Choosing an Open Source CMS: Beginner's Guide [Paperback]

Nirav Mehta (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 2009

This is a practical guide that takes a task-centered approach. Each task is stepped through with detailed instructions. You will come across many step-by-step examples with plenty of screenshots and resources. This book provides all the support and guidance you need as you begin to work with CMSs. It even has additional tasks that you can carry out to build your skills further. Everything is oriented towards managing content with a CMS. This book is written for anyone who wants to start a web site and is looking for a good CMS. It is best suited for people who are selecting a CMS for their sites and people who will manage a CMS. Knowledge of web basics is certainly helpful, but not needed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Nirav Mehta

Nirav Mehta is renowned for his entrepreneurial ventures, his breakthrough ideas, and his contribution to open source. Nirav leads a software development company - Magnet Technologies - from India that specializes in Rich Internet Applications, Web, and Mobile. Nirav believes in simplifying the most complicated ideas and presenting them in lucid language.

Over the last ten years, Nirav has written and spoken on a variety of topics. He has also been instrumental in localization efforts in India and training programmers to be effective developers.

He has set up a website completely dedicated to the book. You can find more information on it here: cmsbook.info

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (April 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847196225
• ISBN-13: 978-1847196224
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,285,188 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars superficial treatment of an over ambitious topic, May 12, 2009

By 

E. Intl (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Choosing an Open Source CMS: Beginner's Guide (Paperback)

I bought this book for a significant discount directly from the publisher (PACKT) and immediately downloaded the PDF. It was unprotected and personalized with my name/address - but had many blank, missing or garbled pages. When I downloaded it again, it had the same problems, just different pages - but with 2 copies, I was able to red the entire book in a couple of hours.

The writing style is light and pleasant, but the content is superficial and disappointing. Maybe I was expecting too much (I'm trying to decide which CMSes to adopt), but I found very little useful advice I have not picked up already from casually browsing the Internet. I thought I was a beginner, but this book is targeted at someone without any knowledge of existing CMS options any any idea of how to start.

The one choice nugget I took away was a reference to a website affiliated with the author - www.opensourcecms.com - a collection of open source CMS demos that you can immediately use without the hassle of downloading and installing on your own server.