Open Content Books

Although Judy Breck might call it thinking outside the "blob" instead of the box, her book offers avenues for those of us seeking ways out of the failing traditional education system. Ms. Breck's book is part social analysis, part technical explanation, part future scope, and a great deal of data-driven exhortation to leave behind this broken system. She offers sound foundational synthesis of how the Internet is evolving to open truly viable avenues far beyond our state's antiquated models of education. She solidly demonstrates the superiority of these avenues and offers ways to nurture their evolution.

Ms. Breck's work provides a great starting point for those fed up with the factory school model. Whether a front line educator looking for ways around your school's problems, a think tank member tasked with solving the country's educational woes, a parent fed up with the service your child gets seven hours a day at the local educational warehouse, or someone interested in exploring creative and alternative resources for home schooling, this book clearly illustrates the path education in our increasingly interconnected world should take in order to meet the needs of every student at every level and prepare them all to enter modern day society.
K. Webb, Public High School Educator

Speaking as a staunch techno-phobe, this book was a pleasant surprise: fascinating, profound and fun to read all at the same time. Judy Breck is a deep thinker who has brought her vast and colorful experience to bear on the writing of her book, inspiring the reader to embrace a broader meaning of technology. Not content to preach to the choir, Judy reaches out to the technically challenged as well as the technically savvy, sharing her vision of the Internet as a kind of educational cosmos. The book's clever web-like layout models the kind of open learning environment for which Judy is a spokesman. If a book has the potential to depolarize our computer-geek/computer-allergic society, this is it!
-Meryl Danziger, music educator, Founder and Director of NYC Music House

This book really takes a very complex subject and makes sense out of it. The examples help make a real life case for why it is great to give out your content for free to the public and how you can commercialize the results. I have to say it has added something very special to our community.

Excellent book. Well structured, with clear explanations, and no extra wording. I have been looking for a guide to understand how Drupal works and how it can be tuned and I have found what I needed in this book. Before this one I read another generalistic book about Drupal that did not manage to add any value in more than 200 pages of reading... what a difference! Congratulations. Keep up with the good work.

An example of the right way to provide documentation for community-developed software. A great resource.

The book is well written and edited. The information is clear and well structured. If you want to make your own modules this book will give you a good start.

There is little or no information on CCK (Content Construction Kit) or Views which appear to be emerging technologies on Drupal. Little information on how to encorporate media into Drupal. There are no example sites or site construction strategy.

People involved building Web sites tend to wear Rorschach ink blots rather than hats -- the content of the book looks more like a hat. If you are a Web developer, not Web designer or Web editor the information contained is up your alley.

Just a little warning, don't buy this book (like I did), if you want to develop for Drupal 6.

Right off the bat I got in trouble, and even the first simple example won't work in Drupal 6..


So, I'm not complaining, but I was stupid enough to buy this just before version 6 got out, don't make the same mistake, read online-tutorials or find a book that's intended for the current version..

(Maybe hardcore programmers will still find this useful, but I could use example-code that works, and this doesn't, so you're stuck researching just about everything online anyway.)

This book is strictly for version 5, which they conveniently forget to mention. The current version is 6, so if you buy this book as I did, it is practically useless, as they have significantly changed the Drupal API.
It would really be nice if there was a law requiring publishers of technical books to CLEARLY state on the cover the Version number.

This book covers all the aspects of using Joomla! CMS. For new users (as me) it's a gude to manage, administer and build useful sites.

This book covers most of the basics of how to set up a Joomla-powered website. Some of the concepts in Joomla are confusing or have misleading labels. Author Barrie North admits as much in several places throughout the book where he says something like "now here's the confusing part." Thankfully, by carefully reading the book and working along with the examples most of those confusing aspects of the software are elucidated.

