Radio UserLand Kick Start [Paperback]

Rogers Cadenhead (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0672325632 | ISBN-13: 978-0672325632 | Publication Date: October 19, 2003 | Edition: 1

Radio UserLand is a powerful tool that is well known for its Web log publishing features, but it is a much larger content management and information aggregation tool. This $40 product has been purchased by more than 200,000 people, and is gaining popularity among those who are eager to make dynamic Web content through exploiting the growing amount of data available on the Internet.

Radio UserLand Kick Start provides everything a Web site developer needs to get started with the software, including a primer on the UserTalk programming language and the software¿s object database, which are considered the two main stumbling blocks for any Radio Userland user who wants to go one step further. Emphasis is placed on the software¿s XML-RPC, RSS, and XML functionality, which makes it easy to create Web services and use the Web services and information of others.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Radio Userland, in case you haven't heard of it, is a content aggregator. It collects story lists from Weblogs and other Internet sites--standardized protocols for doing this exist--and allows you to view them easily. It's also a Weblog editor that enables you to manipulate your own blog more efficiently than standard Web interfaces allow. In Radio Userland Kick Start, Rogers Cadenhead explains how to use the software, taking into account that Radio Userland is a new kind of application with which many of his readers will not be familiar. He does an admirable job of explaining both the general ideas (Weblogging and cherrypicking content) and the specifics of Radio Userland itself.

About half of this book is concerned with user-level features of Radio Userland (that is, everything short of programming); the other half has to do with programming in the UserTalk programming language (as well as a handful of related ones). The user-level coverage is comprehensive and patient enough to get you through the moments of confusion that are sure to strike as you learn about the Radio environment. The programming coverage is similarly complete, explaining both theory (like how RSS feeds work) and practice (there are lots of code listings that illustrate popular effects). This book covers its subject fully. --David Wall

Topics covered: How to use Radio Userland, its associated Weblog hosting service, the UserTalk language, and the RSS syndication format to consume and publish news and commentary on the Internet, even if you've never Weblogged before.

From the Back Cover

Radio UserLand is a powerful tool that is well known for its Web log publishing features, but it is a much larger content management and information aggregation tool. This $40 product has been purchased by more than 200,000 people, and is gaining popularity among those who are eager to make dynamic Web content through exploiting the growing amount of data available on the Internet.

Radio UserLand Kick Start provides everything a Web site developer needs to get started with the software, including a primer on the UserTalk programming language and the software's object database, which are considered the two main stumbling blocks for any Radio Userland user who wants to go one step further. Emphasis is placed on the software's XML-RPC, RSS, and XML functionality, which makes it easy to create Web services and use the Web services and information of others.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (October 19, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672325632
• ISBN-13: 978-0672325632
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,421,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The book you should own if you use Radio Userland, April 17, 2004

By 

Thomas Duff "Duffbert" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Radio UserLand Kick Start (Paperback)

I recently had the chance to review the book Radio Userland Kick Start by Rogers Cadenhead. So what's a blogger who doesn't use that software doing reviewing a book like that? It's always good to know what else is out there, and Rogers has done a really good job creating a guide to get you going.

The book is divided into four parts with the following chapters: Tuning in to Radio Userland; Publishing a Weblog; Enhancing a Weblog; Reading RSS Newsfeeds with the News Aggregator; Upstreaming Files to a Web Server; Designing a Weblog Theme; Calling Scripts to Create Weblog Content; Creating Outlines; Backing Up Data; Exploring the Object Database; Creating New Tables and Other Data; Editing a New Script; Writing Statements and Calling Verbs; Reading and Writing to the Database; Using Variables and Arrays; Working with Loops and Conditionals; Developing Web Services with XML-RPC; Sending and Receiving Email; Handling Errors and Debugging Scripts; Creating and Distributing Tools; RSS; OPML; XML; XML-RPC; Index

The book opened my eyes to the fact that Radio Userland isn't just "blogging software", but is in reality a development environment for content management. It edits your content, aggregates news feeds from other sources, and publishes the content to your hosting service. It also does scripting for building specialized tools to work with your content. Rogers' examples are easy to follow, and help you to understand exactly what types of tasks you can build on your own. Regardless of whether you're a blogger who can't program or a techno-guru who wants to start sharing thoughts, you should be able to benefit from this book.

The statement is made that Radio Userland has no official documentation manual and that the author hopes that you'll consider this book the next best thing. Based on what I see here, I would agree with him.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great resource for Radio users, February 21, 2005

By 

David R. Downes (Washington DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Radio UserLand Kick Start (Paperback)

Radio Userland is a wonderful program for creating and maintaining individual blogs. It is accessible to beginners with little computer knowledge, but also offers amazing flexibility and control to those users willing to learn more about its features. This book is a great introduction both to Radio's basic features and the more advanced capabilities. I was at a sort of advanced beginner stage when I found this book, and it helped me move to the point where I could write simple scripts to automate various features of my weblog, and, I hope, to do even more yet.