was not keepin up and this good habit of mine was in jeopardy. I know the benefits of rising early, I know people argue on this topic but everyone who like to sleep late please don't read my blog, our ideologies don't meet and there is no reason for you to visit this site. Go an enjoy your sleep.

After I got up I washed my face which is very important and I moved to my home office cum drawing room and turned on all the light to get into the mood. I suggest you to setup a serious environment in your home as well. I don't start my day with exercise right after I get up, instead I work for 2 hours straight and then I start work out at 6 AM. Some people can start with exercising just after they get up but for me I prefer to work first and feel good about achieving some difficult tasks first thing in the morning.

Today I posted a blog I have been writing on my other site www.SlashNode.in - Create Node Compare Functionality using views and flag Drupal Modules. Yesterday I spent more than 4 hours writing this blog post. In fact I wanted to write about it for so long but yesterday I just wrote the whole damn thing. Hopefully it will help others who are learning Drupal.

The day looks exciting and I wish you all the best. If you want to Wake up on time with me then subscribe to me newsletter.

March 2012 Challenge to Wake up on time

Submitted by ravisagar on Wed, 02/29/2012 - 14:10

Tomorrow is the 1st day of March. Winters are almost over so it should be easy to get out of the bed for everyone. So the challenge is to get up on time throughout this Month. I know it is very difficult to get into the habit of getting up on time, you can do it for a day or two but after that you get back to your old routine.

Lets try to set some goals here. First of all at personal level we should decide the time we want to get up. In my case it is 4 AM, actually 3:55 AM to be exact. Every human being on this earth needs atleast 7 hours - 8 hours of sleep. 6 hours is still ok, provided you take a nap in the afternoon which covers up the missing time of sleep. Anything less than 6 hours is not healthy for us. So if I want to get up at 4 AM then I should sleep sharply at 9 PM but that's really difficult for me so I sleep at 10 AM. So I sleep for 6 hours and usually it is enough for me and also I take little nap in the day and also on the weekends I sleep for couple of hours in a stretch to cover up the missing hours during the weekdays.

In reality this things hardly works, after all we all are human beings and going to bed sharply at 10AM and sleeping exactly for 6 hours is not possible. Getting up on time is not a problem, you set an alarm for that but you can't forcefully go to sleep. Human beings don't have sleep button :) I tried this approach of sleeping exactly on time but sometimes I fall in sleep immediately and sometimes it takes an hour. It all depends on how tired I am. So this is another point to remember that try to get tired during the day :) Work hard so that you are able to go to sleep easily.

I make it a point to get up as soon as the alarm goes off but my freshness level is not the same all day. Sometimes I feel so refreshed that I get up easily and sometimes I am still tired and need more sleep but I anyways get up.

I carried on like this for many years but recently I came across a blog post by Steve Pavlina where he talked about become an early riser. He mentioned a very interesting approach to tackle this problem. He says that we should sleep only when we feel like, it could be 10 PM or 9:30 PM but always get up on time when the alarm goes off. This approach sounds interesting to me and I tried to implement it in my routine. My target is to go to sleep sharply at 10 but I don't check the clock to get into bed instead I listen to my body. Around 9:30 PM when I have taken my dinner I try to read some book for 30 mins or so and in this time I get involved deeply in the book that after 30 mins of alertness I can't read any longer. Sometimes those 30 mins can stretch to 45 mins and sometimes I feel sleep within 15 mins. Doing this also helps me to achieve one of my goals to read a book regularly.

Anyways so you get the idea.

If you are reading this blog and desire to wake up on time then Subscribe to my newsletter. I will try to help you to get up on time. No I am not an expert on this subject but I can definitely share my experiences and that might help you. Who know that getting up early is the only thing you needed to become successful in whatever you want :)

Have a nice day and Wake up on time tomorrow.

Do you want to WAKE UP ON TIME everyday?

Submitted by ravisagar on Tue, 02/28/2012 - 14:03

If you are reading this blog then probably you have reached here from twitter or facebook. I doubt that you are a follower of my blog. It is ok, there is nothing extra ordinary about my blog, it is just my personal blog. That's it.

