New Book Published: Drupal for Education and E-Learning

One of the major challenges was what to include, and what to exclude -- and further complicating that challenge was the D5 to D6 switch (and much of this book was written during the transitional time b/w D5 and D6). This became particularly relevant given the book's focus: people new(er) to Drupal.

WRT using CCK vs "simpler" modules, I made the call to use the audio and image modules over (respectively) jquery media/filefield and filefield/imagefield/imagecache/imageapi for reasons of simplicity. Both image and audio have sensible defaults, and have been maintained efficiently over the last few years. But, what to include and what to exclude was a tough choice, because Drupal never has just one way of doing things.

The wiki question definitely raises this issue, as the definitions of what constitute "essential" wiki functionality can vary from site to site. Among the options: the wikitools/diff/freelinking/pearwiki/flexifilter/talk blend (as recently described at http://starbowconsulting.com/node/111 ), to creating group editing via permissions, to using OG to create "wiki" style content types. All of these options are viable, with the first option coming as close as possible to a Mediawiki clone with Drupal, and the last option providing a lightweight wiki functionality within groups. Given that wiki functionality is evolving, I didn't feel comfortable laying out one "best" solution.

But I definitely hear you -- the joy of using Drupal comes from the array of options. Part of what I wanted to accomplish in this book was to establish some fairly "timeless" (in the sense that these modules are central to building out functionality, and will stay stable and reliable for the D6 lifecycle and beyond) fundamentals: CCK, Views, and Organic Groups. Using the options in these modules will help people new to Drupal really get started building feature-rich sites. But in choosing what to include vs what to leave out, we needed to make some difficult decisions that attempted to balance ease of use, range of functionality, and how well a solution would hold up over time.

And with that said, I definitely wished I had the space to highlight the feedapi, and some of the uses of aggregation. But, in the interest of keeping the length of the book manageable (it's just under 400 pages) and geared toward newer users I didn't include these details.

So, I definitely agree with you -- there is definitely more to cover -- but this book provides a starting point for users new to Drupal, and for users looking to get more from their existing installs. I hope this helps explain some of what I was thinking with the choices about what got covered, and what got left out.

Cheers,

Bill

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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Click. Connect. Learn.

The other people who have responded said much of what I would have said, but the question you raise -- how can a print book stay current/relevant given the rate of change within the codebase? -- is something I wrestled with both before agreeing to write the book, and while writing the book.

I've been using Drupal since version 4.5, in the dark days when new node types needed to be created via code, lists of nodes needed to be created via code, and no books existed explaining how to do it :)

But over that time, much has remained constant: nodes are the primary means for storing data, taxonomy provides a range of flexible options for categorizing data/providing metadata, and roles allow for granular permissions. The UI for accessing these core components have undergone significant change, but the basic strengths of the platform has remained intact.

Then, we have the core building blocks: CCK, Views, and Organic Groups. The CCK and Views UI both remained consistent throughout the D5 lifecycle, and I feel relatively comfortable that they will remain steady for the D6 lifecycle. In the event that they don't, however, I broke down the instructions for Views and CCK to highlight a process/series of steps for accessing their functionality. The general concepts embodied within these steps provide scaffolding for people attempting to understand what these modules offer.

The same is true with Organic Groups -- while the UI could change within the D6 lifespan, I attempted to focus on the main ways that OG shifts the way your site works once installed. This has something that has been true since I first started using OG, back in (I think) 4.6.

Some of the other pieces (block visibility settings, creating custom menus, backup and maintenance) all address core functionality, or general aspects of running a Drupal site that hold true regardless of the version you are using.

The one area that could/probably will change over the D6 lifespan is file and media handling, as it's likely that Filefield will become more widely used. But, given that this is a CCK-based solution, the book will allow people to transition into that pretty seamlessly. And if/when that becomes relevant or necessary, I'll be blogging the updated instructions over at FunnyMonkey.

So, while there are definitely challenges to writing a print book that remains current, with some planning it can be done, and it was certainly among my goals in writing this book.

Cheers,

Bill

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http://www.funnymonkey.com
Click. Connect. Learn.
Using Drupal in Education