Module development and code questions

I am currently hosting a site on the Intranet for my projects. I have some status spreadsheets in excel .
I was wondering if there is a way to capture snapshots of data from the spreadsheet and display it on the site ?

Or is there a better way for project management using drupal ?

I've got a silly question. Can you use any $node->customvar directly? 'Cos I've been looking at some modules' code and they seem to do it.
Also, is there any place where I can find answers to questions like this? A place to learn how to programme for drupal? I know I've got the API but it's kind of a mess and with very little details.

Thanks.

I have got 2 functions one directing to the other.


function form_stage1(){
if ($_POST['op'] == 'Submit') {
return form_stage2();
}

$form['name'] = array(
'#type' => 'textfield',
'#title' => t('Name'),
'#size' => 12,
'#maxlength' => 12,

);
$form['fieldset']['submit'] = array('#type' => 'submit', '#value' => t('Submit'));

return drupal_get_form('form_stage1', $form);
}

i want to create a website that only accepts invited people' membership.

the invite. module provides an 'Invite a friend' feature but this module is meant to be used when user registration settings have been set to: 'Visitors can create accounts but administrator approval is required'.

i don't want visitors create their accounts though admin approval is required. i want only invited people should apply for membership. and also i wanna see who invited who. is it possible?

Hi,

I want to add a textfield to the page where a new story is creating. And I can add that textfield to any page with form through xx_form alter funtion. But with little knowledge of php and drupal. I was kind lost when I tried to apply that only to a new story creating page.

Could someone kind enough to explain a little bit of the following code I copied from an example of hook_form_alter function, or provide a url that I can continue my learning? Thanks.

I have content types (such as a node type called "data") that get used by people of various og groups. I do not want to allow a person in group B to edit data nodes that belong to the website but not to a group, so I don't want to grant them edit permission to other people's files. However, I WOULD like to allow a person in group B to be able to edit another data node created by another person in group B.

Any suggestions as to a good approach?