However, where the book falls short is that it fails to clearly pull together all the disparate parts of the Joomla system into a coherent picture of how they work together to form the whole. The author does make an attempt at this and the text does provide some help in this regard. But I felt that there were still a few important gaps in my understanding by the time I finished reading the book. Fortunately, after about one more day of exploring the software on my own things started to gel for me. The book does give you all the basics but could tie things together better.

Finally, the quality of the writing is closer to what you might expect to find in a readme.txt file than in a book from a major publisher (Prentice Hall). I lost track of the number of times, the author uses the word "actually" -- a much overused word today. I'm not surprised to hear the word used gratuitously in conversation but I am disappointed to find this kind of writing in a book that lists for $45. And it's not just the colloquialisms that annoy. I found that the author's technical explanations were frequently perfunctory. When explaining a parameter it would be helpful to not simply state exactly what it controls but what its larger significance is or how it can be used. That sort of explanation is not always provided.

But, in spite of these complaints the book did serve as a useful tutorial that got me over the hump in understanding Joomla. Prior to ordering the book I had watched/read a number of free online tutorials but after a while I found that my understanding had plateaued at a low level. Searching for more tutorials to fill the gap became a time-wasting exercise. By working through this book I was able to reach a new plateau which should now allow me to confidently configure my own system.

This book straight up rocks. It has got me off the ground and realizing the opportunity to provide quality websites with a lot less long term knowledge of programming. It's easy to read, has plenty of information, for instance, search engine optimization, without trying to be the expert or claiming any guarantees. Just straight forward, real world info that's easily digestible and the best book on Joomla! 1.5 you'll find. If you want to learn Joomla! 1.5, buy this book.

Helpful. Reasonably up-to-date (for a subject that changes all the time). Clearly written and presented. Offers useful suggestions for online resources. Often assumes greater than beginner's knowledge - the chapter on CSS was impenetrable to me. Introductory chapters clear in explaining principles behind Joomla as a content management system. Could have done with more detail on how to alter templates.

Staring learning Joomla I found that some parts of it are quite obvious and some are not. Without going into programming details, this book explains the work you need to do to make a Joomla website. For me it was important to find explanation on how to create your own templates. I also found important information about installing and working with Joomla, localy and on a server. Certainly I had a lot of benefits by reading this book.

I bought this book several years ago for my son when he was in high school. Since then I've kept it in work and it's been borrowed many times by ASP and Java programmers looking to broaden their knowledge, modify existing systems or to customized any of the many PHP based applications and frameworks that are available on the internet.
It's a great book to learn what is still one of the most commonly used language on the web.

After a long search and 3 PHP books later, I have finally found something that was perfectly structured and EASY TO UNDERSTAND. If you are looking to learn PHP fast, start with this book. 4 stars instead of 5 only because its a bit dated, though still an excelent foundation.

Perfect for a newbie programmer. I had more trouble installing PHP than using the book.

This thing was the best computer book that I have ever purchased. The way it was layed out was the easiest I've ever had to learn anything in computers...and I'm a network engineer, and have been for 10 years.

Great book...get it!

This book is a must have reference to PHP programming. It's a bit difficult to read, but it's great to have around. If you are an absoulte beginer looking to learn PHP, this isn't your book right away...wait a couple of months and then buy it.

The second edition of this book can be downloaded in .pdf version for free.
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Using_Moodle_book

I picked up this book before a flight to a conference, knowing a lot about WebCT (at the time) and virtually nothing about Moodle. I was skeptical about Moodle, but by the end of the flight I had burned through Cole's easy-to-understand book and was salivating to get my hands on a Moodle course to begin developing. Cole has a way of showing a tool with an example and getting the reader excited about trying it.

My only complaint is the production value seems a little weak. I'd like some color images and better proofreading and technical editing of the text.

Otherwise, Using Moodle is a great way to bridge the gap from the stodgy, limiting corporate LMS to the customizable possibilities of the open source LMS.

I was very disappointed with this book and will be returning it.

