Product Description

How to setup, configure and customise this powerful PHP/MySQL based Open Source CMS

• Install, configure, administer, maintain and extend Drupal.
• Control access with users, roles and permissions
• Structure your content using Drupal's powerful CMS features
• Includes coverage of release 4.7
  

In Detail

Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems on the internet. Based on PHP/MySQL, its power and flexibility combined with its exceptional design mean it is already on the way to becoming the de facto standard for CMS Websites. Drupal's modular design and structured source code make it both highly flexible and easily extended and modified. Drupal is extremely scalable, making it ideal for both a simple personal website as well as an industrial strength commercial or institutional web presence.

Drupal is a model open source project in that it has a large, friendly community of people who contribute to the project in various ways. Drupal is not only free and easy to use, but this community provides on going mutual support.

Drupal's power means choosing an initial pathway can be daunting. The flexibility and power of its content management features mean the right approach needs to be taken. This book takes you from initial set up through site design and creation in a series of carefully structured steps. While there are a few advanced topics that are beyond the scope of the book, all of the core stages of creating a website using Drupal are covered in detail.

What you will learn from this book?

Chapter 1 introduces you to the world of Drupal and looks at where Drupal comes from, where its going and what it can offer you. Because it is important to understand the nature of the tasks which lie ahead, it also discusses how to plan and build your website, taking a sneak preview of the book's demo Website in the process. Finally, we scrutinize the Drupal community and learn how to make the most of Drupal as an organized, living entity and not just a piece of software.

Chapter 2 deals with how to get everything you need up and running on a development machine and also briefly looks at how all the requisite technologies gel together to produce your working Drupal site. Once everything is up and running, and after looking over some of the more common installation problems, the chapter presents a short tour of Drupal in order to give you an idea of what to expect.

Chapter 3 looks at the most general settings which all Drupal administrators need to contend with. Everything from determining your site's name to dealing with the cache or file system settings gets treated here before we look at more focused and complex issues in the chapters to come.

Chapter 4 sees us adding functionality to the newly created site. The focus of this chapter is really on modules and how they can be added and enabled, or even how to obtain modules that are not part of the standard distribution. Since blocks are often required to display the functionality provided by modules, this chapter ends off with a discussion on how to control blocks.

Chapter 5 concerns itself with the topic of access control. Drupal has a sophisticated role based access control system, which is fundamentally important for controlling how users access your site. This chapter will give you the information you need to implement whatever access controls you require.

Chapter 6 gets to the heart of the matter by beginning the book's coverage on content. Working with content, what content types are available, administering content and even a discourse on some of the more common content related modules serve as a basis for moving to more advanced content related matters that follow in the next chapter.

Chapter 7 gives you the edge when it comes to creating engaging and dynamic content. While this chapter doesn't require you to be an expert in HTML, PHP and CSS it does introduce you to the basics and shows how, with a little knowledge, extremely powerful and professional content can be created. That's only half the story, because later on it looks at categorization and how this particular feature of Drupal sets it apart from everything else out there.

Chapter 8 gives you a run down of how attractive interfaces are created in Drupal through the use of themes. As well as discussing briefly some of the considerations that must be taken into account when planning your website, it ends off by looking at how to make important modifications to your chosen theme.

Chapter 9 really adds the icing on the cake by looking at a host of more advanced topics. From creating flexible content types and generating revenue from ads, all the way through to building dynamic content using Ajax, you will find something to enhance your website and add that something special.

Chapter 10 takes a pragmatic look at the type of tasks you will need to be proficient in in order to successfully run and maintain a Drupal site. Whether its setting up cron jobs or making backups of your database, everything you need to do throughout the course of running your newly created website will be covered here.

Appendix A deals with the all important topic of deployment. Because all major work should be done on a copy of your Website on a development machine, this appendix presents a sound process for taking the finished product and making it available for public consumption on your host site.

Who this book is written for?

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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #437710 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-11
• Released on: 2006-05-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 284 pages

About the Author

David Mercer

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.

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Customer Reviews

Great start for beginners.
Drupal is an incredibly powerful CMS, but with that power, comes a lot of complexity. It is, in some ways, very different than most other CMS's out there, which adds to the learning curve. But many would say that it may be one of the strongest because of these differences... this is something each user will have to determine for themselves.

Who this book is not for... anyone who has a strong understanding of Drupal, perhaps already customizing Drupal.

Who this book is for... anyone starting out new with Drupal, struggling to gain an understanding, and certainly anyone new to CMS that has chosen Drupal or is considering Drupal.

I think previous posts did a good job of recapping some of the key sections, so I won't rehash those as they are pretty good and fair descriptions.

