split the books page into 2 (or more) sub pages (?)

Agreed, I was thinking that with the redesign it would be nice to make this a totally different thing. Like can we have a content type for "media" or such and then create views for displaying listings?

I can change revisions but I can not edit it... This is probably not good!

I would put each book in a table, with each revision next to the other one!
That will make it more compact! Also can we make all of the books smaller and the same size (Horrizontal)

I wish I knew about this page when I bought my book. It is also missing some newer books!

I would break this into two pages, but not based on the type of book but version of the Drupal the book covers!

Greggles, are you willing to do this? I would love to see books by version!

There is a few more out there... PACKT just made a more advanced one...

Mike

I now remember the new book by packet, its Drupal and Social Environments

I was very excited to see it, but dont have the money to buy it!

I agree a new design for this page and others are in order.

Right now Dean and I are focused on just keeping the list of books up to date, staying in touch with the publishers, and refreshing the book ads as time allows. We meet weekly and jointly spend an hour working together to improve the state of books and book advertisements on Drupal.org.

If anyone wants to join us, they are welcome.

The thing that cracks me up about this page is it was so obviously created by geeks. ;) We have all of this rock-solid data about each book: its author, the number of pages, the publish date, the ISBN *and* ISBN-13 (whatever that's for), and yet we give people absolutely nothing -- not even a tiny description! -- that might help them find the book they need. :)

Two things that would help this page a lot are:

1. One or more broad categories for the books to belong to, as mentioned above. Not quite sure how to break this down, though... target audience? topics covered? difficulty of subject matter?
2. Since these are all linking to Amazon.com, maybe one other piece of data we could bring over to this list (unless we gain some kind of proceeds from people clicking through but not buying because they never find the book they need) is some of the first paragraph or so of the Product Description. For example, for Cracking Drupal it might be:

"Authored by a Drupal expert, this is the first book to reveal the vulnerabilities and security issues that exist in the sites that have been built with Drupal, and how to prevent them from continuing. The main goal of this guide is to explain how to write code that avoids an attack in the Drupal environment, while also addressing how to proceed if vulnerability has been spotted and then regain control of security."

I've slightly modified the page, removing one of the ISBN(s) leaving the ISBN-13 only (it's useful for people wanting to search for it in other bookstores), and the language (they're all English after purging two old German books).

Instead of:

Drupal Intranets with Open Atrium

By: Tracy Smith
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Packt Publishing
Release Date: January 2011
Language: English
ISBN : 1849511128
ISBN 13 : 9781-84951-112-4
Order now from Packt Publishing
Order now from Amazon.com

We now have this:

Drupal Intranets with Open Atrium

Discover an intranet solution for your organization with Open Atrium

By: Tracy Smith
Drupal version(s): 6
Published by Packt Publishing on Jan 6,2011 (304 pages)
ISBN-13: 978-1849511124
Order now from Amazon or Packt Publishing

I'm also bothered by the lack of a tiny description. I attempted to make up for it by making sure that we're linking the author names to their d.o user profiles, and linking to the "News & Announcements" page for that book in d.o. On the other hand, where available, I am putting the book's subtitle after the title (only 4 books don't have one).

I'm weary of copying short descriptions from Amazon (not sure about copyright), but I'm pretty sure we can copy some text from our own "New book" pages (whoever owns the copyright on those already provided permission by posting that in d.o).

