[drupal-docs] New book about Drupal?

[Liza Sabater]

CORRECTED VERSION!!
I left out a whole chuck there in the middle.
Sorry about that.


On Aug 10 2005, at 02:20, Liza Sabater wrote:

On Aug 09 2005, at 08:37 PM, Jeremy Epstein wrote:

> There are many books about the 'cultural revolution' of blogging, and
> about 'web 2.0' (*snickers* when's 2.1 coming out?), and I'm sure that
> many more will be written in the next 12 months. There are no books
> about Drupal.

Hi Jeremy,

I was not explicit with my comment. I completely agree there are no 
books about Drupal, and I am not looking for another book about 
blogging. What this book could be is about IMPLEMENTATION. Divide it 
into two books. One book is about which modules to use for what 
purposes :

In one book we would have all different kinds of configurations for 
different user profiles:

(1) A personal mommyblog moving into a community site about parenting
(2) A comparison between a really no-budget grassroots candidate site 
vs. a "I can buy Convio" candidate site
(3) A site for new media artists used for fundraising vs a PTA site
(4) A community site for literary creatives
(5) A translation site with multiple localization options
(6) A regional portal for homeschoolers
(7) An intranet corporate forum

etc. etc. etc.

The second book would be about hacks and quick templating recipes. I 
would even go as far as comparing themes in Drupal with templating in 
other blogging systems. I would also include examples of how to make 
changes to existing modules. Not just create modules but take the stuff 
we have now and make tweaks to them. This is not exciting for a guy 
like you, (if you are a developer) but it may well be for the millions 
of bloggers who may be "graduating" from the smaller blog engines. 
Technorati says there's 14 million active blogs out there. Let's assume 
there's a 5% error here and that only a 10% of these people would like 
to up the ante technologically speaking. That is still 1.47 million 
people wandering in the desert looking for something like Drupal but 
finding it "hard" to visualize and implement the product.

I hate tech books that do not give me concrete examples of the most 
basic things I need to know about software. Inductive teaching in tech 
sucks : its about building from nothing. I have something NOW, an idea 
I want to implement. And idea that has been proven to its capacity in 
another platform. So I need know NOW how to use your kick-ass social 
publishing tool (I just invented that term) to take my existing real 
life site into the next level.

So when I say "not for developers" what I mean is that there are many 
people out there who are not developers setting up their own blogs and 
making their own sites because companies like Blogger and SixApart have 
obliterated the threshold to entry into the "web development" arena. 
Drupal's challenge is to meet the needs of the millions of these blog 
consumers who will want to have more flexibility and control over their 
content, especially if they decide to turn their sites into brands and 
monitize their efforts.

So let's give examples of how to take to the next level what is already 
being done elsewhere. In those examples we can weave stories about the 
"bran raisings" and "guerrilla marketing" and the "insurgent 
candidates" and the "renewal churches" that used Drupal and benefitted 
from it. Then once people have learned how to implement the vision, the 
concept and the dream they have right now, then they'll probably take a 
step back and either build something new from the something I've 
already learned with your book or hire a geekster.

And I am going to take it one step further : You ultimately need to 
sell Drupal to the people with the money to hire you are a developer; 
in a lot of cases not necessarily people with tech expertise. I'm 
thinking CFOs, the goddess that signs the budget checks. Drupal needs 
something that people can SEE NOW how their needs will be met. They 
need evidence. This book should be evidence of what much more can be 
done with the product; not just another code book.

Best example of what I am thinking of? Molly Holzschag's book on CSS 
for beginners.



Best,
Liza Sabater
Blog Publisher
www.culturekitchen.com

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater
-- 
[ drupal-docs | http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/drupal-docs ]


Liza Sabater
Blog Publisher
www.culturekitchen.com

AIM - cultkitdiva
SKYPE - lizasabater