Customer Reviews

Using Drupal

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book has been eagerly awaited as the first O'Reilly volume covering Drupal, and having been written by such a rockstar team of Drupal pros.

It's also the first book to focus on a wide range of third party contributed modules rather than just Drupal core, or a narrow subject area of modules. It's written for Drupal 6, although the book would be fairly applicable to Drupal 5 (with the caveat that one of the major modules, Views, is completely different for Drupal 6 - the underlying concepts are similar though).

The first thing that struck me about this book is its fundamentally different approach from most early Drupal books, as well as the kinds of books you find in the early stages of any new technology's mainstream acceptance. It's not simply a higher quality rehashing of handbook pages and technical how-tos, but it has an incredibly cohesive and clever process through the entire book.

Every main chapter of the book will:
* Introduce an example scenario that's easy to relate to. For example, an early chapter that covers creating a simple site for a Mom & Pop shop has this sample case study: "in order to update the web page content each week, they currently pay their next-door neighbor Goldie to hand-edit the page"
* Outline what you're going to be building
* Explain why certain decisions or trade-offs were made when creating this site, and highlight alternative choices depending on your particular situation
* Explains step-by-step how to complete the site with lots of tables and screenshots, pointing out gotchas and important concepts along the way
* Ends with a "Taking It Further" section with suggestions for other features or future modules to watch that are related to the site recipe

The hands-on approach of this book takes you through a single, cohesive example in each chapter. This gets you building a site to completion at every step. This approach reminds me of the different ways to learn a musical instrument such as piano or guitar - you can start with theory and technique and practice your scales first, or you can just learn some chords and be able to whip out a few simple pop songs your first afternoon. This book is the chords.

It also has some great moments of explaining fuzzy concepts that are difficult to understand without significant Drupal experience. The Using Drupal team shows their years of expertise training users and implementing Drupal sites in gems such as this, describing whether you should use taxonomy or a CCK field for content categorization:
A general rule of thumb is that if you can remove the field and the content type still makes sense, use Taxonomy. An article filed under a "Technology" category is still an article if you remove the category association, so Taxonomy is a good fit. If the field is part of a piece of content, such as an album's recording artist, then CCK is generally a better choice.

Using Drupal will take you through building a:

* Simple website with blog for a mom & pop grocery store, including a WYSIWYG editor and uploading images to content
* Job posting board for a university, which introduces the key CCK and Views modules
* Product reviews site with user ratings, Amazon product data importing, some simple CSS tweaks using the CSS Injector module, and more CCK/Views
* Wiki, which brings in revisions, input formats, and Pathauto module
* Local arts news site, which takes you into Actions, Triggers, Workspace, Workflow (both as a concept and module), and Views Bulk Operations to create an administration page
* Photo gallery, with ImageField, ImageCache, much more Views and some site display tweaks
* Multilingual website with a strong overview of concepts, then Locale, i18n, and the Localization Client
* Event management site with calendar and attendees
* Online store using Ubercart (focuses on basic store setup, products, attributes, and orders - you'll still need to set up payment methods)

It also covers a few additional topics:

* An overview of Drupal, and where to get help
* Basic theming (this is the only time you'll see code!)
* Installing and upgrading Drupal and modules
* How to choose modules and participate in the community

So what's it missing?

Obviously Using Drupal only scratches the surface of the many, many types of sites you can build with Drupal. There are a few major topics you won't find covered in here - membership sites with protected user access, Organic Groups (a chapter that didn't quite make it due to module readiness for D6), more advanced magazine/newspaper-style sites with modules like Node Queue and Panels, multimedia (there's another book for that!), or social networking sites. However, I think they picked a great selection of site recipes to cover in a relatively small amount of space, and each recipe will get you a solid site built.

The book will also direct you to two additional resources available online: the finished demo site for each chapter for you to browse, and a download package containing installation profiles with the same versions of modules and themes used on each site. The installation profiles will set you up with a clean slate with your modules all prepared for you to start following along step-by-step in each chapter.

Other things I really love about this book:

* It isn't afraid to recommend helpful modules early, such as Administration Menu
* It highlights common newbie gotchas, such as using the blog module when you really want a story
* It points out future modules or alternatives to watch, for example, the WYSIWYG API
* It gives contrib modules such as CCK and Views the foregrounding they deserve when learning Drupal

This is the book I wish I had when learning Drupal. We're even giving away copies of it at [...] because we love it so much. I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone new to Drupal, intermediate users who want to take their skills to the next level or brush up on Drupal 6/Views 2, or anyone who actually needs to build a site similar to the recipes listed above. And, y'know, anyone else who's ever built or wanted to build a website :)

I'm just learning Drupal and this book has been invaluable. Via a "case study" approach, Using Drupal shows you many well-trodden paths through the Drupal forest using off-the-shelf modules to build out 9 sites.