However, there are still too many books (43 available + 9 coming soon).. Some suggestions:
1.a) Removing (or moving to a 'Old books' page) all Drupal <= 5 books (would get rid of the bottom 6 + Drupal 5 Views Recipes)
1.b) Splitting the page into per-publication-year pages, keeping only the last two years in the main page (leaving 16 books)
1.c) Find a way to have Dries ask people to stop writing Drupal books in his next DrupalCon keynote :P

2. Moving the 'Coming soon books to another page': counting 9 books there at the moment.

Also, what to do with self-published books? I know 4 books in that category:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0557097983/?tag=drupal0a-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/283990490X/?tag=drupal0a-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1921523735/?tag=drupal0a-20
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1409232948/?tag=drupal0a-20

From the reviews in the Amazon.com pages above, I am pretty sure that 3 of them should never have any highlight in drupal.org. Dorien Herremans's book is probably of acceptable quality (review in Slashdot: http://books.slashdot.org/story/09/06/15/1331252/Drupal-6-Ultimate-Commu...), but there should be some clear rules on why some books are allowed in the list and others aren't. Or maybe just create a new free-for-all-list-my-print-on-demand-book page.

And non-English books? With translations and others, I've seen Spanish, Polish, German, Portuguese and Chinese Drupal books.. Do we do a separate page for each language? I'm assuming that since drupal.org is not a multi-language site, that we'll only list books in English.

One other note: I'm auto generating the page contents from an ooCalc file that I created with all the book info (yes, I am a book worm).

Which means that altering the page contents is easy for me now...

Perhaps we should be using an Amazon widget for this, rather than trying to maintain this page by hand:

https://widgets.amazon.ca/

Seems like not much has happened since the last post in this issue… except that there are now a whole lot more books.

What I think makes sense is to sort the books by topic: General Drupal/Beginner info, admin/site-builder, development, theming, business, etc

I also think it makes sense to include links to other Amazon stores. I believe the tag which provides the affiliate ID is fine for any Amazon store. I would also suggest providing Amazon store links for the books published by Packt.

At some point (e.g. after full move to D7), it might make sense to actually use Drupal to create book listings and then be able to show a book on "upcoming" while it's status "not released", show a book in multiple categories, etc.

I'd be happy to help sort this out, but in IRC (#drupal-docs) the issue was raised that this page is now maintained by DA.

Copied from IRC (with minor edits)

Discussion regarding this copied from IRC so that jredding and others involved can be filled in:

LoMo: Okay. Was wondering about creating a Drupal book structure with sub-pages for books sorted by common Drupal "tracks" (dev, business, theming, etc) with, perhaps "General" (and beginner) topics on the main page.
[ ... ]
jhodgdon: anyway LoMo: probably best to discuss on the issue before doing that big of a change.
LoMo: jhodgdon: I was thinking this would be a pretty small change. The "big change" I might propose for the future would be to have a new content type created and use views to output pages based on the topic of the books, published/not, links, etc
[10:10pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: ok, well at least if there is already an issue, it would be polite to post on the issue and tell people you are going to make that change.
[10:10pm] LoMo: jhodgdon: Right now it seems a bit ironic that the content of this page is completely hand-coded HTML.
[10:11pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: adding new content types to drupal.org and new fields ==> more porting headaches when updating to Drupal 7. So it is not undertaken lightly.
[10:11pm] jhodgdon: Views too.
[10:12pm] LoMo: Yeah, I will post on that page and wait for discussion. In the meantime, I'll just fix a few small things and leave the books in one page.
[10:12pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: you could certainly separate them out by section and put in section headers at the top
LoMo: jhodgdon: What do you think of adding order links for multiple Amazon stores? (.com / .fr / .de / etc)
[10:17pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: The existing links give money to the DA... not sure if the others would?
[10:17pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: I would say definitely do not mess with the links.
[10:17pm] LoMo: jhodgdon: I see all the Amazon links end in the query: /?tag=drupal0a-20
[10:17pm] LoMo: jhodgdon: I think that is how the money goes to the DA
[10:17pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: I have no idea about that. sorry. but don't mess with the links
[10:17pm] jhodgdon: no the money comes from the vendor ID I think.
[10:17pm] LoMo: And I believe that will work with any of the stores.
[10:18pm] jhodgdon: I am not sure, don't mess with them please.
[10:18pm] jhodgdon: or ask someone that really knows the mechanism.
[10:18pm] LoMo: I won't (for now).
[10:18pm] LoMo: But I do believe that is the affiliate's code.
[10:18pm] LoMo: Although I think that it used to use a different format.
[10:19pm] LoMo: Anyway, I think that even the Packt books could have links to purchase on Amazon (alternatively).
[10:20pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: please post your ideas on that issue, and hopefully the people subscribed there (who know more about it than I do) will respond.
[10:20pm] silverwing_afk: LoMo: jhodgdon /books is now under the 'control' of the Drupal Association
[10:20pm] jhodgdon: silverwing_afk: ok I thought that...
[10:21pm] silverwing_afk: I rewrote that page to make it look nice a while ago, but won't touch it now
[10:21pm] jhodgdon: silverwing_afk: so who should we have LoMo contact that is maintaining the page?
[10:21pm] silverwing_afk: jredding
[10:21pm] LoMo: silverwing_afk: Does that mean it should only be edited by DA?
[10:21pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: yes probably but jredding is receptive to suggestions in general
[10:22pm] jhodgdon: not sure what the best way to contact him is though.
[10:22pm] silverwing: LoMo: My feeling is that since the DA is in conrol, and they have a paid staff and it makes money, they handle it
[ ... ]
[10:22pm] kdmarks joined the chat room.
[10:22pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: or try https://association.drupal.org/contact
[...]
[10:23pm] LoMo: jhodgdon: Okay. I'll fix a couple minor things I can see. (e.g. looks like one book description was used as a template to create a couple others and the description "Drupal for Designers" was used where it's not appropriate.)
[10:23pm] jhodgdon: LoMo: do you have edit permissions on that page? I would be surprised ...
[10:24pm] silverwing: It should be Full HTML
[10:24pm] LoMo: jhodgdon: As far as I can tell, I can edit it.
[10:24pm] jhodgdon: it is documentation

