The Bottom Line
Pros
- Covers the basics of Drupal in a short time
- Quizzes and exercises test what you learned in each chapter
- Includes details on Drupal 7
- Explains Drupal CMS conventions
- Includes details on possible problems
Cons
- Screen shots can be hard to read
- Expects you to read a lot before you do anything
- Doesn't cover theme creation in much depth
Description
- The first chapters describe Drupal and help you install it.
- Then you learn about administering Drupal and using nodes.
- Chapters on managing URLs, users, and the site as a whole.
- You will learn to add polls, comments, blogs, newsletters, contact forms, and calendars.
- Modify the site look with themes, blocks, panels and pages.
Guide Review - Sams Teach Yourself Drupal in 24 Hours by Jesse Feiler
Drupal is a fairly complicated open source CMS. And while you can go online and learn a lot of things about it, including how to install and use it. This book takes you through it in a straightforward and reasonable way. What I liked best about it was that the lessons were short. A few may have taken close to an hour, but most of them took no more than 30-45 minutes. Which meant that I could spend more time tweaking and fiddling and going back and re-reading sections.
The book doesn't assume that you know a lot, but you do need to understand at least the basics of Web design and Web publishing to get the most out of this book. Also, if you're not comfortable working at the command line with your Web hosting provider, some things will take a lot longer.
One thing that Jesse recommends is that you create your first Drupal installation with the intention of throwing it out when you're done. That is an excellent idea. That way, if you're having trouble with something or you can't figure out how to get it done, you're not wrecking your live website. I did this by installing Drupal on my local machine and doing all the exercises there. Then, installing it on a live server is a piece of cake - as I've already worked out the kinks and figured out what I do and don't want to use.
The one thing I didn't like was that most of the chapters expect you to read a lot before you get to doing anything. While it is possible to follow along on your own installation, a lot of the instructions are phrased as "as you can see in screen shot 14.5...". But the images are nearly full-screen images of Web pages - so the text on them is small and hard to read. Instead, what you're supposed to do is read through all that and then only take action in the "Try it Yourself" sections. It was hard for me to wait, and many times I didn't wait and then would create more problems for myself. This is what made up the bulk of each hour of the book for me.
