Saturday, November 29, 2008

Buying a Drupal Book

I try to avoid buying computer books, partly because I'm cheap, partly because I have limited shelf space, and partly because free online resources are often better. However, I've been having trouble getting started with Drupal--I know how to make it work, but I don't really "get" what I need to know to start working on a real Web site. (By the way, my latest set of helpful Drupal links is listed below.)

There's useful information here, but not what I'd been hoping to find. That's why I ordered Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6: Build your own professional blog, forum, portal or community website with Drupal 6 by David Mercer. It came in the mail yesterday, and I started working my way through it this morning. Even though it was quite pricey, I'm pleased to have it. The author walks you through developing and implementing a sample Web site. The drupal.org site tells you how to do hundreds of different things, but David Mercer tells you why you want to do a few of the more basic things, and what things you need to learn about first. It was this orientation that I've been missing.

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