SkillDisplay - Learning Resources for TYPO3 Beginners
Thanks to Christina from SkillDisplay for sharing!
This blog post is about resources for TYPO3 beginners - in TYPO3 terminology you want to learn the “TYPO3 Editor” skills. If you are looking for German resources, you want to look for “Redakteur”. When you are already more familiar with the content management system, you can look out for “integrator” related skills. Thank you to Olivier Dobberkau (TYPO3 President), Jochen Weiland (jweiland.net) and Daniel Siepmann (TYPO3 Documentation Team) for giving inputs for the blog post!
Topics in this blog post cover:
- Get your “ready to use” TYPO3 instance
- TYPO3 Docs and Mainzific Rim
- The TYPO3 Guidebook
- Video tutorials
- Educator Boxes
- Get support from the community
- Do you want to create learning resources while learning?
- Start learning TYPO3 today!
Get your “ready to use” TYPO3 instance
Before getting started, you need to get a TYPO3 instance. You can either download the newest version of TYPO3 (currently v10.4) and install it on a web server, or just get it ready to use. To try out TYPO3 for an evening, use the “Free TYPO3 Test and Demo Web Sites” instances, with version 9 LTS or newer if available. Also, jweiland.net - a TYPO3 Association Platinum Member and TYPO3 Agency Solutions Partner - provides free TYPO3 with a template for a duration of three months which is perfect for everyone who wants to learn TYPO3 skills. You can access it through the “Developer” package. Additionally, they made a TYPO3 v10 responsive template available to the community that can also be used with other hosts. Please be aware that jweiland.net provides German resources.
TYPO3 Docs and Mainzific Rim
Don’t be scared of the TYPO3 Docs! The amount of content might be a bit scary at first glance, but you don’t need to know everything from the start! There are also some resources which make the entry easier. It is always good to have a TYPO3 instance running while you read the resources and immediately try everything yourself. And here they are, the beginner guides for TYPO3:
- TYPO3 Tutorial for Editors - the TYPO3 docs page provides an Editor guide that explains how to add or change content on an existing TYPO3 website
- Getting Started Tutorial - this tutorial was created to introduce new users to TYPO3, its core features, and provide an overview on how to configure and administer the CMS.
- Mainzific Rim - this is a gamification resource, where TYPO3 beginners can learn to use the CMS by creating a website to warn the people in Mainz of a terrifying dinosaur that is about to rampage through the city. The adventure is divided into 4 chapters. You can find the whole adventure book here and verify your skills in the matching skill sets:
The TYPO3 Guidebook
Another resource, which will be published in the beginning of 2021, is the TYPO3 guidebook! The book is like a tour guide. It tells you what sights you can visit, but it is up to you to explore the city. Likewise, you should also apply the newly gained knowledge instead of only reading about it.
The great thing about the book is that it is written in English, co-authored and supervised by the native speakers Felicity Brand, Heather McNamee, and Jeffrey McGuire. Additionally, the publication went through multiple rounds of community feedback. It’s a book for everyone, picking up beginners, project managers and developers, and includes amongst other things step-by-step tutorials that tell you how to use TYPO3. You can find additional learning resources on typo3book.com!
Video tutorials
For everyone who likes video content, you can find TYPO3 tutorials on the YouTube channels from Jochen Weiland and Wolfgang Wagner in German. A tip from Daniel is to also visit the YouTube channel from TYPO3, which has lots of videos from previous TYPO3 camps and other tutorials. There are resources in English and German available.
Educator boxes
Another way to learn is the English educator box and the Romanian educator box, which resources were created by the TYPO3 Education Committee, the technical high school HTL Wien 3 Rennweg, and the Liceul Tehnologic “Grigore Moisil” in the course of the joint Erasmus+ project. The box is publicly available and can be used by educators, but can also help when learning on your own.
Get support from the community
While learning how to use TYPO3, you’ll surely get some questions, so get ready for Slack! You can find a guide on how to join the TYPO3 slack channel here. You can then join the channels for beginners - either press the ‘+’- symbol next to the channels or the More button to find “Channel browser” or “Browse channels”.
Do you want to create learning resources while learning?
The TYPO3 docs team is always looking for people who want to contribute. It is easy and the most important thing is - you can’t break anything! Especially while you are a beginner and are learning new things, you are in the perfect position to contribute, as you have the same understanding and insights as other beginners and can create resources that match this level. While you figure out for yourself how templates and content elements work, you might find that there is something missing in the TYPO3 docs.
To make it easier for the next person just click the “Edit on GitHub” button, then add or change what you want and then send a pull request. Someone from the TYPO3 docs team will proofread it. Get more information about contributing here.
To give a little visualized help, here is a step-by-step image guide!
Step 1: Navigate to the page you want to change and press the “Edit on GitHub” button
Step 2: Click “fork this repository” - Sounds important, but you can’t break anything!
Step 2.1: Sometimes, you need to click the edit (pen) button
Step 3: Make changes
Step 4: Make a pull request - this will be double checked and is not public immediately
Start learning TYPO3 today!
Use the available resources, create new ones, and track your newly gained skills on the SkillDisplay platform. All you need is to log in/create an account and click the self verification button for each skill you have learned. And never forget, that the TYPO3 community is there to help with questions so there is nothing stopping you from learning!
