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By mdev on
My third Drupal related book has just been published by Packt Publishing, entitled "Drupal 7 Social Networking", so I thought I'd post it on this forum for those who are interested. I'm very grateful for the feedback received on the previous version for Drupal 6, and feedback on this version is of course most welcome. Please feel free to contact me on my personal email (mkpeacock@gmail.com) with any questions.
Packt, the publishers, have kindly provided a discount code for anyone from here who purchases the book, to receive 20% off: Drupal7Social20.
For those of you who don't know, Packt also donate a percentage of sales from their Drupal books to Drupal.
About the Book
Drupal 7 Social Networking provides careful instructions and clear explanations to take you through the setup and management of your social network site, covering topics from users, to marketing, to maintenance. It will help you create your own social networking site, suitable for whatever audience you choose!
Starting from the very basics of both Drupal and Social Networking, right through to more complicated aspects, you will progressively learn how to add to and expand your social networking site and add more features. You will learn how to secure your social network, deploy it on the Internet, and keep it running and well maintained. As social networking sites rely on the participation of their users, this book helps you to structure your site in such a way so that users can easily and enjoyably contribute, thus creating a powerful social network.
A complete walkthrough for creating, developing, growing, and maintaining a Social Networking website using Drupal 7.
What you will learn from this book:
• Build a social networking site from the ground up using Drupal 7
• Use a combination of features, modules, and simple customization to allow user interaction, contributions, and communication
• Import content from the Internet to your site using the Aggregator module
• Create user profiles, set up roles and permissions, and handle security settings
• Use Drupal's modular system to create modules to add functionality
• Customize the look and feel of your site by enabling and installing new themes, ensuring that your site is distinctive
• Deploy and maintain your social networking site on the Internet using the maintenance mode, reports, and cron to keep everything running smoothly
• Recover from virus attacks and hacking attempts on your social network by making and maintaining regular backups, in case the worst should happen
• Promote and market your social network using advertisements, advertising networks, other social networks, and search engine optimization
• Let your users contribute to the site, from those who wish to add a little content to those who wish to help run the site on a daily basis
Approach
This book is packed with clear instructions and careful explanations for creating a powerful social networking site using Drupal 7. With each chapter, you add new features and content until your social network is ready to be released to the Internet where it can grow.
By the end of this book, you will have a powerful social network which you can either choose to model on the case-study, or create to your own unique design.
Who this book is written for
This book is aimed at anyone looking to create their own social networking website, including:
• Businesses – building a social network around a product or service can improve your company profile and increase customer loyalty, while an internal social network gives you employees a place to keep resources, discuss ideas, raise concerns, and keep up to date on company policies.
• Hobbyists – create a community around your hobbies and interests; create a local or distributed user group.
• Organizations and charities – raise your profile, promote your events, services, and fundraisers, and get help from the community in organizing them.
• Families – for large families based across the country or across the globe, keep up to date with everyone, and let everyone know what you are up to.
You don't need any experience of Drupal or PHP to use this book. If you are a Drupal user you will find this book a great way to rapidly tailor an existing installation into a socially orientated website.
Want a Sample?
For a glimpse of the content featured within this book, Packt has provided a free chapter excerpt: Deploying and Maintaining Your Social Network
About Me
Michael Peacock (www.michaelpeacock.co.uk) is a web developer and Zend Certified Engineer from Newcastle, UK with a degree in Software Engineering from the University of Durham.
After working as Managing Director and Lead Developer overseeing the development team at the web agency he co-founded almost five years ago, Michael stepped back from the business and now acts as the Web Systems Developer on the telemetry project for Smith Electric Vehicles.
In October 2010, Michael presented his thoughts on specific web application architectures at the popular PHP North West conference, and has presented to the PHP North East user group on automated deployment systems and to North East technical community group Super Mondays on Jenkins Continuous Integration.
Michael loves working on web related projects, and is currently incubating a number of ideas for launch through his latest venture, Central Apps Limited (www.centralapps.co.uk).
He is the author of Drupal 7 Social Networking, PHP 5 Social Networking, PHP 5 E-Commerce Development, Drupal 6 Social Networking, Selling online with Drupal e-Commerce and Building Websites with TYPO3. Michael acted as technical reviewer for other publications like Mobile Web Development and Drupal for Education and E-Learning.
You can follow Michael on Twitter: www.twitter.com/michaelpeacock or find out
more about him through his blog: www.michaelpeacock.co.uk.
