A lot of Drupal books have come out lately. A ... lot. One that I've seen lately is called Drupal 6 - Social Networking and is actually pretty good. It is published by Packt Publishing and written by Michael Peacock. The goal of the book is to provide users who want to build their own social network (think Twitter, Facebook, ...) a step by step guide.
The book starts by explaining what a Social Network is and what it can do for you and your company. It goes then further by installing and configuring Drupal. It provides a nice walk through the most used configuration screen. After following that by introducing you to nodes, blocks, menus, themes and modules you get a nice overview of how Drupal is built up.
This lays the grounds to actually building your own (Social Network) site, which is done over a few chapters. You are introduced there to a few of Drupal's modules (to extend Drupal) and how to use and configure them. The start is always a problem/feature for the site which is then solved in the rest of the chapter.
The fact that not everything is possible by default in Drupal isn't passed. A chapter is also added that explains how you can solve problems in Drupal that are not solved yet with a contributed module. A short introduction is given to how you can write these modules yourself. Don't expect a lot of programming lingo here, only the bare essentials are touched. But these give you a nice idea of how simple Drupal development can be. I must admit this is not for everyone. Skip this if you think it's too difficult, but try to read it once to get to know what Drupal development is about. You might like it!
A chapter is also provided where you learn how to maintain your site and optimize its performance. Security is not ignored there too. A few for the SPAM problem (you'll definitely encounter when you release your site and it proves succesfull) are given.
The book ends with a few tips of how to promote your site. After all, you're building a social site. That needs people!
A lot of modules are discussed in this book. Which is important. By simply learning how basis Drupal (core) works, you can't do much unless you're a developer. In the book modules for blogging, wiki, polls, aggregation, forum, guestbook, groups (like facebook groups), friends, contact, spam protection, ... are suggested. Using all these, you can already built most of the sites you want to build.
When browsing the book, you'll see a lot of screenshots. This helps you focus, helps you read faster (you don't always have to run it yourself - but that's recommended) and makes the book a joy to read. This book is actually quite an entertaining one you'll read very quickly. The whole philosophy of the book seems to give you an overview of all that's possible and gives you hints on how to build upon that. That doesn't mean nothing is touched upon to shallow though, after finishing the book, you're able to build a full site yourself. From intallation, to finishing touches by design and maintenance.
The central topic of this book (besides Drupal) is social networks. But after reading this book, you can use your knowledge of Drupal to build other sites too. I invite you to experiment with what you've learned.
Overall this book is quite a nice addition to the lot of Drupal books available on the market. I can whole-heartedly recommend it to you if you like your books with a lot of examples, screenshot and real life use cases. And don't let the module development chapter shy you away. It adds that touch of complete coverage to this book.
Comments
It is a nice book! Drupal 6 is making website more social if you install relevant modules.
- Tanya
Web Design Firm
I can certainly say the this is a good introduction to how Drupal can be used to build a site with social features. Many people I know are using Ning, etc when they really should be using Drupal to have total control over their site.
These social features ca be used on many types of sites that are not explicitly social networks as well.
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