(Conclusion: I'm holding off on making any edits to this page. ) Input?

Currently, a single listing looks like this: (latest book listed from Packt).

Drupal 7 Business Solutions

I would suggest also adding Amazon links for .com, .ca, .de, etc, unless the DA has a special arrangement with Packt; e.g.:

Drupal 7 Business Solutions

(But regardless of any possible arrangement with Packt to just link to them for books published by them, for any Amazon links, I think it makes sense to include links with the DA associate ID tag for all Amazon stores which carry the book. A significant portion of the community lives in Canada and Europe and the DA won't get any referral credit if users copy the book title and search for it in their local Amazon site.)

If the DA finds this appealing, I think I could create a TextMate snippet to more easily create the set of links for a book, and work through each book listed (testing that the article exists in the stores for each location, before committing edits, of course).

The book page is great for new people to learn what is available but it is often just a collection of links with little context about the book or why someone should purchase it. In my experience people often resort to going to Amazon or Packt to learn more about the book, read the reviews, etc. This is fine and we don't want to become a book store. However, we can do a better job of highlighting the books available.

I'd like to suggest that a long-term solution is to move this into a store and create a book content type so that books can be categorized according to subject material, experience level, etc. A mockup of what that store would look like is attached.

@jredding: I'll work on sorting out the http://drupal.org/books and Upcoming books pages by loose categories with a small right-floated set of links at the top to each category, starting at the top with "General / Learning Drupal" and other sections, "Design", "Theming", "Developing", etc., as per our discussion in IRC (@ #drupal-infrastructure).

Books on the main page have been re-organized into four major categories with links to the headers for each category (all still on one page). "Upcoming" books could still be categorized (a smaller task).

I suggest it might still be better to move the categories to "child" pages for each category / target audience. This would require a bit of link fixing (to /node/new_nid/#anchor) for some texts and/or copying the full info for some books into the multiple categories that they belong in, but this only affects a few books.

Again, the ultimate goal, according to jredding (see above) is to build a new content type for books, so that they can be tagged. I would be willing to help with this task and/or create the issue to get that ball rolling. :-)

LoMo... you rock! This is looking so much better. I like this simple categorization. An idea would be to create the four categories into child pages and then link to those child pages through tabs across the top, similar to what is at /marketplace. Perhaps we can take a real simple cue from /hosting and create a side menu block that links to the various book categories.

