Drupal 5 Views Recipes Review

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Drupal 5 Views Recipes ReviewI am not a PHP expert and I barely know how to spell CSS. My first attempt at website development began three years ago with the decision to utilize Drupal. After three years of trial and error, the searching of forums, posting questions, hiring four different developers, installation and then un-installation of almost one hundred modules, and the purchasing of several reference books and videos, I would say that I still have barely scratched the surface of potential with Drupal.
So it seems to me that there are basically six levels or stages of Drupal knowledge and understanding that users (other than true professional developers) go through:
1. The Discovery phase where the user decides "This looks easy, how hard can it be to plug in a module?"
2. The Awakening phase where the user finds that Drupal is amazingly powerful.... with hundreds of ways to attempt to solve the problem and to really tweak their website, they must use and understand modules and possibly the basics of CSS. This is the stage where the user may even abandon Drupal due to the feeling of being overwhelmed.
3. The Acceptance phase where the user decides they if they want to really customize their site they may need to seek professional help.
4. The Disbelief phase where the user discovers that anyone with a computer can claim to be a Drupal expert and that they (the user) may in fact know as much as the Pro they have hired. This user is not afraid to wade into the fray, comfortable in the knowledge that the site can always be restored from a backup (you DID backup the site didn't you?).
5. The Semi-Pro - Feels comfortable with about 90% of the requirements for building an awesome website, but still discovers new ideas and processes through forums and books
6. The Pro - only occasionally needs help with the finer details of a particular code snippet or module customization, generally can figure it out without assistance
With these phases in mind, I would say that "Drupal 5 Views Recipes" is a fantastic resource for stages 1 through 5. Certainly some users within the different stages will gain more from the book than will others, but overall this is a cookbook with recipes designed to not only attain a particular result... but also to help remove the "tunnel vision" thought process for solving Drupal problems.
This book includes almost 100 "recipes" with specific examples of how to set up the modules to attain a particular result, plus the downloadable files enable copy and paste simplicity.
Topics/Recipes include, setting up the Frontpage, podcasting, Google proximity views, Blogrolls, tweaking themes, displaying charts, Photo Galleries, YouTube, Calendars, Popular Content pages, exposed filters, applying and creating patches, setting up Cron, a thorough discussion with examples for VBO (Views Bulk Operations), Google maps, formatting of queries, Panels, code snippets to tweak the PHP files, etc.
Though written for Drupal version 5, many of the workflows and module combinations will work equally as well in version 6 (although the user interface in v6 may be different in some cases).
As I mentioned earlier..when it comes to site development in general and specifically Drupal, I am NOT a Pro. I need instructions as well as a "Step One, Step Two, Step Three approach and that is what I really like about Marjorie's approach.
This will become a well-worn reference guide in my library of Drupal tools....I highly recommend it!Drupal 5 Views Recipes OverviewThis book will give you a long list of powerful recipes. Choose the ones that suit your needs and use them through step-by-step instructions. Most of the recipes are code-free, but a number of the recipes contain code snippets. This book is primarily written for Drupal site builders, administrators, and themers who want to develop custom content displays using Views. It can be used by anyone who has a Drupal 5 web site, including original site developers as well as people who have inherited a Drupal 5 site. Some knowledge of HTML and CSS is required; PHP basics will be handy for some of the recipes.

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Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation Review

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Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation ReviewAnne is a technical writer who has done a considerable amount of work with FLOSS Manuals in documenting the OLPC laptop, and is obviously well-versed in both open-source documentation and social media. The book is designed to give technical writers and other information developers an overview of the tools and techniques available now for documenting products and communicating with end-users through social media and other non-traditional methods.
As a technical writer and community manager, I am exactly the target market for this book, so it is no wonder that I think it is an excellent resource that is long overdue. What surprised me was the depth with which she covered her subjects, the extensive yet highly selective quality of references in the book, and the sheer number of strategies that I hadn't yet encountered even as a professional in this area.
The most important point Anne makes in the book is that documentation as we know it is changing dramatically. Practically all of the basic tenets of technical documentation are in question. Users depend far more often on advice from random strangers via mailing lists, community forums, and search engines than they do on the technical documentation that comes with the product. I have seen this to be true even for highly technical concepts and tools. This is not news to anyone who has ever used Google to find the answer to a technical question rather than looking in the docs, but it was fascinating to see that phenomenon addressed in such a way that my opinions of it were actually changed. Like many technical writers, I have a lingering fear that I will someday be obsolete and that my job of communicating technical issues to users of technology will be taken over by amateurs in ad-hoc communities. Anne gently reminds us that it is the quantity of information that is skyrocketing, not the quality, and that our jobs as technical communicators are more important than ever in making that information "findable", even if that means abandoning what we traditionally think of as documentation. What I took away from this aspect of the book was the overwhelming necessity to make human connections, even in technical documentation, an idea that resonates strongly with my own role as a community builder. Chapter 3 spells it out best as "Defining a Writer's Role with the Social Web".
The book catalogs the available tools and strategies from several different viewpoints based on documentation strategy---in other words, use cases---rather than simply providing an annotated list. Anne specifically points to references and in-the-trenches stories that underscore her points in a very effective way. The subject that brought me the most "aha!" moments was that of wikis. I use wikis on a daily basis, but there were certain aspects of them that I had overlooked. There were so many interesting references in all sections that I felt compelled to stop reading the book and follow them, which is not a criticism of the writing but rather of the sheer amount of information out there. The consistent, confident, professional tone kept me riveted to the book, but I am now going back over every page and following links.
I highly recommend this book to both technical communicators and those involved in social media and community. My copy is going straight to my boss' desk.Conversation and Community: The Social Web for Documentation OverviewConversation and Community: The Social Web for Technical Documentation, industry expert Anne Gentle's new book, brings the tools of the Social Web to technical documentation. She looks at the most important Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, and syndication, and shows how they can be used to foster conversations and a community with your customers.Through examples and her own hard-won experience with these technologies, Gentle provides practical guidance for technical communicators, marketers, and anyone who wants to use the Social Web to interact with customers.

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