Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 560 pages
• Published by: Apress December 13, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 1590595629
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-1590595626
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.3 inches
• Weighs: 2 pounds

Product Description


Content management, blogs, and online forums are among the most significant online trends today, and Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress are three of the most popular open source applications facilitating these trends.

Drupal is a full content management system that allows you to create any type of website you desire, from an e-commerce to a community-based site. phpBB enables you to set up a bulletin board or forum. And WordPress is the software of choice for the exploding blog community. All three technologies are based on PHP and MySQL.

Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress is authored by a team of experts. Robert T. Douglass recently created the Drupal-powered blog site NowPublic.com. Mike Little is a founder and contributing developer of the WordPress project. And Jared W. Smith has been a longtime support team member of phpBBHacks.com and has been building sites with phpBB since the first beta releases.

About The Author
Robert T. Douglass is a core developer and member of the security team for the Drupal project. As a leading voice in the Drupal community, he works hard to introduce new programmers and webmasters to the joys of building websites with Drupal. To this end, Robert headed Drupal's involvement in the Google Summer of Code, 2005. Robert is a freelance Drupal consultant and programmer, working out of his home in Germany.

Mike Little is one of the founders of the WordPress project and is still a contributing developer. He has been programming professionally for 15 years in a variety of languages including PHP, Java, JSP, Perl, and assembler.

Jared W. Smith has several years of experience administering, styling, and modifying the phpBB bulletin board software, and designed web sites in different forms for several years before that. He was among the original Support Team at phpBBHacks.com &emdash; the leading distributor of modifications and templates for phpBB &emdash; where he now serves in an advisory role.

Reader Reviews
When I picked up this book I knew what phpBB was (my main reason for getting the book), but the other two applications were foreign to me. So, let me start off by briefly pointing out what each application is and does: - Drupal is a CMS, content management system, (think Wikipedia) that allows users to input and update information - phpBB is bulletin board software (very much like Invision or Jolt from surface appearances) - WordPress is blogging software (do I really need to say more after 2005, the year of the Blog) The publisher has chosen to group what amounts to three separate books on three open source applications together based upon the 'community' aspects that they engender, allowing groups of users to come together to post,and counter-comment. The book is effectively a collected user manual for these three applications, but that does not really go far enough. Yes, the material for each is available online, but this book collects the documentation together in a user friendly manner. Anyone that has tried to install and operate a complex piece of software based upon the canned manuals can appreciate the complexity involved. Using this book is essentially like having an experienced guru looking over your shoulder offering advice as you go through the process. This can be the difference between 30-60 minutes of simple work and 5-6 hours of confusion, frustration and ranting. Add to this the advice on configuration and usage/management for avoiding pitfalls and achieving best case results, and this book can pay for itself in no time (I bill at $50 an hour and consider my personal time even more valuable). Bottom line, if you want to keep users on your site (i.e. not farm out these services), and want to use a CMS, bBoard, or Blog using open source software, it is worth your time to check out these options. If you then decide to use one of them, this book can save you a chunk of time and frustration. P-)