As a Drupal newcomer comfortable writing code (like me), your first instinct will probably be to start adding PHP to your theme, your blocks, etc. to do what you want. Using Drupal shows you how other developers have solved many common problems/features and packaged up the solutions as modules. It's like being able to start out on your first solo project after being on a team that has already completed 9 Drupal projects. You'll already have a set of "tried and true" design patterns to leverage and know how Drupal sites tend to be built.

Using Drupal can only cover a handful of the numerous Drupal modules out there, but it saves you time by pointing out some of the most useful and commonly-used modules and showing you how to use them in practical situations.

This book is not a comprehensive introduction to the basics (how to install Drupal, basic configuration, etc.), but once you have the basics and want to start "Using Drupal" on real projects, this should be your next read.

This is one of many books coming out that focuses on the very confusing contributed modules aspect of Drupal. There are so many and it's hard to know what's available, and what choices to make. The book has a focus on some of the most popular ones, like CCK and Views, but covers many others as well. I particularly like that it often compares the options available for doing a specific thing and explains why they chose the one they did, and why you might choose another one.

I gave the book four stars instead of five because the printed edition needed some serious proofing. If you get the printed edition, be sure to go to the website where you can find errata (corrections). It was very confusing and time-consuming to figure out that figures were out of sync with the figure references in the text in some cases. There were also some typos that make some instructions technically wrong. But given how much people wanted to get this book, maybe they rushed it.

I'm a rank amateur when it comes to Drupal. I'm not even proficient with HTML. Stylesheets? What are those?

I do have a hosted domain, and I wanted a good looking web presence, but didn't want to pay someone to create and maintain my web site (I'm semi-retired and don't want to spend the money). I briefly looked at Joomla, but it appeared too restrictive and not that easy to learn. I decided to give Drupal a spin.

Not that Drupal is easy to learn by any stretch. Drupal's many, many options, along with the ever-increasing cadre of third-party developers, gives virtually unlimited customization opportunities.

I have been looking for a good Drupal manual for a while, and "Using Drupal" is the best I've run across. Not that I've been able to find many at all.

This book is good in that you can pick it up and get started without having to know anything about Drupal. The book is centered around developing several different types of web sites, which is absolutely fantastic if you happen to be developing a similar type web site.

But even if you aren't I think it's a really good book. It introduces you to underlying concepts of Drupal, as well as relaying great information on several of the more popular third-party modules.

I decided that I was going to read the book from cover to cover before going back to my computer and trying to implement some of the concepts. I'm glad I did - even if you run across something that seems directly applicable to what you (think) you want to do, they probably present at least one alternative elsewhere.

All in all it's a good Drupal book. I'm glad I bought it and I'm sure I'll be going back to it for tips and hints frequently.

Drupal is an incredibly powerful CMS and like anything with its flexibility, Drupal quickly gets complicated. As much as I like the system, one of the problems that I've had with it is that Drupal has been built upon a unique set of assumptions/principles, which really haven't been covered in a book. Until now.

This is the missing link between the introductory Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6: Build your own professional blog, forum, portal or community website with Drupal 6, which does a nice job of getting a basic Drupal site set up but doesn't really show how to deeply customize the CMS, and Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional), which is written for programmers. Both are good for what they are, but don't help the reasonably knowledgeable web designer, not programmer, wring all the juicy goodness out of Drupal.

Through a series of well chosen example projects, Using Drupal, opens the door to the power and extensibility of Drupal and shows us not just how to do things but why. It's the why part that makes this book special. Drupal is different and understanding the philosophy behind the difference and how to think the Drupal way makes Drupal special.

Even though I've built a dozen working Drupal sites over the last few years, a couple pretty complex and customized, I've felt that there was more I could be getting from the system. Oh, I can theme a site and set up users and modules. I could add custom forms and views, which my clients thought was great, but I always felt that here was something I wasn't quite grasping. No longer.

Besides getting a ton of practical advice from well chosen and explained examples, Using Drupal has given me the key to thinking understanding the system. Brilliant.

