Customer Reviews

PostNuke Content Management

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As more and more websites come online, and as existing websites might want to have more customisation, the need for a powerful content management system grows. There are several out there, proprietary or free. Here, Hatch explains in depth the free PostNuke system. It's a spinoff from PHP-Nuke, an earlier free CMS. (Though the book doesn't really go into any comparisons between the two.)

PostNuke uses PHP and the MySQL database. If you like, you might consider PostNuke to be a very "webby" way of accessing MySQL. It is laid out in an explicitly modular fashion, with each component describing a block of functionality. Hatch shows how this partitioning is in no small part responsible for a lot of its success. Many independent developers have been able to easily put together modules specific to their websites. Several chapters are devoted to examples of these modules. A chapter each on user interaction, communities, online gaming and money making. Within these chapters are numerous case studies.

It would certainly help you if you were already cognisant of PHP and HTML. Knowledge of MySQL is also good, though not as important. The module coding is in PHP, and that is where most of your time will be spent.

It was nice to have a PostNuke book to use as a reference guide since there are no others out there (as of 12/2007). The book provided informative background on PostNuke as well as other modules and blocks you can add. The information however can be found online after a bit of searching. Like any other technology book, they do become outdated, and this one is getting there. A number of links to 3rd party modules are no longer available, and some info is no longer pertinent to PostNuke V.8.
Still, I was able to find some core information I needed. I'd only pay $15 for it now.