Bruce,
Assuming paper books (old style) are an option, here are two choices.
If you're trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors try: Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
If you know PHP and want to take advantage of Drupal's inner workings try: Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate
Best regards,
Mitch
On Saturday 26 May 2007 05:18:12 Mitch Wander wrote:
Bruce,
Assuming paper books (old style) are an option, here are two choices.
If you're trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors try: Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
If you know PHP and want to take advantage of Drupal's inner workings try: Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate
Best regards,
Mitch
There are actually five books out about Drupal: http://drupal.org/node/42200
For what Bruce is looking for, I would definitely not recommend "Pro Drupal Development". That is for advanced users and programmers, which is not what he's looking for.
Either "Building Websites with Drupal" or "Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress" might be okay, but they're aimed at people creating Drupal websites, not necessarily the people using them.
I don't know anything about "Practical Drupal: Evaluating and Using a Web Content Management System", to be able to classify what kind of person would benefit most from it, but based on the book description, it might be the best option.
Mitch Wander / 2007/05/26 / 08:18 AM wrote:
If you're trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors try: Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
Well, I bought this book before anything, and was a bit of a disappointment. First of all, it is for 4.7, not 5.1, and it confused me a great deal. Also the book only lists the things you can intuitively know, but not the real issues with Drupal - In my case, I don't need blog.
Handling Drupal, for me, is taking much longer than when I dealt with Joomla. Even Joomla book from the same publisher was more useful than Drupal one to me. My impression is that Drupal documentation in general is for developer minded people written by developer. Most of them has no step-by-step explanation.
A music notation software, Finale, which is like Drupal because the application is so deep, practically nothing it can't do, but there are too many ways to do one thing, came with 3 thick volumes of manuals when I bought it in 1987. I read them all every night until I memorized them all. It took me almost 1 year.
This is my 3rd try with Drupal because I realized I am doing something wrong in one point and it seems easier to start over than changing the strategy.
Apology for my rant.
Doesn't that first book, about Drupal, just cover up to Drupal 4.x.y, since it was published April of 2006? Are there major changes with Drupal 5.x.y that would create problems for a user reading a book covering an older version?
Hi, If I'm looking for tutorials/training/handbooks, say from the site, that cover, "If one were trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors," where might I look on the site(s) for that kind of documentation?
Also, while it might be good for me to learn a book that draws upon such advanced skills as PHP, I would also want to give some documentation to the end-user, specifically a totally non-technical end-user... users that may not know HTML, much less CSS, much less PHP... where I am indicating that PHP, as a programming language is far more complex and advanced a topic then CSS which is more advanced then just plain old HTML.
Assuming that the first book is ok for use with the latest versions of Drupal than that would be a good book for me. Let me know what you all think about that, please. Then, I'd ask for instructions/tutorial pages/handbook pages for a non-technical end-user. Thanks, Bruce
Mitch Wander Mitch@MyTroops.com wrote: Bruce,
Assuming paper books (old style) are an option, here are two choices.
If you're trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors try: Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
If you know PHP and want to take advantage of Drupal's inner workings try: Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate
Best regards,
Mitch
I started with Drupal 4.7 and the Mercer book, which is pretty good. Not the most exciting reading material, but it gave me some ideas about what can be done. I only started in mid-January, and we upgraded to 5.1 when it came out, not so long after. I haven't found the differences between versions to be a problem. (Except that we were using the theme editor module in 4.7 and we don't have it in 5, and a designer I work with was going crazy about not having access to edit the theme on a site, and I thought he was upset about not having the theme editor, but it turned out I had accidentally not given him access to the admin area *at all*, and that's what he was really complaining about. Oops!)
I think if you try to use a book for detailed step by step directions, the version changes could be confusing, but if you just use it to help understand the framework for how things basically work together, you can figure out where things are on the menus etc. without difficulty.
I have years of experience using computers for a wide range of apps, but the closest I've ever come to programming or scripting anything myself is doing an "If" function in Lotus 1-2-3. I think whether Drupal is easy enough for end users depends on what you expect them to be doing - making blog entries, or setting up their own groups, etc.
Hope this helps,
Jean
On 5/28/07, Bruce Whealton brucewhealton@yahoo.com wrote:
Doesn't that first book, about Drupal, just cover up to Drupal 4.x.y, since it was published April of 2006? Are there major changes with Drupal 5.x.ythat would create problems for a user reading a book covering an older version?