The authors could only cover a few of the many, many possible modules that extend Drupal. The ones they did cover are really useful, though, and form the core of most customization. What's great, if I may repeat myself, is that they way these add-ons are used and described teach Drupal principles, making this more than a cookbook.

The single best source of Drupal information on the web is the site lullabot.com. It comes as no surprise that the authors of this book are the development team that puts out Lullabot.

I looked at a lot of Drupal books. I had already installed Drupal. I secured my site. Then I tinkered with a few modules. I quickly realized I could lose a lot of time exploring modules. Amusing, but not efficient. I needed a guide to some common modules to get me going. This book does that.

If you're having trouble installing Drupal, this book won't help you.
If you're a hardcore CSS or PHP hacker, this book is not for you.
If you want to go crazy creating your own themes and modules, there are other books.
But if you want a good guide to quickly building and customizing a site, this is it.

The book is built around use-cases for typical "types" of sites, introducing modules suitable for each. Notable strengths include detailed hands-on examples the awesomely powerful CCK and Views modules. Although often treated in the Drupal community as "advanced" topics, it's hard to imagine even a moderately functional site today that does not have equivalent functionaltiy. (They really should be part of Drupal core!) This book shows how easy it can be to use CCK and Views to great effect. All example sites can be downloaded from the publisher's site.

The book does have some weaknesses, none fatal, and none unique. As with most tech trade books, it was trivially out of date the moment it was published. Having the source for each site available solves that problem, but if you're working from the latest release build of Drupal (as you should be) then you need to accept some discrepancies and read for the forest, not the trees.

A bigger weakness is the page-flipping annoyance. The heavy use of figures and tables is essential for this book. And it's clear that attention was given to to placement relative to supporting text. But with typically two figures/tables per page (!) no pagination scheme could possibly produce a graceful result. It would have been easier for the reader if the tables and figures were simply collected at the end of each chapter. Maintaining two bookmarks is not hard; readers and editors alike would have been happier. (minus 1/2 star)

The other major weakness is the typesetting. Linotype Birka is just harsh on the eyes and pretty awful for books which are meant to be read character-by-character to follow examples. Do not attempt to read this book in low light! O'Reilly please note: other publishers (APress and Manning in particular) have realized that long tracks of technical detail are more pleasant to read in heavier, "boring" typefaces. (minus 1/2 star)

After a year of struggling through and figuring out how to use Drupal 5 -- and tentatively experimenting with Drupal 6, only to throw in the towel -- this book came to my rescue.

If you're not a hardcore programming geek, it is insane to use the Drupal content management system without a good reference manual or two. Tiny problems that have relatively easy solutions can swallow days and weeks of your time. Finding answers on the Drupal website is hit or miss, its forum is generally helpful, but occasionally rude to overwhelmed newcomers. To be clear, a simple out-of-the-box Drupal website isn't necessarily that hard to put up. But as you try to fine tune the graphic layout, add functions, and expand the breadth of your site, you get a geometric increase in complexity.

Of the Drupal books I've read, this has been the best. It walks through sample websites examining a wide range of Drupal 6 functionality, explains the CMS clearly and frankly, reminds you to follow best practices, and removes much of the system's mystery. I didn't see anything in this book that would be overly complicated for a newcomer with limited web development skills, but knowing a bit of HTML, PHP, and Javascript is immensely helpful.

This book walks you though the basic setup of an amazing variety of websites using existing contributed modules. In every chapter I found my self saying "WOW! That's cool!". My mind was opened to new possibilities. Just check out the table of contents and you'll see what I mean: a photo gallery, a wiki, a newspaper with editorial workflow, an e-commerce site... Wow! Drupal is really amazing in the possibilities made possible by the contributors. "Using Drupal" will help you see what's possible and help you get started. At the end of each chapter is a "Taking it Further" section that makes recommendations for other modules that would improve the site you just created, which I found very informative even though they did not cover the details.

Using Drupal is centered around Drupal 6, and makes extensive use of the CCK Content and Views (version 2) modules. CCK/Views are a very powerful way to develop web content types, and create different ways of viewing or referencing that content. The several sample websites that make use of CCK and Views will give you a good idea of how they work, and what is possible.

The book does have it's flaws, and at times it's a little rough. Not inexcusably so, but be prepared for a few moments when what is supposed to happen when following the examples does not happen. There is a significant bug in the core Drupal modules that will present itself in Chapter 6 if you follow the "Hands-on" text, and the authors fail to make note of it, which left this reader wondering what he did wrong. There are also many occasions when the authors walk you through setting up some modules without adequately explaining the "why" of what you're doing.