I have been thinking about it for the past few days. The one thing I do good and I am proud of is waking up on time most days in a week. I occasionally break this habit though. I do want to be perfect in it and I really want to wake up every single day without fail. May be lets say at least 360 days in an year. Not waking up on time 5 times in an year is acceptable. You may have some emergency or sick may be but not a single day more than that.

Why the hell should we wake up early?

I am sure you have lots of dream and ambitions about your life. May be you want to crack any examination or get a promotion or start a new business. Whatever it is, it will require your discipline and dedication to work everyday towards your goal, but all that will need more time than you would normally spend through out day. It is not necessary that you spend extra hours everyday but I guess it is good to at least wake up early everyday. I know many people who just want to get fit, loose weight and want to exercise daily. When you get up early you have time to go to gym or may be to a park to exercise. I know some people will disagree about waking up early but I really feel that we human beings are day animals. Our body and mind works best early morning and as the day progress the productivity falls down. It means that starting your day with a bang will help you. I personally start my day with planning the whole day on my notepad. I spend at least 30 mins every day on this activity. Some people might find it waste of time but believe me knowing what you have to do in the day is something that gives you clear focus.

Every morning while making my daily list of to-do tasks I start with writing down my Short Term Goals (Withtin 6 months) and Medium Term Goals (6 months to 2 years) on the paper and as I am writing the to-do task list I verify the need of those tasks, whether they contribute towards my goals or not. Doing this every morning give me clear vision about my day. It may seem useless but keep doing it in long run will definitely keeps you on track.

Anyways I am little biased here when I say that waking up early is good. I like it. I do it and I can give you 1000 reasons to wake up early on time.

Ok so if you are convinced that it is indeed good that waking up early on time is good. Then you would ask me how will I get up on time every morning. I know it sounds so easy. You put an alarm on your mobile to get up at 5:00 AM and sleep. It doesn't work. When the alarms goes off your hand will reach out to the mobile and it is likely that you will snooze the alarm and promise yourself to get up in just 1 sec. Oh yes I was in the middle of a beautiful dream, let me complete it. It is just 5:00 AM right now, I will be up myself at 5:05 and start exercising, I really need this sleep. When you actually get up it is already 7:00 AM and which is your days first failure and you will feel depressed for sometime and then forget about it and with just a small guilt feeling for few seconds you will promise yourself that you will surely get up on time tomorrow. Oh yeah last night I slept late, I worked so hard all day in the office. You will convince yourself and give excuses. I used to do it and overcome it. Occasionally I do get disturbed and I feel really sad when I do not get up on time.

Ok so what am I trying to say here

In this blog in simple words I am just trying to say that I can help you with waking up on time and yes I also don't follow this habit myself so today I want to pledge that I will wake up at 4:00 AM everyday and I will keep a count of the days I get up on time and share with all of you. May be on a daily basis I will update you guys whether I get up on time or not.

If you also want to wake up on time then subscribe to my newsletter.

Things are close now

Submitted by ravisagar on Mon, 02/13/2012 - 13:41

Past 2 months were super hectic. Not that I was working 15 hours a day (thats not true) but because I did so much brain storming during the past 2 months which I don't think I have ever done. Anyways. Update: I have been working on creating free Drupal Video tutorials and whats cool is that I am actually writing a book on Drupal, not really a standard text book but rather a step by step guide. It will be targeted to someone who is interested in learning Drupal and has no prior experience in web development. What else? This book will be completely free of cost. And? the book won't just have boring step by step text along with screenshot but also links to free Drupal videos. So if anyone read that book then he/she will have an option to complement the learning from the book with these videos to give a solid background.

Thats it.

Why I am not blogging much these days?

Submitted by ravisagar on Mon, 02/06/2012 - 14:00

I was thinking a lot about it. Do I really need to update this blog every other day just for the sake of it? If you ask them then I will say yes I love writing stupid nonsense things which are not relevant for others and I write because I like it. I am no writer but I just find it relaxing. I write to break free. Now coming back to the point. I am thinking that instead of writing often I should write probably less but some quality stuff that can help others. May be I will start another blog. ravisagar.in would be my stupid nonsense blog where I can write whatever I want and another blog could show my serious side to the world and probably help others and society. I don't know yet but lets see. Let me do some thinking about it. May be I will just re-work on this blog. Changes design and start writing serious stuff here.

BTW I have to update this site from D6 to D7. Man I am lazy.