Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition (Beginning from Novice to Professional)

This is a review for the second edition, covering Drupal 6.

I have read only the first 3 chapters, but did read the 1st edition cover-to-cover.

The first thing to know is that while reading this, if you are working through the examples, you will want to have the Drupal API handy (http://api.drupal.com) as there are infrequent calls to depreciated functions such as variable_delete() instead of the current variable_del() that may make the learning process more difficult for people in the novice to early-intermediate range that aren't familiar with the API pages. So far the only other complaint I can make is that VanDyk's adherence to Drupal coding standards is spotty. I won't mention and specific examples of this as they don't make or break any of the code, but being a person who (tries to) strictly adhere to a given set of standards, found that to be a little bit annoying. Overall, this title would have benefited from an extra proofing by the sort of person who would read it in the first place.

This is the type of book in which a reader would benefit from an initial read-through before they would start coding. There are several front references that make more sense with better context.

As stated in general terms, this is my second reading of this book and find the updated version to be an excellent primer on the core pieces of Drupal, building modules and the theme system and have and will recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning about Drupal in spite of it's relatively few and small problems.

Seems to be a great book easy to follow - but it's for version 5 of Drupal. None of the examples work with Version 6. So if you up to date on your code, don't bother with this book.

Since the description said this was a great introduction for beginniers I made the mistake of thinking it might help me - I'm a business person who owns a website. I'm looking for a platform that will enable me to manage my content.

I needed to undersand how Drupal works at an application level. How would I control and update my content? How would I control who has access to the content? How can I enable some people to add/maintain content, others to administer technical details?

The author could't wait to discuss his code, so there was a complete disconnect for me.

Having just cracked the basics of Drupal, this book (now covering Drupal 6) is fantastic both for reference and as a training manual to go to the next step. Some of the content is very advanced, but if you're looking to understand theming, nifty JS (jQuery) tricks and writing your own modules then this is definitely for you. With Drupal 7 threatening to appear in the next 6 months, I wouldn't hand around for another book - go for this and get stuck in.

I used to be an enthusiastic reader of the first edition and, although I initially hesitated at purchasing this sequel/remake, I can only advise others to do the same.