The target audience is decidedly not for the developer type. Knowledge of PHP scripting, CSS, HTML, etc. is certainly not required. In fact, a complete novice to the world of web development can probably follow most of the setup of the sample websites without too much trouble, if they have a bit of help in actually installing the files and setting up a database. This in itself is a testament to the power of Drupal.

That's not to say developers cannot benefit. This can actually be a good thing for developers who tend to just go off and solve problems themselves. Better to get a lay of the land and see what other developers have contributed and see if you can use it. Odds are remarkably good that you can, and if it's just not quite there yet, you may find yourself wanting to get involved in the open source community to make it happen. Playing around with contributed modules is likely to help you see what's possible, and help you "grok" the Drupal way of doing things. Actually, I wish I'd read this book before "Pro Drupal Development" from Apress, but it was not available at the time.

Overall, this is a wonderful and welcome addition to the material available for aspiring Drupal developers. I will no doubt be preordering the 2nd edition just like I did the 1st edition. I almost want to give it 4 stars because of it's flaws, but this is such a useful book that the pluses overwhelm the minuses. So 5 stars it is.

After learning XHTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL over the last year, I determined that I really needed to learn a content management system if I was going to take any of my ideas, or the sites I manage, into the modern age. Drupal had been recommended to me by a friend that had used it to develop a fairly extensive travel website.

I found Using Drupal to be a great introduction to Drupal. Like most Open Source software, I found the documentation on the [...] site to be very confusing. It was difficult to find a real entry point in anything posted there. Using Drupal provided that entry point, getting the user up and running and running through most of the basic functionality of Drupal, as well as giving some ideas for expanding into more complex ideas. That said, there are limitations to the book. One of the main drawbacks is that many of the modules that the book uses are very basic in nature or the book doesn't delve that deeply into them. A prime example is the chapter on event registration. While it is functional at a basic level, it is not really usable in the real world as the actual registration consists solely of having a user (who has signed up for an account) click an 'attending' link. That doesn't allow much flexibility for how many guests they might bring, options for food selection, purchasing tickets, etc. The book does mention that there are some other modules that have more functionality, but a look at them seems that most aren't that far along in development, at least for Drupal 6.

A couple of technical notes. If you download the source files and run the older version of Drupal that comes with it, most everything will look as it does in the book. If you use the most recent version, certain things don't look or work exactly the same way. I decided to use the source version, however I ran into problems with the Amazon module (had to update it to the most recent version) and the language translation (known bug with Drupal 6.4). They weren't show stoppers, but it did add some frustration.

I've order a couple of the more advanced drupal books on building your own modules and themeing in order to get the functionality I need for my site.

So in summery, this is an excellent introduction to Drupal, but it doesn't cover any of the more advanced topics. If you are looking to start Drupal, buy this book, but realize you've got a few more you need to read if you want a truly modern website.

Drupal is not for the faint of heart or the uncommitted: it has a rather formidable learning curve, especially when you tackle the thousands of modules that extend the functionality of Drupal.

It becomes clear from the scope of the book, why six authors were required. As they state in the preface, the book is not intended for newbies to website creation and, likewise, isn't for the hard-core programmer. It is intended for the great mass between the two.

In fact, the target audience is considerably narrower. No one without an interest in migrating to a content management system (CMS) is going to want to read this book.

A concise, thorough explanation of Drupal and its architecture is provided first, which is very helpful. Next is a jumpstart, as they term it, on using Drupal. The jumpstart is not a substitute for an introductory manual, but if you are a learn by doing type, it serves its purpose.

Then the authors rapidly move into the use of modules. There are literally thousands of modules available to extend the functionality of Drupal. Only nine primary functions are covered here and each may involve the use of several modules. The Photo Gallery example, for instance, requires the use of three modules.

The approach is very much hands-on, guiding you step-by-step through the use of that particular module.

Do not expect to breeze through this book in one sitting. It ain't gonna happen that way. Instead plan on several days or, more likely, several weeks of working through each of the examples.

At the end of the day, I don't think this book is intended to churn out Drupal masters. Rather it should help make Drupal less intimidating, particularly the task of choosing, implementing and using modules.

Overall, this is a clearly written introduction to Drupal. It is not so basic as to be comfortable to total newbies, but if you are familiar with PHP, CSS and other basic technologies, you should be reasonably comfortable with "Using Drupal". Will it be the only book you'll ever need on Drupal? I don't think so - but it will be one of the basics.

Jerry