Over time making this a view and using taxonomy would be a great way to show off how simple Drupal is to create pages like this.

I like that idea (top tabs for child pages), but assume that would entail one or more of the following:

• Drupal infrastructure changes
• custom theming and/or views
• Possibly also best implemented when we have a content type for books in place

As a "next step", would you agree to me creating simple documentation "book sub-pages" for the categories of books listed? (i.e. just normal "child" pages of the current page). If we are moving toward a complete restructuring of the book listings—possibly just a link to the Drupal Association store at some point in the near future—with each book listing implemented as a node with CCK/fields for title, author, purchase links, etc, and taxonomies for experience level and category, I'm thinking that a simple restructuring of the current system is perhaps the most appropriate interim solution.

Shall I go ahead with that, for now? (I could also re-organize the "Upcoming" page to break books into the same loose categories, but leave them all on one page -- OTOH, I had to look at reviews and other info to best determine categories/target audience for books which are already in-print, so it might be harder for books which are only announced, so perhaps it is best to just leave them sorted by expected publication date).

(Follow-up)

Actually, I just realized that the Drupal Documentation areas already have top-level tabs similar to the ones you proposed, so this would either require a double layer of top-tabs (special theming not quite like what is on the /marketplace area) or removing the “books” listings from the “Documentation” area, altogether. I do suggest, for now, simply keeping the listings as they are, but adding "child pages" to sort the listings (by category): either keep "beginner" books on the main /books page and move "experienced site builder", "front-end", and "developer" to new child pages, or create child pages for all four sub-categories.

Does this sound reasonable (for now)? As per Jennifer's concerns voiced in IRC, I don't want to make further changes to these listings till I've seen your go-ahead, Jacob. :-)

LoMo: I had an email conversation with jredding...

Conclusions:
- The Books page is primarily about helping people find usefull books, and secondarily about generating some revenue.
- We both think your enthusiasm and ideas for making the page more usable are great!
- jredding would like me to take the lead on structure/content ideas.
- I would say before modifying any of the Amazon/Pakt links, we need to talk that over with jredding or someone else who knows about our financial arrangements, because I don't know anything about that.

So: For now, yes, please do go ahead and split the Books page up into sub-pages. I think it would be best to put all the books on sub-pages, rather than keeping one category on the Books landing page.

And you're right, we can't realy do tabs at the moment.

If you'd like to work on a content type for books, I think that is a great idea! Steps:
a) Create an issue (project: documentation, component: docs infrastructure, tag: docs infrastructure) (post a link here please). Put in as much detail as you can about your plans.
b) Once the plan is agreed to, follow the procedure at http://drupal.org/node/1018084 to get a Drupal.org dev server.
c) When you have that done, create your content type and View on the dev server, and put in a few sample items so we can test it.
d) When it's ready to go, I'll give you some guidance on making a patch using Features so we can get it deployed on Drupal.org.
e) Once that's done, we can populate it with real content.
f) Once that's done, we can replace the existing Books page with the new view, and break into cheers. :)

Hi Jennifer,

I did discuss the multiple-locale Amazon links with jredding (in IRC the other evening) and he indicated he wasn't ready for that initially as it would make the fields/views more complicated than need be. From what I remember (last time I was working with it) Amazon affiliate account IDs are good for all stores, so as long as the item is carried in another store; especially with books, normally all that needs to be changed is the '.com' domain (e.g. to '.de') for an affiliate link to another store/locale to function. I'll double-check on that, and perhaps indicate that people living outside the U.S. (who have a local Amazon store) can open the .com link, then change the domain to .[local-country], leaving the "?tag=drupal0a-20" (query that provides affiliate referral) intact. That way all of us, when we buy Drupal books from Amazon, can help fund the D.A.

