Books – The Coding Pad

HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions – Book Review

I’ve been spending some time in the recent past revisiting my knowledge of (X)HTML/CSS, and one of the big things I’ve discovered is that I have more I need to unlearn than to learn. I learned everything I know about building websites on the internet, by experimenting, searching w3c schools for syntax rules and tags, and learning by looking at other people’s source code. This is the first time I’ve actually bought and gone through a book on this stuff, and I am so glad I did – wish I has done so earlier! If you’re just starting out, or like me feel like you need to learn the right way, or just want a nice (X)HTML/CSS book for your collection, I have just the book for you, it’s HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions – A Web Standardistas’ Approach by Christopher Murphy and Niklas Person. This post is a review of the book.

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MODx Web Development – MODx Book Now Available!

The first ever (I believe) MODx book is now available! It is titled MODx Web Development, authored by Antano Solar John and published by Packtpub.

You can get a copy of MODx Web Development at Packtpub (ebook costs $22.39, paperback costs $35.99, bundle costs $40.79).

Here is a quick rundown of the contents of the book:

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Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide Book – Initial Impressions

I recently got a copy of the new Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide ebook by Dorien Herremans to review. I am currently working through it and will be putting up a comprehensive review soon, but I wanted to share my initial impressions with you, having read through the first few chapters and skimmed the rest of the book. Let me preface this all by saying that I am really really looking forward to working though this book.

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Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6 – Book Review

Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6 by David Mercer is what I believe is the ultimate beginner’s book for Drupal. While the other books that I’ve reviewed here focuses on how to build a particular type of website (Drupal 6 Site Builder Solutions for a small business website and Drupal 6 Social Networking for social networking sites), Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6 looks at Drupal as a whole for any type of website.

This book walks you from the very beginning, introducing you to Drupal, how to set up a development environment and install Drupal, all the way to how to deploy your completed website. Early on in the book the author introduces you to the Drupal.org website and how to use it, which is a very useful section since the Drupal website is the ultimate Drupal resource and you need to be familiar with navigating and finding (and even sharing) information and resources.

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Drupal 6 Social Networking – Book Review

I have just finished going through the book Drupal 6 Social Networking, authored by Michael Peacock and published by PacktPub. This is a book that anyone, whatever their level of proficiency in Drupal is, can use and appreciate. Drupal 6 Social Networking shows you how you can use Drupal to create a social networking website where users can register, share information, and interact in various ways.

The one thing I appreciated the most about this book is how newbie-friendly it is. I’m all about newbies on this blog because I know how crippling and confusing it can feel to be new at something, to hear words and wonder what they mean, to know that there’s a secret language there that you don’t get just yet. Michael basically takes you by the hand and walks you through using Drupal in such a way that even if you’ve never heard of Drupal before, you’ll still be able to make good use of this book. He doesn’t rush through the preliminaries, but explains everything from the install process, to the configuration, to what all the options in the admin settings mean, and how to change and configure them.

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