Web Site Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for Building and Administering Your Web Site (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) [Paperback]

Doug Addison (Author)

Book Description

Series: Cookbooks (O'Reilly) | Publication Date: February 17, 2006

The total number of web pages today has been estimated at over 3 billion, spanning millions of individual websites. Not surprisingly, there is tremendous pressure on web developers and designers to remain current with the latest technologies.

The Web Site Cookbook from O'Reilly covers all the essential skills that you need to create engaging, visitor-friendly websites. It helps you with the practical issues surrounding their inception, design, and maintenance. With recipes that teach both routine and advanced setup tasks, the book includes clear and professional instruction on a host of topics, including:

• registering domains
• ensuring that hostnames work
• managing the directory
• maintaining and troubleshooting a website
• site promotion
• visitor tracking
• implementing e-commerce systems
• linking with sales sites

This handy guide also tackles the various elements of page design. It explains how to control a reader's eye flow, how to choose a template system, how to set up a color scheme, and more.

Typical of O'Reilly's "Cookbook" series, the Web Site Cookbook is written in a straightforward format, featuring recipes that contain problem statements and solutions. A detailed explanation then follows each recipe to show you how and why the solution works. This question-solution-discussion format is a proven teaching method, as any fan of the "Cookbook" series can attest to.

Regardless of your strong suit or your role in the creation and life of a website, you can benefit from the teachings found in the Web Site Cookbook. It's a must-have tool for advancing your skills and making better sites.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Doug Addison has more than 10 years of web development and content management experience and has worked professionally with numerous web technologies, including HTML, JavaScript/DHTML, CSS, Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Dreamweaver. Doug worked on the Hoover's Online site and the StarDate and Weatherwise magazine web sites before starting his own web consultancy. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (February 17, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596101090
• ISBN-13: 978-0596101091
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #242,927 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So you don't learn the hard way too..., March 5, 2006

By 

Brett Merkey (Palm Harbor, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Site Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for Building and Administering Your Web Site (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

The author says this is the book he wished he'd had when he started building websites ten years ago. I agree. The book is structured as a series of problems posed, with solutions, a discussion, and related links for follow-up. Some of the problem/solution match-ups certainly sometimes read like notes kept handy after some bit of knowledge was learned the hard way.

The book is written for those who make a living by designing, developing, maintaining, and marketing Web sites for themselves or other people. The exclusive focus is on the familiar world of LAMP -- Linux/Unix with Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

The author shares lots of handy code snippets (mostly PHP) to deal with technical issues but he does not neglect the soft skills, such as approaching the information architecture of a proposed site -- and marketing the finished one.

Addison goes into as much depth as is necessary to solve a problem and resists the temptation to go further. He clearly keeps up with best practices. I was impressed that his advice for a printer-friendly site is to use print media CSS. Most sites, even new ones, use more expensive and labor-intensive methods, like adding middle-layer software or creating separate content versions.

Quibble: the book does not mention, nor do the publisher's or author's sites offer any way to download the code snippets and the lists of related links. That is very odd for a book of this nature and I hope the author corrects the oversight for readers soon.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grab bag of topics, wanted more, March 8, 2006

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Web Site Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for Building and Administering Your Web Site (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

This is one of the few books where I would say that I wanted more from it. The choice of recipes is good. And it certainly covers my top ten. But I liked how the material was presented so much that I found myself wanting more.

This is a grab bag book, so you will want to check the table of cotents out before buying to make sure you will get enough material for your dollar. What is in the book is covered well.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended, April 21, 2006

By 

S. Stanicki (Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Web Site Cookbook: Solutions & Examples for Building and Administering Your Web Site (Cookbooks (O'Reilly)) (Paperback)

Excellent for beginners, but I would have liked to have gotten more detail. Perhaps that is the trade-off for so broad a subject. This book has answers to alot of questions that beginners (like me) might have. For instance, when I was shopping around for a hosting service for a personal website, features that were common to most hosting plans were cron (a scheduling utility) and ssi (server side includes). What are they? Why would they list them as a plus for hosting? Why would I care if they featured these or not? Well the Web Site Cookbook not only tells you what they are, but also gives you examples as to when, how, and why you might use them.

Each topic (recipe) is broken down into 4 sections:
1. Problem: A one or two sentence description of what you need or want to do.

2. Solution: A step by step solution.

3. Discussion: A discussion of the applied solution.

4. See Also: Additional information from other "recipes" in the book and/or outside resources.

There are also sections on planning your site, organizing directories, creating color schemes, as well as tips on making URL's easy to find and remember. (just to name a few). This book will get you well on your way to putting together a well designed web site. Highly recommended.