Anyway, I've split the books into four child pages and put a bit more info on the original page (which now has none of the books, but still has the images as hidden "attachments". A few of the books appear on more than one category page (I've put back full info for each of those, rather than linking to the "primary" category, as I had it when they were all on one page). One book (Definitive Guide to Drupal 7) is in all four categories as I think it has enough good info for new site builders as well as for those more advanced, and good theming and coding chapters, too.

I'l start an issue to get a dev server on d.o. and work with that, when I have time, in the next week or so… while you guys are enjoying the mile-high city. Wish I could be there, too, but I'll join sprints, try to participate via IRC, and watch (some of the) sessions as they are posted (I hope they will be, as for other DrupalCons). I couldn't justify the expense of flying from Germany this year, but whether I'm living here still next year, back in the U.S., or somewhere else, I do hope to join the North American DrupalCon next time around. And I do hope to see you in Munich in just five months.

I won't be in Denver either. Anyway, the next step is to propose a plan for the books content type and views (on another issue) -- space is tight and the infra team will not grant you a dev server unless you have a firm plan of what to do with it.

Regarding the split-up page... generally great! I think your strategy of multiple listings is the right way to go.

But I don't think we need the first two paragraphs to be so wordy and talk about the history of how long the page used to be. Think of someone coming there for the first time, and provide them links to the 5 sub-pages, with brief explanations about what's on each page. Probably a bullet list would be easier to scan than a wordy paragraph or two? :)

You're right, Jennifer. First draft woes. ;-) I've tightened it up a bit. Please don't hesitate to slash it down further (or to give me more editorial tips), but I do hope you agree the current revision is a step in the right direction. :-)

I'll create my "issue" for the content type / Views in a few hours, after I've slept a bit more. (I just got up in the "middle of the night" now and happened to refresh this page.) Is it also possible to do this dev work on a localhost server? I have multiple local staging and testing servers for D6 and D7 already, so one more running the stripped-down D.O. “skeleton” would be simpler for me if it’s also better for the infrastructure team.

The new content type/Views plan has been created in the following issue:
Create new content type and Views for books

I look forward to discussion/comments to help refine the plan further. :-)

Yay! I like the new categories for the book pages, it makes finding books so much easier. Although I completely agree that a content type + Views + exposed filters is really in order here.

How about stealing some graphic design elements from the /hosting page and adding a block to the right side?
This would make searching easier and it is a quick block to create (it's just a straight HTML block) until we get the grand plan in place.

Regarding Amazon links, I really love the idea of putting amazon links all around my primary objection was of adding a new module to drupal.org for the creation of those links. If we think they are really important we can just add them in using basic HTML but I can see that becoming a lot of work over time.

I’m glad you like the categories, jredding. :-)

Re. your suggested right-column block: This might fit into the final re-design, but currently books are listed as a page within the Community Docs > Understanding Drupal “book” and, as such, use the standard Drupal “book” menu structure (which I have no control over). Your suggestion could fit into a plan to re-theme the community docs “book pages” (not to be confused with “published books about Drupal”), or could fit into a future possible re-placement of the books listings in a more prominent location on this site or the DA site (store?).

Most people who have used Drupal for a while might never look into the “Understanding Drupal” documentation area, so might be unaware that these lists of Drupal books exist and that when they buy Drupal-related books (from Amazon) that they can use links which give affiliate credit to support the D.A., so I do think it makes sense, ultimately, to move these listings to somewhere more prominent (i.e. to promote their existence on d.o.)

Regarding Amazon links, if you would like to provide them for all books (Packt and others), just entering the ASIN (Amazon ID) for the book into the new content type would create the Amazon link (built in Views). Regarding locales, I believe I was wrong — each locale (Amazon store) would require another affiliate ID, but if the D.A. had an affiliate ID for each Amazon locale, it would be easy to create a set of links (in Views) based on the ASIN + each locale-specific affiliate ID tag, so this would not entail extra work over time and could result in a lot more purchases which benefit the D.A.

