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Open Source CMS Guide in Print

2006-08-30 admin

Content Management Systems (CMS) are becoming increasingly popular
thanks to the variety of solutions that require no coding skills to upload and manage website content.

Many prefer to use open-source CMS that can be downloaded for free
without obligation. But all CMS require some degree of technical knowledge, and open source ones are often unsupported

Many users, independently from their technical background, may need to
go through a learning curve if they want to get hands on the application, especially if they want to install and use the most advanced features.

There are different ways to go about it. The most common is to start working as part of the developers community, sign up for the forum and
get involved. Get your hands dirty. Most developers and users learn as they go, and their main user guide is the documentation to be found on
the relevant websites. That is generally the most comprehensive and up
to date source of user information.

Some however, especially beginners and non tech people, may still need
the support of a manual printed on paper. Not many Open Source CMS have their own book on paper. Drupal is a popular CMS that has been
around for a number of years, and recently its 4.7 version was released.

The book entitled "Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals and Community Websites" written by David Mercer, published by PACKT
is actually a physical publication, that guides users through the installation and configuration of Drupal in a Windows environment
(because it is expected that the Linux community are sorted out already).

More and more people, irrespective of their roles and background, are learning about open source CMS. This book may be right for them.

Thirathep Chonmaitree an IT lecturer and would be Drupal adept downloaded the application and used the book as a guide to help him
along. He answers some of our questions:

Summarise what's the book about

This book is the guide in creating online systems using Drupal. It explains how to set up Drupal on your machine and also guide you through the basic concept of Drupal in setting up the blogs, forums,
portal, etc.

Is the book written to support any particular environment?

The author does specifically focus on Windows platform. The instructions in this book focus on Window platform only, however, the author actually touches on Unix platform a little bit in the
installation chapter. The book does not really tell the reader upfront about this though, this should be displayed in the title area perhaps.
It might be better if this would be obvious for the readers.

Intended Audience?

The manual is not specifically addressed to a technical audience, as no specific pre-requisite level competence is recommended, but as the chapters unfold it becomes clear that some Windows administrator
knowledge would be highly beneficial in order to run the necessary commands with confidence

This book has 10 chapters with one appendix, divided into different parts. First part is the introduction, including installation and setting up Drupal on your machine. Here readers will find some
background and philosophy about the open source community . Then comes
the basic information on how to set up a web site , then in the third part users can find how to install the most advanced features. All
chapters that related to each part can be shuffled together within the same content and the continuous of the topic.

In chapter one, the author actually put the reader into the world of Drupal with his easy-to-understand introduction. Chapter 2 and 3 are dedicated to explain the the development environment including the installation and configuration. He then adds some functionally into
your basic site from chapter 3 with the guidelines in chapter 4. An explanation of permissioning and roles can be found in chapter 5. The
remainder of the book is dedicated to advanced features including delivery, categorization, enriched features and more. The
book also touches upon user interface and website look and feel, and includes flexinode and AdSense. Lastly, the instruction on how to run your website safe and sound is in Chapter 10. In the appendix reader learns how to deploy your Drupal web site and how to safely import all the necessary files to the host.

Is the book useful?

The book is definitely useful for beginners and the novices of the internet, also to those who are systematic in their approach to application development.

How could it be more useful?

One important point of having a book like this one is to have some tips and tricks for user to get excited with. It is deliberately important to advance the knowledge of the novice user in knowing more
and more later on. The tips and tricks are the juice of the knowing soul. Once the users get their feet wet, more knowledge will be required and the demand will come. With this book, it does not have that drive in bursting the curiosity of the reader to know more.

Are there enough illustrations?

The illustrations seem secondary since it is not a step-by-step instruction book of Drupal.

Are the instructions for installation and development sufficient to get the job done?

The instructions are not really clear enough. The reader needs to find some more information based on each environment in order to set up Drupal smoothly.

Does the book give any additional knowledge to what is available on the web?

Definitely not!!! The website does have a lot more uptodate information about Drupal than the book. The drupal.org web site actually has a wide range of coverage in the installation tip and trick into setting up Drupal.

Compare this book to other manuals you may have used before

There is the different approach in writing the manual. It depends on
the author's perspective of getting information across to the reader. Each author who wrote software manual has his own perspective of the
audience and the difficulty level in mind.

Is this book enough to get started?

Yes, I think so. The beginner should actually receive enough knowledge in creating a web site using Drupal.

What other knowledge would be beneficial?

A little bit of system administration and web site developer knowledge
would be beneficial but not necessarily required in relating to the content of this book.

Should readers buy this book? Yes, no, why?

Yes if you are a beginner. This book gears its content in helping someone gets started on the web site development using Drupal. No if you are serious CMS developer. You cannot find high technical description about CMS of Drupal in this book.

www.packtpub.com

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