Drupal 6 Social Networking (Paperback)

~ Michael Peacock (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Build a social or community web site, with friends lists, groups, custom user profiles, and much more

• Step-by-step instructions for putting together a social networking site with Drupal 6
• Customize your Drupal installation with modules and themes to match the needs of almost any social networking site
• Allow users to collaborate and interact with each other on your site
• Requires no prior knowledge of Drupal or PHP; but even experienced Drupal users will find this useful to modify an existing installation into a social web site

In Detail

Drupal is ideally equipped to be used as a base system for creating a custom social networking site like Facebook and MySpace. While these large social networks have their place, niche social networking web sites can help promote businesses, products, projects, and hobbies of any nature.

This book provides careful instructions and clear explanations to take you through the setup and management of your social network site, covering topics from users to marketing to maintenance. It will help you create your own social networking site, suitable for whatever audience you decide!

This book will take you from the very basics of both Drupal and Social Networking right through to more complicated aspects, like creating your own custom design and features for the site. With no experience of Drupal required, the book will introduce you to this award-winning CMS and carefully take you through the steps to create a social networking site from it. As the book progresses, you will learn how to add to and expand your social networking site, adding more features and adding value for your users, and how to make your users feel part of the community. Social networking web sites rely on their users contributing to the site, and this book helps you structure a site in a way users can easily and enjoyable contribute to the site - creating a powerful social network.

The book begins with the fundamental concepts of a Social Networking site, and how we can use Drupal to create such a site. It then goes through installing Drupal before looking at expanding the out-of-the-box feature set with third-party modules designed for Social Networking. Once the web site is running, it looks at securing the Social Network, deploying it on the Internet, and keeping it running and well maintained. It doesn't stop there however; as Social Networks rely on their user base to run and become successful, the book also covers marketing the Social Network using Search Engine Optimization, Online Marketing, and a range of new Social Media.

What you will learn from this book?

• Get started with Drupal and explore the features of this powerful Content Management System.
• Build a social networking site from the ground up using Drupal 6
• Use a combination of features, modules and some simple custom development to allow user interaction and user contributions
• Enable your users to interact and communicate with one another, building friendship
• Let your users contribute to the site, from those who wish to add a little content to those who wish to help run the site on a daily basis
• Import content into your site from elsewhere on the Internet using the Aggregator module
• Create user profiles, set up roles and permissions, and handle security settings
• Explore Drupal's modular system, and use it to create modules to add additional functionality relevant and useful to your social network.
• Customize the look and feel of your site by enabling and installing new themes, ensuring that your site is distinctive
• Deploy and maintain your social networking site on the Internet using the maintenance mode, reports, and cron to keep everything running smoothly
• Recover from virus attacks and hacking attempts to your Social Network by making and maintaining regular backups, in case the worst should happen
• Promote and market your Social Network using advertisements, advertising networks, other social networks, and search engine optimization

Approach

This book is packed with clear instructions and careful explanations for creating a powerful Social Networking web site using Drupal 6. With each chapter, you add new features and content until the Social Network is ready to be released to the Internet where it can grow.

By the end of this book, you will have a powerful Social Network either like that of the case-study, or of your own design based on the setup and features the book walks through.

Who this book is written for?

This book is aimed at anyone looking to create their own social networking web site, including:

• Businesses - building a Social Network around a product or service can improve your company profile and increase customer loyalty. Alternatively, an internal social network gives you employees a place to keep resources, discuss ideas, raise concerns, and keep up to date on company policies.
• Hobbyists - create a community around your hobbies and interests; create a local or distributed user group.
• Organisations & Charities - Raise your profile, promote your events / services / fundraisers and get help from the community in organizing them.
• Families - For large families based across the country or across the globe, keep up to date with everyone, and let everyone know what you are up to.

You don't need any experience of Drupal or PHP to use this book. If you are a Drupal user you will find this book a great way to rapidly tailor an existing installation into a social-orientated web site.

About the Author

Michael Peacock

Michael Peacock is a web developer from Newcastle, UK and has a degree in Software Engineering from the University of Durham. After meeting his business partner at Durham, he co-founded Peacock Carter, a Newcastle based creative consultancy specializing in web design, web development and corporate identity.

