Drupal User's Guide: Building and Administering a Successful Drupal-Powered Web Site [Paperback]

Emma Jane Hogbin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 29, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0137041292 | ISBN-13: 978-0137041299 | Edition: 1

Finally, Drupal Made Easy: A Step-By-Step Guide from Planning to Finished Site

 

The open source content management system Drupal offers amazing flexibility, sophistication, and power. The catch? Many first-time users find it difficult to get started, and most Drupal books don’t help with the initial stages. Drupal™ User’s Guide is different: easy to use, fun to read, practical, and complete!

 

Long-time Drupal site developer Emma Jane Hogbin guides you through every step of building sites with Drupal, from installation and site planning through launching your first site. Drawing on her experience teaching thousands of beginners, she covers both Drupal and Web design tasks, showing exactly how they fit together.

 

Drupal™ User’s Guide shows how to use Drupal 7’s newest improvements to build more modern, manageable sites for any business or organization. Hogbin covers crucial topics other Drupal books ignore, including search engine optimization and accessibility.

 

• Walk through installing Drupal on Mac OS X and Linux Web servers
• Get comfortable with Drupal 7’s new administrative interface
• Build a basic site in minutes
• Create S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely) site goals
• Audit your existing content so you can make the most of it
• Explore, choose, and customize Drupal themes
• Walk through building a community site with private discussion area
• Build a complete business association directory site
• Use Web forms to capture and display any kind of content
• Take advantage of Drupal’s powerful Views module
• Choose the right Drupal and third-party modules to build virtually any site
• Optimize your site for Google and other search engines
• Use advanced techniques to improve your visitors’ experiences

 

If you want to create great sites with Drupal–with no hassle, no confusion, and no degree in computer science–this is the book for you!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Emma Jane Hogbin makes Drupal easier through her books, videos, classes, and conference presentations. She has been teaching Internet technologies since 2002 and has been building Web sites since the 1990s. Hogbin has taught Drupal in France, Belgium, Hungary, Canada, New Zealand, England, and across the U.S. She has served as technical college instructor at Humber College and Seneca College and worked on curriculum development for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Her first book, Front End Drupal, is recognized as the most important book for Drupal designers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (September 29, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0137041292
• ISBN-13: 978-0137041299
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #123,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Emma Jane Hogbin teaches designers how to make beautiful Web sites using Drupal. Emma's first book, Front End Drupal, is recognized in the industry as the most important book for Drupal designers. She has been teaching Internet technologies since 2002 and has been building Web sites for well over a decade.

Emma is a highly sought-after speaker and trainer. Her presentations have taken her to France, Belgium, Hungary, Canada, New Zealand, England and the United States. In addition to her engaging conference presentations, Emma has also worked as a technical college instructor at Humber College and Seneca College, and has worked on curriculum development for Humber College and the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

Emma encourages non-traditional participation in technology through craft and believes that everyone is capable of mastering the tools that surround them. To help make technology more engaging she open sourced one of her knitting patterns so that others could knit their own Drupal Socks too. Every year Emma sponsors an award for "Most Creative Use of Technology by a Senior Female Student" at her old high school, West Hill Secondary School, in Owen Sound, Canada.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book for beginners November 11, 2011

By Michael Anello

Format:Paperback

Emma Jane continues to be a voice that resonates with new Drupal users as well as themers of all levels with her clear writing style and holistic approach to building Drupal sites. This book is well-written with chapters about less-geeky, but equally important aspects of web site development (site planning, information architecture, usability) that are often ignored in other Drupal books. When she does dive deeper into Drupal site building (most effectively with multiple case studies), her ability to focus on the important parts and not get bogged down in details (as is very easy to do with Drupal) is what makes this book a valuable resource for beginners.

If you're new to the community (and starting with Drupal 7), this should be the first book you purchase.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive, but approachable! March 5, 2012

By Jeff Eaton

Format:Paperback

I'll cut to the chase: "Drupal User's Guide" is a good book, and if you're trying to get your bearings in the often-confusing world of Drupal site building, you should buy it. Period.

I'm not necessarily the target audience: I've been a Drupal developer for almost six years now, and I tend to chew on more esoteric and nerdy problems than the ones this book tackles. I do a lot of training and education for clients and customers, though, and the approach that author Emma Jane Hobgin takes is fantastic for those who aren't already neck-deep in the world of Drupal (or a similar web CMS). She's an experienced author, teacher, and trainer who knows Drupal inside out, and it really shows.

The book often mixes technical information about Drupal-specific features with introductions to the "soft skills" needed to use them effectively. Drupal's FieldAPI, for example, isn't just about clicking and dragging. Using it effectively requires understanding how to break down something like "An article" or "An event" into discrete chunks of information, and Hobgin tackles that without getting tangled up in the technical weeds. Similarly, chapters on installing Drupal include useful overviews of the other stuff that's needed -- web hosting, domain registration, and information about how to cope with "custom installers" provided by soem web hosts. The chapters of the book that deal with planning your site's structure also touch on SEO and accessibility.

Many of those secondary topics have enough potential depth to justify their own books, but their inclusion works well. While that information can be safely skipped by old hands and experienced web developers, the result is a Drupal guide with valuable context, something that's often missing from purely technical books.

Hobgin also pays attention to the current trends in the world of third-party Drupal addons. The chapters that cover design and theming explain how to build custom Drupal templates, naturally, but the book also gives some space to point-and-click design tools like Sweaver. While some people will always want to roll their own designs from scratch, it's great to see all the options covered.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Have to Start Your Drupal Site November 13, 2011

By Scott L. Wolpow

Format:Paperback

Drupal is not easy. It has a very steep learning curve. Building a website is more complex than most people think.

Hogbin spends the first third of the book instructing you on what goes into a great site. I never realized how vital that is to a person who has little experience in building real sites.

If you are building a Drupal site, then congratulations, you are on the road to being a serious developer.
From examples of types of sites, to getting into the role of the users of the site, this book cover it.

As a starting point, you cannot go wrong.

I highly recommend this book and I have added it to my list of books I give my clients.
In fact buy this book just for the planning chapters.