Which book should I buy?
drupalfool - February 14, 2008 - 22:17
I would really appreciate some suggestions and some links on which is the best book to buy for learning how best to use and design sites for drupal. One which is full of examples, information and is easy to follow would be great. Which one is the best - there seem quite a few and they don't come cheap. I don't mind spending the money but I do want to make sure I don't waste it and I get the best for it.
What works best for me is one which is also a cookbook/code library/instruction manual with pictures LOL :)
Thanks
Jim
Pro Drupal Development
I used this book to learn drupal 5. Pro Drupal Development
Pro Drupal Development: for pros!
Pro Drupal Development is indeed a fine book, though I would suggest that any buyer heed that first word: Pro. It's fantastic if you want to develop a module or otherwise write Drupal code. But anyone who's looking for a beginner- to intermediate-level overview of installing, configuring, and administering a Drupal site, without coding, will get much less bang for the buck from the book. (Though it still may offer up some real gems to help beginners grasp concepts.)
FYI for would-be buyers –
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A site by, of, and for the Drupal newbie: http://www.drupalace.com
Huge learning curve
Drupal has an almost vertical learning curve. Bad enough you need to learn a new system, how it operates and what all the various bits do, but Drupal has its own language and terms which confuse the bejeesus out of anyone new to using it.
The book Pro Drupal Development by John Vandyk and Matt Westgate is indeed well written but it is written for developers and those who want to learn how to program Drupal and write modules. This is not the best book to buy if you are brand new to drupal - even if you know your way around programming code. Until you understand drupal better, most of what it talks about will be way over your head. It will sit on my shelf until I understand Drupal better :(
I have now ordered Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by David Mercer to see if I can reduce the angle of the learning curve. This book sounds like it will be more suitable for a newbie but it remains to be seen.
I decided to use drupal because it offered flexibility with all the modules and because people said it was more stable than Joomla. All this said, I really did not want to dust of my programming hat and learn how to programme drupal in order to set up a community website. This in my opinion is where Drupal falls down. It is not very user friendly or intuitive for newcomers and many requests for help go unanswered which is a big problem for anyone grappling with the intricacies of the system and needing help quickly.
I am not ready to quit drupal yet. The new book will arrive in a few days so I hope it will spur me onwards. But if this book does not help, I am afraid I will be waving goodbye to drupal in favour of something easier to learn.
I will keep you all posted.
Out of curiosity: is there
Out of curiosity: is there some specific aspect of Drupal, or some specific feature you can't get implemented, that has you possibly ready to leave? Or is it more of an all-round, widespread sense of "just too hard" ?
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A site by, of, and for the Drupal newbie: http://www.drupalace.com
Not Too Hard - Just Too Much
Hi Drupalace
Drupal itself is not too hard but it is not very intuitive and although there is a ton of information on the forums and in the handbooks, a lot of it is "Look at what I just did" without actually explaining how it was done. This general backslapping is all well and good (everyone deserves to show off their work and be praised for it), but it does not help a newbie to learn drupal when they have to wade through so many non-informative posts.
Other things which should be simple are pretty complicated. For example: I just spent a whole week trying to figure out how to get different types of RSS feeds into unique sections (i.e. News into the newsroom, jobs into the careers section etc). I posted many requests for advice which went ignored and had they been answered could have saved me a few days of frustration. Except I have new problems which don't make sense - e.g. the menu system will not allow more than one url alias to point to the same place.
I still have high hopes for drupal but was not prepapred for the huge learning curve and resulting addition to the development time.
Thanks for all advice and interest - I really appreciate it :)
Yeah, Drupal is really hard
Yeah, I find Drupal to be really painful, although I see its promise. I started off with Joomla a little over a year ago and it was much easier to get going. Both projects suffer from a lack of documentation and support, but that's the open source way. I am looking for a website that will gracefully allow me to restrict access to content, create content, create and display galleries of pictures, and generally look nice and offer cool features. I think I can get there with Drupal, but even getting images displayed on a story is an exercise in suffering.
David Mercer
David Mercer's book 'Drupal, Creating Bogs Forums Portals and Community Websites' is a pretty good start. It takes the newcomer from installing Drupal to developing a community website. The current version is for Drupal 4.7, but I think there is a version for Drupal 6.0 coming out very soon.
There's not much about coding in there, it's more about setting up the site, and using modules effectively etc.
Well there aren't many choices...
I am trying to learn Drupal as well and have bought Mercer's book, the Pro Drupal book, and Drupal 5 themes. I think those are pretty much the only Drupal specific ones right now. There are many HTML/CSS/etc. books, as well obviously, but they aren't Drupal specific.
As a newbie with minimal programming experience, Mercer's book was quite helpful getting started, but then didn't offer enough as I tried to do more stuff. The Pro Drupal book seems pretty advanced and not really relevant to my needs of trying to implement a few simple sites. The Drupal themes book is pretty good, but really seems geared to somebody who's serious about learning to build themes vs. just helping you get the basics so you can implement a site. There's stuff there, but not as much as you'd like.
Not sure any does what you are looking for, so suggest you get them all and hopefully piece things together.
For me, my next step is to buy another HTML/CSS book and then maybe ones with a bit on PHP and Javascript.
O'Reilly / Lullabot book coming out
Keep an eye out for a new Drupal book, created by the Lullabot folks and published by O'Reilly.
http://www.lullabot.com/blog/were_writing_oreilly_drupal_book
It looks to be a good middle ground between the Mercer book (a good start, but doesn't deal with involved, contrib-based site development) and Pro Drupal Development (an incredibly useful book ... if you're a developer). It might be what you're looking for. Not sure about the publish date, though.
Anyone that's new to drupal
Anyone that's new to drupal should check out this site, it has some great online video tutorials that are really easy to follow.
http://www.theartlab.net/
I actually like the online help forums that Drupal has.
I'm no programmer and have found a lot of help and incite from searching the site and asking questions in the forums.
I tried using Wordpress which is easier in someways but god forbid if you try to ask for any help in their forums. Be prepared to be flamed.
Ace, I've checked out your site too and found it very helpful.
Thanks all
personal site