Michael loves working on web related projects. When he is not working on client projects, he is often tinkering with a web app of his own.

He has been involved with a number of books, having written two books himself (and working on his third): Selling online with Drupal e-Commerce Packt, and Building websites with TYPO3 Packt. He has also done technical reviews of two other books: Mobile Web Development Packt, and Drupal Education & E-Learning Packt.

You can follow Michael on Twitter.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (February 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1847196101
• ISBN-13: 978-1847196101
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #204,524 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Somehow good for both experienced and novice drupalites, April 28, 2009

By	David Bressler "http://twitter.com/djbressler" (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really like this book, it covers a lot of territory in a very practical way, while also digging into the "why's" of things should be done the way Michael suggests. Understanding the "why's" is important so that if you want your site to do something different, you can make a good decision about the implementation.

The book is also very "satisfying." I'm a deep technical person [...], though don't have much Drupal experience. I was afraid, I'd have to bite my tongue and toothpick my eyes open to read this book for the Drupal specifics. That's not been the case. It's an easy read, interesting, and relevant. I'm currently thinking about a few new social projects, and while I wouldn't go so far to say that you should read this book whatever platform you are deploying on; I would say that you should consider prototyping on Drupal with this book in hand so you could make a better platform decision once you know more about building a social site. (sorry about the run-on sentence!).

I gave it a 4 instead of 5 stars, because there are a few places where there are typos that affect the content, and other places where ideas are used before they're explained, or a final screen shot that brings it all together is missing. I realize it's really boring to read a lot of explanations, and then read about the example, and sometimes it's best to talk about the example, and explain stuff after. It just makes it harder to read because I'm trying to figure out if something will be explained later, or if I need to look online before reading further.

This book has saved me a LOT of time researching Drupal and its plugins on line, so really glad I'm reading it. There were a lot of good references for further reading about the topics discussed AND the topics referenced, but not discussed in the book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Holistic writing for a specific need, April 8, 2009

By	C. Nemati (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I won this book recently at a Drupal group, and I'm finding it more well-written than I anticipated from the title. The pitfall of a lot of technical books that are written toward a specific goal bypass a lot of the framework and foundation that it takes to achieve these goals. It's great for both the Drupal pro and the newcomer because, heck, even the pro can forget a few minor things along the way. The theme of the book is great too - the "sample" it guides you through is a site for people who have dinosaurs as pets. Really, what this book needs is a new title and a picture of a velociraptor doing some Drupal programming.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars For Absolute Beginners Only, July 24, 2009

By	Ryan W. Schwab (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm mystified by who the intended audience of this book is. Its apparent audience is people who want to build a social network site, but who have never built a webpage before. Why a web newbie would want to attempt to build a social network site when they can just get a Ning account is incomprehensible to me. That being said, let me delve into the contents a little bit.

Chapters 1 and 2 are introductions to social networks and drupal. Spend 15 minutes on the Drupal website ([...]), and sign up for a myspace or facebook account. You now have more knowledge than you would by reading chapters 1 and 2.

Chapter 3 tells you how to use the core drupal modules. If you need help pointing and clicking your way through the graphical UI in drupal, this will be useful for you. On the other hand, if you can figure out that clicking an Enable box will enable a module, and that typing a description in the "Description" box will give your module a description, you can safely skip this chapter.

Chapter 4 goes into more details about core modules like Profile and Open ID. Again, this will be useful for an absolute beginner, not so much for a user with any amount of experience with software interfaces. Chapter 4 introduces a new tradition that will be repeated in every chapter hereafter: instructions on downloading and installing a module.

Chapters 5 and 6 can be summed up with, "Get the following modules: User Relationships, Activity, Guestbook, Organic Groups, Views, Notifications, Token, Messaging, and Addresses."

7 and 8 are the truly shocking chapters. Without giving any real detail on the topics of creating custom themes and modules, the author posts page after page of code. For a newbie, this is completely baffling and unhelpful. For a programmer its useless. Just download a module and look at the source. Ditto for the css and php of a custom theme.

In summary, this book is mostly good if you're relatively new to the web and want to start a social networking site. But if you are such a user, I recommend googling "white label social network" and saving yourself a lot of trouble. For the rest of us, skip this book and instead spend a few hours on the drupal developer site.