Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress (Paperback)
Product Description
<p>Content management, blogs, and online forums are among the most significant online trends today, and Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress are three of the most popular open source applications facilitating these trends.</p>
<p>Drupal is a full content management system that allows you to create any type of website you desire, from an e-commerce to a community-based site. phpBB enables you to set up a bulletin board or forum. And WordPress is the software of choice for the exploding blog community. All three technologies are based on PHP and MySQL.</p>
<p><i>Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress</i> is authored by a team of experts. Robert T. Douglass recently created the Drupal-powered blog site NowPublic.com. Mike Little is a founder and contributing developer of the WordPress project. And Jared W. Smith has been a longtime support team member of phpBBHacks.com and has been building sites with phpBB since the first beta releases.</p>
About the Author
Robert T. Douglass is a very active member of the Drupal community; he regularly submits patches to the core Drupal code and maintains several modules, including media and subscription. In 2005, due to the growing popularity of Drupal, he became a freelance Drupal consultant and programmer, working out of his home in Germany. His most recent project is NowPublic.com, a Drupal-powered site which unites the citizen journalist with the blogosphere.
Mike Little is one of the founders of the WordPress project and is still a contributing developer. He has been programming professionally for 15 years in a variety of languages including PHP, Java, JSP, Perl, and assembler.
Jared W. Smith has several years of experience administering, styling, and modifying the phpBB bulletin board software, and designed web sites in different forms for several years before that. He was among the original Support Team at phpBBHacks.com ? the leading distributor of modifications and templates for phpBB ? where he now serves in an advisory role.
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I have only read the Drupal section of the book, so I can’t comment on the other two sections.
I have been trying to learn how this powerful CMS system works as I start my first Drupal site, and have spent many hours on the official website reading documentation and community posts from the incredibly helpful folks over there. However, sometimes computer people have a hard time communicating effectively with the less-technical among us. As an instructor myself, I constantly have to remind myself to slow down and make no assumptions when I teach - a skill it takes a long time to master.
This book is a shining example of that skill put to good use. The author is extremely talented at phrasing things in “real English” and makes no assumptions that the reader has any pre-existing knowledge. His explanations are well thought out, and make perfect sense out of what can be a complex subject. He has obviously spent a lot of time crafting the words to ensure you get the picture. I’ve had many “ah-ha!” moments reading this book, where something came together and clicked in my mind - even after reading many other explanations elsewhere.
There are a few features and modules mentioned which are available only in the upcoming Drupal 4.7 (which is currently available in a beta test version, and working quite well just as it is), but it would have made no sense to publish a new book that only covers older features when the new version is literally weeks away.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in learning Drupal.
When I picked up this book I knew what phpBB was (my main reason for getting the book), but the other two applications were foreign to me. So, let me start off by briefly pointing out what each application is and does:
- Drupal is a CMS, content management system, (think Wikipedia) that allows users to input and update information
- phpBB is bulletin board software (very much like Invision or Jolt from surface appearances)
- WordPress is blogging software (do I really need to say more after 2005, the year of the Blog)
The publisher has chosen to group what amounts to three separate books on three open source applications together based upon the ‘community’ aspects that they engender, allowing groups of users to come together to post, comment and counter-comment.
The book is effectively a collected user manual for these three applications, but that does not really go far enough. Yes, the material for each is available online, but this book collects the documentation together in a user friendly manner. Anyone that has tried to install and operate a complex piece of software based upon the canned manuals can appreciate the complexity involved. Using this book is essentially like having an experienced guru looking over your shoulder offering advice as you go through the process. This can be the difference between 30-60 minutes of simple work and 5-6 hours of confusion, frustration and ranting.
Add to this the advice on configuration and usage/management for avoiding pitfalls and achieving best case results, and this book can pay for itself in no time (I bill at $50 an hour and consider my personal time even more valuable).
Bottom line, if you want to keep users on your site (i.e. not farm out these services), and want to use a CMS, bBoard, or Blog using open source software, it is worth your time to check out these options. If you then decide to use one of them, this book can save you a chunk of time and frustration.
P-)
As a fairly experienced IT Professional who is now entering into the world of web design and deployment, I found this material, particularly the section on phpBB very insightful and helpful in guiding me through the dangers and pitfalls of installation and maintenance. Not only is it well thought out and logically laid out, but it was also written in plain English and not comupter-ese, making it an invaluable aid in implementation. I recommend this book without reservation.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Misleading title and outdated information
The title is very misleading. There is little in this book about “building online communities”. Rather it is a book about tools which can be used for building online…
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great book for web designers. For programmers, not so much.
Carefully designed and clearly written, this book is an effective introduction to PHP for anyone who has at least a little experience with web design.
2.0 out of 5 stars
Mediocre and Out Of Date
I bought this book hoping to get up to speed quickly on the very exciting Drupal platform. Unfortunately, this book was targeted at Drupal 4.7 Users. I started using 5.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress
Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress was very helpful. I found the sections very helpful and easy to understand.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Introduction
This is a great introduction, at least to Drupal version 4.
Note that the administration menus are significantly different for the current Drupal 5 release.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Theres Advanced, Basic and This book - Way To Simple!
This is basically an outline for beginners ONLY. If you expect to be able to move on past simple installation and configuration, save your money!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book for beginners
I have no problem saying I am a wanna be computer person. This book helped me so much and it was written for people like me who don’t know a whole lot.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Useful comparison, cursory treatment of each topic
This book was useful for comparing and contrasting Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. Before reading this book, one might have reasonably wanted to use Drupal where phpBB would have…
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very basic
Good for a beginning administrator but that is about. I almost bought this book for the Drupal stuff. But it was just way to basic.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent resource for the beginning developer
I bought this book mainly for the Drupal section but the entire book is done quite well. The Drupal section is excellent and really walks you through everything from installation…