In this chapter we created our first module. We created our first .info and .module files. We implemented our first two hooks, hook_block() and hook_help(). We installed our module, and then went on to extend the module to access an outside XML source for content.

We also looked at several important Drupal functions, with t(), l(), watchdog(), and check_plain() being the most important functions of the bunch.

In the coming chapters, we will build on the concepts covered in this chapter. Next, we will turn to the theming system to learn how to cleanly separate layout and styling information from the rest of the code.