Author: Jesse Feiler
Publisher: Sams, 2010
Pages: 456
ISBN: 978-0672331268
Aimed at: Beginning Drupal users
Rating:2
Pros: Lots of information
Cons: A confusing, difficult-to-read, book
Reviewed by: Mike James

Production problems aside this book still has the disadvantage that it manages to make what can be a difficult application to get started with seem even more difficult. It starts off by trying to convince the reader that no programming experience is needed to use Drupal - this is true - but then suddenly starts to explain how it works in terms of .htaccess files and PHP code to the extent of actually listing the PHP.  This is a quite unnecessary complication and adds nothing to the understanding of how things work at a conceptual level. In fact the listings add little even if you do know PHP and understand what .htaccess files are all about. 

This is not an isolated incident. The author repeatedly appeals to some advanced idea or other while motivating the introduction of something that could be simple. When we do reach a topic that needs a practical explanation the level suddenly drops to enumerating the menu and module that are usually fairly obvious. The explanations in this case are often at the level of:

"title - this is a string of up to 255 characters for the title of the node"

- not as bad as some treatments where  "title" is often explained as  "the title" but still a lot of fairly obvious information.

It is in the description of the menus and forms that the difficulties in reading the screen dumps is most acute. Another problem is that by the time we have started to examine the actual Drupal screens and options the reader still has no clear or even vague overview of the organisation of Drupal or its operating principles.

The book ploughs on regardless introducing more modules and more options. By Hour 8, i.e. Chapter 8, we have reached managing users, roles and permissions - something that probably should have been dealt with much earlier. Other topics include allowing users to edit content, creating newsletters etc. In Hour 14 we reach the fairly central topic of views and how to create them. If you are still with the book beyond this point then you start to progress through events and calendars and e-commerce to your first live site - themes, block, layout, menus - then on to managing the site.The book rounds off with dynamic page construction and customizing themes via CSS.