This video is an introduction to the Schema module. This is a great module if you'd like a peek at how your Drupal database is set up (with descriptions!) or if you are building a new module and you'd like someone else to magically create the schema for your .install file. It can also check your database and tell you if anyone has monkeyed with the way Drupal thinks it should be set up. This introduction touches on all of these features and gives a good overview on how to use this really cool module.

One of the hardest things to do after getting your Drupal installation up and running is deciding which Drupal modules that you're going to use. There are literally thousands of modules to choose from, and so this can be quite a daunting task. It's even more overwhelming if you don't have a clear strategy for searching through, filtering down, evaluating and testing the viable module candidates in the vast Drupal contrib repository. You may have already come across valuable resources such as Lullabot's Top 40 modules podcast, the user ratings and feedback provided at DrupalModules.com, as well as the recently published module usage statistics on Drupal.org that allows you gauge how many people are actively using any particular module. These are all great resources to be sure, but there is also a lot of really useful information on the health of a module that you can gather directly from the links on the module's project page if you know where to look. This 8-minute video is an outtake from the "Understanding Drupal" DVD / digital download that features the Lullabot team sharing their module evaluation tricks of the trade. They'll walk you through some of their favorite strategies for quickly filtering down the number of viable module options down to a reasonable number. If you enjoy these types of insights, then be sure to consider coming down to the "Do It With Drupal" Conference in New Orleans from December 10-12 where team Lullabot and a host of Drupal and outside community experts will be giving out a lot of practical Drupal site building advice like this. This is the last week of the last early bird discounts, and so save yourself a couple of hundred dollars and register today.

Now that CCK and Views have release candidates for Drupal 6, it's the perfect time to start hammering down on the list of modules that haven't been ported yet. This video demonstrates how anyone with basic copy/paste/modify PHP skills can help port Drupal modules. Really! It's not nearly as bad as you think. :) Topics covered include:

• How to tell the module portage status of your Drupal site with the Upgrade Status module.
• How to perform basic community research to determine the actual porting status of your modules.
• Overview of the amazing Coder module and how to configure it.
• Where to find more information about changes between Drupal versions.
• How to use Coder module to convert a simple module from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6, step by step.
• How to test to ensure the porting status was a success.

Everyone with a Drupal.org account can add new pages to the handbook. This video shows how easy it is and walks through the entire process of adding a new page for a contributed module and making an issue to get the link added to the module's project page. This is the third video in a series that also shows how to get an account and take advantage of advanced search on Drupal.org.