Customer Rating:  
Summary: A great book for web designers. For programmers, not so much.
Comment: Carefully designed and clearly written, this book is an effective introduction to PHP for anyone who has at least a little experience with web design. It is built around simple step-by-step examples which illustrate the principles being explained. These are clearly designed to minimize the trauma of learning a programming language for the code-phobic. The reader can follow along on the keyboard and build confidence by experimenting with variations.
For programmers, who already understand most of PHP's basic concepts, this approach can be frustrating. The book spends pages demonstrating things that could be explained in a paragraph or two.
You can learn PHP from this book whatever your background, but if you have already mastered another programming language, you'll be better off with a book that teaches PHP from that point of view.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Mediocre and Out Of Date
Comment: I bought this book hoping to get up to speed quickly on the very exciting Drupal platform. Unfortunately, this book was targeted at Drupal 4.7 Users. I started using 5.5 (as of today they have a version 6 release candidate), and quickly discovered that half the information in the book did not match up. There has been a major reorganization of the administrative pages, leaving the information given you more likely to confuse than inform.
My other major objection is that the information is cursory, and does not really provide you with the skills needed to build a real site. If they had done this book well, you would have been walked through building a basic real site, so you could understand everything in context. There is nothing like that here. It is basically piecemeal information that is available online, though a bit more thorough with some exercises scattered throughout to demonstrate concepts.
Unless you intend to use Version 4 of Drupal for some reason, save yourself some money and frustration and wait for an updated version.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress
Comment: Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and Wordpress was very helpful. I found the sections very helpful and easy to understand.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction
Comment: This is a great introduction, at least to Drupal version 4.
Note that the administration menus are significantly different for the current Drupal 5 release. I wonder if a revision is in the works?
Customer Rating:
Summary: Theres Advanced, Basic and This book - Way To Simple!
Comment: This is basically an outline for beginners ONLY. If you expect to be able to move on past simple installation and configuration, save your money! The software Drupal, phpBB and wordpress are all excellent programs. This book is an introduction to each and has nothing to do with building online communities. Way to simple. SORRY!!!
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