Any feedback on David Mercer's new drupal book?

I've just looked through it for about 20 minutes, and would agree to the Dries'es annotation. I think it's quite complete description of Drupal's features and how-to's. Didn't find anything new for myself, but to read such a book is a much easier faster and better way than study Drupal by forum's postings (AND HANDBOOKS, DON'T FORGET ABOUT HANDBOOKS! :-)

By the way, seems like Rob's book is something similar.
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It's a longtail.

I thought the book was excellent.

As a Drupal newbie I found the online documentation lacking (comprehensive but not always comprehensible.

This book took me by the hand and explained the basics in an understandable way.

If I had one query, it was why he felt it necessary to spend twenty pages on setting up Adsense.

My plan on having read through it once is to read through it again while doing a small website i'm working on.

9 out of 10 for beginners.

The book is a good intro for those of us that like to read and learn off line. I am new to Drupal and have found it useful. It is organized reasonably well.

One area however that it does not touch upon very well is template development. I think it would be very useful to also demonstrate more fully how to use Drupal for something other then a community based websites. There is only one case study eco website used throughout the book.

I was successful in installing and configuring Drupal to work with Apache2triad software on WinXP laptop, which is detailed in the book. That is a great help in learning Drupal. I have not read Robert Douglass' book so I can not compare it yet, I will post back when I have finished his book.

I bought David Mercer's book, as well as the one by Robert Douglass. Both were very helpful for getting up to speed. After I read both, the online Drupal handbook made a lot more sense.

The only problem with Mercer's book is that it needs editing. I'm a technical writer, and I kept wanting to reach for my red pencil to cross out superfluous sentences. About 30% of the text was unnecessary and simply got in the way. Hopefully the editing will improve in the second edition.

(Hint: read Strunk & White's "Elements of Style", the works of Rudolf Flesch or the latter-day proponents of clear writing.)

The content of Mercer's book was great, and there was not much overlap with Douglass's (if there was duplication, I needed it in order to absorb the concepts). I just wish the books covered more.

I've got to admire the two writers for daring to tackle a product that goes through versions so quickly and that has so many permutations. Well done!

I have just finished a quick read of Robert Douglass's contributions to "Building online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress" and finished David Mercer's "Drupal"

David Mercer's book is great for the Drupal Newbie, and anyone who wants to get the big picture. He actually covers all basic Drupal topics well and takes you all the way through the process of launching a live website with a discussion what's involved with maintaining a Drupal Site. Perhaps more important for a beginner like myself, he shows you how to set up a sandbox installation on your computer by installing Apache2triad and Drupal. His style of write is a bit campy and he seems to drift off topic at times but overall its well organized.

"Building Online Communities..." is also good. If you haven't decided to go with Drupal yet then I suppose its a good review of PHPBB and WordPress too. ( I skipped these chapters. )

Robert Douglass clearly explains the topics concisely if not briefly and although he covers much the same topics of Drupal, he hits it at different angles which I found helpful and he discusses modules not covered by the other book. I found he covers the topic of theming much better. I think because Drupal represents only a third of this book it wasn't able to cover more topics in fuller detail with sufficient examples.

I think that both books are worth while and have made the learning curve easier. If you can only afford one book I would go with Mercer's book and supplement with the online documentation. Get Robert Douglass book if you want more information on Modules and Theming.

>> I had to come back to edit this post to plug Roberts Douglass' book a bit more, I am finding that I reference his book quite a lot now that I am beyond the basic install.

Advance Drupal/Cookbook Wish list
If such a book was being written here are some topics I would like to see covered at length.

• Advanced Drupal Theme Development - With examples not only for Community sites but for Ecomerce and Corporate/Brochure websites Complete with PHP and CSS Hacks.
• <Advanced Drupal Application- with examples on how to set up different types of websites with Drupal using various Modules.
• <An Introduction to Drupal Module Development- I'm not anywhere near this one, but would be insightful.

What would you like to see in an advanced Drupal book?

After a couple of months of wise consideration and attempts on several CMS systems for the first time ever, I finally adopted Drupal 4.7.2. as my final choice. Have not regretted it since. What I read in serious reviews and from people who are supposed to know about these things, my choice can only be confirmed.
I started out with the drupal.org handbooks, just taking in what I needed to get started, and experimenting for myself. That worked out fine, most of the time. Several chapters though were (are) out of my league so I left those for later. I like the modular way in which this can be done. One can just study on what one needs to do, and leave out the rest for later reference, on an as-needed basis.
Then I discovered David Mercer's book which I have read after about a month of previous Drupal experience. I read it from start to end, not skipping anything. The book was most helpful in disclosing Drupal further for me. Through its clear full-text explanations in a spoken language kind of way, several Drupal concepts became much clearer. Mercer's book was quite helpful in acquiring a better understanding of the drupal.org handbooks.
Because I had some Drupal-experience before using it, I could also detect from this book if my concept of developing with Drupal was the way it's supposed to be (which, fortunately, it was).
After reading this book and shaping up my skills, I'll continue on the drupal.org handbooks and forums and start webbuilding in Drupal for real.
I would gladly recommend this book to any newbie and perhaps not-so-newbie too.

When I discovered Drupal last month, I saw Mercer's book and bought it immediately. Skipped past the other one because it wasn't focused on Drupal, but tried to cover more ground.

While Mercer's book was very valuable to me and I do not regret buying it, I felt that it focused too much on the technical aspects of setting up the software and did not address how to present content to the site visitors.

For instance, there was no discussion on how to create links to show taxonomy related articles, or on various ways to display blog posts from dozens of authors without getting them all mixed up (still trying to figure that one out).

Mercer's book is primarily targeted to the newbie who hasn't set up any web software before and is a good, though brief, introduction to the Drupal way of thinking.

- Alan Tutt
http://www.PowerKeysPub.com

It is for beginners or new comers to the drupal environment and not for advanced users. As a noob I can say that this book gave me a better understanding of what drupal is all about. After finishing the book I found myself asking more questions and getting a better idea how to tackle my project.

update.. had more questions so I read another drupal book from Apress.

does this or any book explain how to implement new content types with a many-to-many relationship? e.g. A company can sell many products. A Product can be sold be many companies.

I just finished reading(only chapter covering drupal) Apress Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress. I would recommend this for beginners such as myself. It has a technical approach to it. Book has really helped me a lot in getting focused.

Topics included
Configuring Drupal
Using Drupal Core Modules
Adding Contributed Modules
Adding and Customizing Themes
Maintaining your site

ther rest of the chapter are focused on phpBB and Wordpress book has 561 pages and 3 parts. Part 1 is drupal and covers 244 pages.

Good Book.

If you are thinking of buying either of the Drupal books (Douglass or Mercer) in order to gain a deeper understanding of Drupal or as a guide to serious customization, think again. Both books cover very basic concepts and provide very few tutorials. I regret purchasing them.

Recommend it highly.

I purchased the ebook .pdf. It is secured by password and not printable or copy(copy/paste) but as an entry level dru pal, I found it very useful, especially the installation on a localhost server on my WIN XP Pro machine(cut down time for dev)...with many good screen shots. You can however, using Adobe use the highliter and pencil, coments tools to annotate, and create personal book marks, and save-as for multiple versions. You cannot however edit the text. Very comprehensive TOC and index/

He anticipates all those elementary dumb newbie questions, and answers them in an understandable and comprehensive way. E-book version about $25US...instant download. Found having the ebook open on the desktop while actually using drupal to be very helpful...

Which ever to buy, don't forget to download the free code samples from the publisher website which Mercer lists in the book, which you can copy and paste...

Mick