Looks great! Thanks for making this happen, LoMo! RE #28 - LoMo is right, we can't easily implement a different sidebar navigation just for this section, at least at this time while Books is in the generic "Understanding Drupal" section.

So... I think we can now call this "fixed", since the original idea of splitting the page into sub-pages is done. Discussion about the new content type should now happen on #1487988: Create new content type and Views for books.

That's understood. We do want to maintain consistency throughout the site. Just more motivation to jump onto a redesign of the section with a content-type, etc. as I find the navigation of the page to be a bit lacking, not sure how many people look to the bottom of a page to find more categories, sections, etc.

For consistency we can look to the redesign of the marketplace on how the views exposed filters evolve on that page.

Hello all,

Nice to see some changes in this thread! Personally, I think that the newest books should always be on top, and that should be the default sorting when /books becomes a views page.

Until then, I do agree that the page could be improved, but going against the flow here, I don't like the changes at all. I want to see list of books when I go to a books page, not a list of links asking me to choose what type of user I am.

I do agree that the list became too long (success!), but the solution for that would be to create a views pager. The way it is currently, we risk having books being listed on the four sub-pages (as is the case for "The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7").

As to the problem of amazon.com/co.uk/etc, there's a 5-year old Amazon Associates blog page on earning revenue from the different country sites that seems to indicate that the DA would have to register itself in each Amazon page. It seems to still be valid.

However, my question on this would be: are books so special in d.o that we need to create a separate content type for them? Might be better to branch this out to a store.drupal.org sub-site that could more easily handle that kind of content.

I respectfully disagree... If I'm browsing books, not seeing books that are not appropriate for me seems like a big win. But I think we all agree that moving to a Views model will help, and until then, let's leave the page(s) as they are now.

Let's continue the discussion about how/whether to do Views on that other issue [the question of whether to do it there or have a separate store can be handled there].

Right. You've been a bit out of the loop, jcnventura... so yes there are a few books that fit into more than one general category, but I think it's overall a helpful way to find the kind of books you are interested in. Most Drupal developers won't be interested in a D7 for Dummies guide, but someone new to Drupal might want to start there. Someone new to Drupal who also plans to develop ASAP, might want to dive in with the Definitive Guide to D7. Some titles aren't immediately clear what kind of subject matter they deal with (e.g. some of the design/front-end guides), and I do think that sorting those into that category helps, too.

Re your other comments: Yes. I did determine that each Amazon locale requires a separate Amazon associates ID, but that's not a big deal. If we want to create a Views display that generates all eight links, and it requires multiple associate IDs, it's work done once. The ASIN is the same (for books) in all stores, as long as the product is carried, so it's simple to build the links.

Newest books will always appear on the top, and with a Views-based search, people will have a lot of control over what they see (only books for D7, only books with at least some advanced content, only books dealing with [ ... ] (fill in the blank).

Right now the books are buried in the "getting started" documentation section, so people who've been involved for a while would never bother looking at these pages and find the books links. So, yes... it's likely that the books might be moved somewhere more prominent or even into the D.A. "store", but the content type and Views might help with all that.

Finally, in theory, this issue is supposed to be closed as "fixed" now; however we could still re-work the current system, if you have input. But where we really need input is in the topic where we are discussing the Content type/Views -based books system: http://drupal.org/node/1487988

Anyway, I'm sorry you dislike the categorization, but with the new system, you will be able to view all books, once again, or sort/filter them. We will have links to easily sort and filter, but you should also be able to just see all Drupal books (released) sorted by descending publication date and all upcoming books sorted by ascending order (as it was). :-)

Updating this topic, too. The plan for a CCK/Views -based book listing system has been worked out well enough that we've moved to the next step: application for a dev server on d.o. which I can use to build up the content type and Views displays, etc, before bundling up the "Feature" for use:
http://drupal.org/node/1493106