Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6: Build your own professional blog, forum, portal or community website with Drupal 6

by David Mercer

Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6

Genres: Technology

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[James Stewart]

An update to David Mercer’s now two year old Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals and Community Websites, this version has been updated for the CMS’ latest revision and guides the user through from setting up a development environment and installing drupal through to building custom themes and deploying a fully built site.

The book is designed to be read sequentially and assumes very little prior Drupal knowledge, though a little familiarity with the interface would be helpful, and a lot of willingness to explore and experiment are going to be necessary for complete newcomers. The first few chapters–focussed on explaining the benefits of using drupal and guide the user through the initial setup–are a little clunky and may deter those not comfortable with installing databases and scripting languages. The style improves as the book progresses and Mercer covers his topics well, with a considerably better structure than several Packt publications I’ve seen lately. (sadly the book retains Packt’s )

Some of those topics are fairly complex and it might have been good to have a few more directions for exploring the power of taxonomies and getting to grip with best practices in designing them. Given the range of documentation (on blogs and elsewhere) available online, more references to resources outside the book would have been a useful addition. But the fact that Mercer takes users beyond the very basics is to his credit, and it’s very good to see coverage of jquery, CCK, caching, and other topics that are key to recent versions of drupal but which could easily have been glossed over.

This is not a book for the seasoned developer coming from another platform or for those who have already have ample drupal experience (others have that covered) and it’s not really the “user manual” I’d like to find to hand on to drupal-using clients. But for those with an itch to build their own site and a sense that drupal might be the right tool, this volume is well worth a look.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher. You can find it at packt, amazon US, amazon UK and all sorts of other places.

[Chris Chinchilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book will suit anyone who has a need to create a content rich website. Whether you are: Adding a personal web page, Building a forum, Writing a collaborative book, Retailing goods, Creating a blog, Launching a community Website. This book will prove to be an indispensable companion. Both experts and beginners to computing alike will find the information contained herein to be accessible and easy to intuit.

About the Author

David Mercer was born in August 1976 in Harare, Zimbabwe. Having always had a strong interest in science, David came into regular contact with computers at university where he graduated cum laude with majors in applied math and math (although he minored in computer science). As a programmer and professional writer who has been writing both code and books for about nine years, he has worked on a number of well known titles, in various capacities, on a wide variety of topics. His books have sold tens of thousands of copies and have been translated into over 6 different languages to date. David finds that the challenges arising from the dichotomous relationship between the science (and art) of software programming and the art (and science) of writing is what keeps his interest in producing books piqued. He will no doubt continue to write professionally in the future. David balances his time between programming, reviewing, writing, and contributing to interesting web-based projects such as RankTracer and LinkDoozer. When he isn't working (which isn't that often) he enjoys playing guitar (generally on stage and unrehearsed) and getting involved in outdoor activities ranging from touch rugby and golf to water skiing and snowboarding. Visit RankTracer or find him on LinkDoozer where he is generally lurking.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, the geek in me is still alive and well. Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS) that complements any implementation of Moodle (why do the use these names?). Drupal allows users to blog, have discussions, create polls and make standard web pages. Most importantly for me it allows the creation of "books" which are group editable chaptered documents. Its much like a wiki application. This was ideal when we were looking for a place to make our Teacher Collaborative - much like the Resource Bank we had (have?) in ABSS. Like all software its only as useful as the creative thought that molds it . . .

[Sharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second subtitle, "How to setup, configure, and customize this powerful PHP/MySQL-based Open Source CMS," is the true one. This book really doesn't deal with how to use Drupal for site/community creation; the advice on planning the site is nothing that wouldn't be found in any web design handbook. The book's organization is tightly bound to the idea that the reader is setting up his/her own system, so it requires some effort to find desired information if you're running a system set up by someone else. But everything seems to be in the book somewhere, and everything is very, very clear.

[Jodie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gave an excellent overview of the Drupal system and its features. There were lots of screenshots, and the steps to performing a task are made clear. I'm a more advanced user of technology, yet I still found this book to be very helpful in explaining the basics of some of the lesser-known parts of the system, such as the Taxonomy module. I tried surfing the web and the Drupal website to get the information in this book and couldn't find it easily, so this book was definitely worth a read.

[Mike Ree · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was a good starter book but considering I downloaded and installed drupal a couple weeks before reading this book I managed to learn most things contained within before I ever read the book.

If you want to save yourself a couple weeks of learning curve on drupal, this would be a good book. If you have some skills and would like to improve them, i would stay online or purchase a more advanced book.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent book for a brief intro to Drupal 6. Covers the subject well, if not in depth. Enough info to allow a user who is not well informed on drupal to set up and get a site online in minimal time.

[Jan]

makes it seem simple!

[Tim Pixley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gave a birdseye view of what drupal was all about.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Looks good, will let you know. Will be building another drupal site soon.

[Kambham]

drupal is best

[Mercia McMahon]

interesting from the purely historical perspective of how difficult Drupal was to use with version 4.7. Might skim through his Drupal 7 update which is the book I meant to read!