Hi, If I'm looking for tutorials/training/handbooks, say from the site, that cover, "If one were trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors," where might I look on the site(s) for that kind of documentation?
Also, while it might be good for me to learn a book that draws upon such advanced skills as PHP, I would also want to give some documentation to the end-user, specifically a totally non-technical end-user... users that may not know HTML, much less CSS, much less PHP... where I am indicating that PHP, as a programming language is far more complex and advanced a topic then CSS which is more advanced then just plain old HTML.
Assuming that the first book is ok for use with the latest versions of Drupal than that would be a good book for me. Let me know what you all think about that, please. Then, I'd ask for instructions/tutorial pages/handbook pages for a non-technical end-user. Thanks, Bruce
*Mitch Wander Mitch@MyTroops.com* wrote:
Bruce,
Assuming paper books (old style) are an option, here are two choices.
If you're trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors try: Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
If you know PHP and want to take advantage of Drupal's inner workings try: Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate
Best regards,
Mitch
[ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
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Jean, This does help a lot. It is good to know that some people can get a great deal done in Drupal and use the application without being a programmer or coder (depending on what wording one prefers - I hear html called coding sometimes and I think that useage is wrong as html is not anything like programming. Computer science degrees are not needed for CSS or HTML... getting back from my rambling...)
With that in mind, I find it difficult when documentation for Drupal, or other similar applications, starts getting into programming, i.e. PHP programming. My end users are likely not going to know how to do PHP programming. So, for a user like yourself and other similar users, how often do you have to call in developers/programmers in the cycle of going from conceptualizing a site, setting up drupal, configuring it, and later modifications or customizations? That kind of information would help as I setup and use drupal with clients/customers? How often will they need to call in myself and others after the site is quote finished unquote - I say that in quotes as a dynamic site is never really finished is it?
I also wonder what else I can do for my customers, clients, end-users to make things easiest, beyond giving them a useful set of documentation.
Thanks for all the advice already, Bruce
Jean Gazis jgazis@gmail.com wrote: I started with Drupal 4.7 and the Mercer book, which is pretty good. Not the most exciting reading material, but it gave me some ideas about what can be done. I only started in mid-January, and we upgraded to 5.1 when it came out, not so long after. I haven't found the differences between versions to be a problem. (Except that we were using the theme editor module in 4.7 and we don't have it in 5, and a designer I work with was going crazy about not having access to edit the theme on a site, and I thought he was upset about not having the theme editor, but it turned out I had accidentally not given him access to the admin area *at all*, and that's what he was really complaining about. Oops!)
I think if you try to use a book for detailed step by step directions, the version changes could be confusing, but if you just use it to help understand the framework for how things basically work together, you can figure out where things are on the menus etc. without difficulty.
I have years of experience using computers for a wide range of apps, but the closest I've ever come to programming or scripting anything myself is doing an "If" function in Lotus 1-2-3. I think whether Drupal is easy enough for end users depends on what you expect them to be doing - making blog entries, or setting up their own groups, etc.
Hope this helps,
Jean
On 5/28/07, Bruce Whealton brucewhealton@yahoo.com wrote: Doesn't that first book, about Drupal, just cover up to Drupal 4.x.y, since it was published April of 2006? Are there major changes with Drupal 5.x.y that would create problems for a user reading a book covering an older version?
Hi, If I'm looking for tutorials/training/handbooks, say from the site, that cover, "If one were trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors," where might I look on the site(s) for that kind of documentation?
Also, while it might be good for me to learn a book that draws upon such advanced skills as PHP, I would also want to give some documentation to the end-user, specifically a totally non-technical end-user... users that may not know HTML, much less CSS, much less PHP... where I am indicating that PHP, as a programming language is far more complex and advanced a topic then CSS which is more advanced then just plain old HTML.
Assuming that the first book is ok for use with the latest versions of Drupal than that would be a good book for me. Let me know what you all think about that, please. Then, I'd ask for instructions/tutorial pages/handbook pages for a non-technical end-user. Thanks, Bruce
Mitch Wander <Mitch@MyTroops.com > wrote:
Bruce,
Assuming paper books (old style) are an option, here are two choices.
If you're trying to quickly build a Drupal site from start to usable for site visitors try: Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer
If you know PHP and want to take advantage of Drupal's inner workings try: Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate
Best regards,
Mitch
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A-NO-NE Music -
Bruce Whealton -
Jason Flatt -
Jean Gazis -
Mitch Wander