building online communities with drupal phpbb and wordpress
What a mouthful.
As well as being a System Administrator, I'm also a Web Developer (although not very vocal about it). So when a book comes out that covers three of the most popular (and coincidentally PHP-based) web applications, I thought it would be fun to read.
So what does the book cover? Well, as the title suggests, Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress. For those not familiar with those applications, Drupal is a Content Management System, phpBB is a Forum or Bulletin Board, and WordPress is a blogging application. Across the board, installation, configuration, management, and customization is discussed. The skill level is set for beginner and will take you to the intermediate range.
So what's good about this book? If you're new or have thought about using any of the three of the titled applications, then this book is for you. Most of the topics are explained very clearly and by the time you're done reading about each, you'll have your own installation up and running.
Also, being a fan of just reading, I enjoyed how the book was split into three parts -- each by a different author who had a different style of writing toward their topic at hand.
So is there anything missing from the book? With all three sections, the theme customization parts were on the shallow side. Understandably, this book is aimed at beginners, so only a few basic ideas were covered to get the reader started. Ideally, I would have enjoyed seeing how to create a theme from absolute scratch. The WordPress section came pretty close, but having all three cover how to build a theme from scratch would probably take a lot of time and extra space. Not to mention it's really more of an advanced topic.
Overall, I think all three authors did an excellent job at describing their application. If you're new to the world of Online Communities, you'll get an excellent introduction to starting your own with this book. I give it an 8/10.