As the book even recommends, there is much information on the Drupal site, both online documentation and in the forums. So why buy a book? The online Drupal documentation is primarily a set of technical documents... not strictly dry technical, but still primarily focused on the "what." However, anyone just getting started will likely feel overwhelmed or just confused with trying to dig through that type of documentation. It is a must, but may be better off left for doing after reading this book. And some of us just like to page through a book and have a reference at our side, not to mention, reading tons of information online can be a bit harsh on the eyes after awhile.

At the time of this writing, to my knowledge, there is only one other book, "Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress" from Apress. As I have both, I can say that it is also an excellent book. The immediate thought may be "which one should I get?" Perhaps both, but either way, don't misjudge by size, as the Apress book combines three scripts into one book, so actual content length is fairly comparable between the two.

I would highly recommend this book as a starting point for anyone new. It provides a few more visuals with screenshots than the other book does, and does a great job walking you through a "hypothetical" example, much like a tutorial. The Apress book though would be an excellent next step, as it goes into a much deeper level, including multi-sites (running multiple sites off of one Drupal installation) which isn't even covered in this book, and more details on themeing. However, the Apress book might also be a bit overwhelming if you are really starting out at square one.

I had actually gone through the exact opposite approach... read the online documentation first, then the Apress book, then this book. The two books are laid out a little differently, and while there is obviously some overlap, Mercer and Douglass both have their own styles and presented information a little differently, so you may find that things you are confused on in one book may click in the other. That was certainly my case and I can only imagine that things would have clicked even faster had I read everything in the opposite order as I had.

If you've read the Apress book or any of the online docs, you'll still gain from Mercer's book, however I'd highly recommend starting here first if you can.

I would liked to have seen a little more information, and would really have liked to have seen more information on themeing and multi-site. These can be quite complex, but David does a nice job of presenting information so it would have been nice to see how he did on presenting these more complex topics. Both this and the Apress book are listed as Beginner-Intermediate, but I would consider this book to be more on the Beginner side and the Apress book to be more on the Intermediate side... again, making them a pretty good 1+2 combination.

Good intro but not too indepth
This is a good introduction to the concepts behind drupal and explains some concepts like taxonomy and access control with great depth. For an aspiring drupal site admin it is a great book to read.

Once.

It is not an in-depth guide to drupal, but more of a technical overview of the concept. Most of the content is available in similar form online.

It is very easy to understand and if you learn things better with a physical book, this is a good choice.

Good Basics and also allows you to move go further
Drupal has suffered somewhat in recent months, in comparison to other CMSs such as Joomla. Whereas Joomla, which many developers consider to be a technically inferior CMS, has steamrollered ahead, Drupal has kept on plodding along. If you don't believe me, go to Google Trends and see how the number of people searching for Joomla has doubled every three months while Drupal has inched slowly upwards, barely doubling in the last two years. Part of Joomla's comparative success has been its branding success. Whereas Drupal has a slightly intimidating blue head for a logo and a staunchly community-orientated focus, Joomla presents a more friendly image with a colourful logo and plenty of commercial options available.

Whether the Drupal community wants or needs to keep up with such a rapid expansion is one question, but books such as "Drupal - Creating Blogs, Forms, Portals and Community Websites" by David Mercer can certainly help encourage more users.
It is stronger than many other CMS books for two key reasons, First, it hasn't been been translated in the somewhat uneven and typo-strewn manner of similar books. Second, it attempts to show people the wider picture of what is involved in building a website - it delves into how to plan and think about your site rather than just the nuts and bolts of how to build it.

The first chapter introduces Drupal with a heavy emphasis on using Drupal.org to find out more. This is sensible as so much introductory material is available online. The second chapter on setting up a development environment is the chapter I had most problems with, because it doesn't quite explain things simply enough for someone setting out to build their own website for the first time. If you now how to use shell command to set up a Drupal site on your own computer you'll be fine but otherwise you'll just be following instructions without gaining much understanding.

The book then hits its stride in Chapter 3 (administration), Chapter 4 (frontend functionality) and Chapter 5 (access control). For anyone wanting to learn how to run a Drupal site, this middle section is invaluable as are Chapters 6 and 7 deal with adding content to your site. This section alone makes the book worth the purchase price because of its numerous screenshots and clear explanations.

Chapter 8 is the theme chapter and is more involved with modifications to existing themes than explaining how to create them. Chapter 9 is an odd mixture of "advanced features" that could do with more focus and explanation. At one point it mentions, "use something like the following command line..." which is not very useful for beginners. Partly however this is a limitation of Drupal itself which does require quite a lot of code work to run particular task. Chapter 10 goes beyond the title of the book to focus not just on creating but on running your Drupal site, including throttling, cron jobs and SEO.

Overall, "Drupal - Creating Blogs, Forms, Portals and Community Websites" is recommended. I've given it to clients in recent weeks and will continue to do so. It explains the Drupal basics but also has enough meat to help people to move beyond to develop a more advanced site.