If you have spent a few minutes playing with Moodle and read even a little of the online manual, this book adds nothing new. The system is easy to figure out, as most items are pretty self-explanatory and each option has a handy pop-up help screen that explains anything that you don't understand. The online documentation is very good.

I was hoping this book would explain how to do more advanced things in Moodle - how the many available add-on modules work and what they contribute to a finished system, tips and tricks to add videos and flash files to your courses, best practices for course development, advanced customizing, etc. But there was none of that in the book - only the same information that is already included free with Moodle. Save your money!

Executive Summary: Good, well written overview, buy if you can afford it, a good book by the standards of how to publishing but not critical as a lot of stuff is on Moodle's site.
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Moodle has about 50% of the education market now and there are a lot of people working on it and a ton of information available through moodle's site. Mooodle 1.6, which I am using, has yet to stablizie properly and there are all kinds of bugs needing to be tackled. These vary depending on what level of Apache you use and what your level of admin access is. So, though it is more focused than a lot of other books, your milage will obviously vary depending on your logistics.

Moodle itself is easy enough to use and it helps to be familiar with it before reading through the book. Like most of the other books in this range, I just skim it as I more or less know how to use the admin panel; the book concentrates on front end classroom stuff, not on setting up Moodle and as all classes vary and teachers uses different methodologies or none, it is hard to write a definitive book on a pliable tool. The book is written in very clear and cogent Engish and this is not always the case with how to geek books, so that is a big plus.

Also, there are a few interesting teaching insights in the book, more than most others I have read and they are valuable. It gives for example, novel ways to use Wikis. But you would probably hit on these yourself after a while.

There are different ways of using the functions (different levels of access for teacher only, groups of students and teacher, or everyine doing the class). There are also different ways of teaching; I prefer a more informal approach and beleive in giving the students a lot of rope. This means I will use some functions and ignore others.

I have skipped the set quizes/ exams section for examole as it seems like a lot of useless work unless you have hundreds in your class. But again YMMV. I give it 5 stars as it is a well written book that is more focused than some others I have reviewed here.

The book is OK as a read, but isn't very strong when it comes to actually using Moodle. I was expecting much deeper information than is found in this book. I'm still going to have to spend hours just trying things out on Moodle before I can do anything of real use. It appears that Moodle can be a very powerful tool, but the book seems to focus primarily on entry level knowledge. Too bad.

As a web graphic designer, I want to expand my skills into CMS systems. I thought this book would be a good start, but after reading it, I learned little more than how to install Joomla and basic interactions. The book is states it's for "Novice to Professional," but a more accurate description would be "a getting started guide".

Great book, very informative. Was able to begin working on an existing Joomla site in short order. Also has info on how to use Google Analytics for web stats!

This is the best basic book I have found on Joomla! It's well written, with lots of tips for building a well thought out site with Joomla! I also learned much about how to think through site layout, and what keeps end users interested. We have built a really nice Intranet site with the knowledge gained from this book. Good info on nice Joomla plugins and other useful packages such as FreeMind.

These technical books are expensive (I paid full price for this in a bookstore) but worth every penny when they provide the answers to those inevitable snags you hit on a project. This book, however, almost never had the answers I needed. Mainly it points out the features in the Joomla admin interface, but that I could figure out on my own. I wanted to know things like how to download a template and customize it for my site. Instead the book tells you where the CSS code is and that you "can edit it" -- duh! In not anticipating and helping me through typical development tangles, I found the book an expensive, boring, barely helpful description of the Joomla admin tools. Save some money -- there are much better helps available free by searching Google.

I was initially very pleased with this book, and with help from this book, I was able to get a basic Joomla website running in a day or so. However as other reviewers have noted it seems to be missing several chapters that should provide details and examples of how to use menus, modules and articles together to create a good Joomla website.

The author raves about the Leo outline editor but never shows how to actually implement the outline using the Joomla menus etc. The author touches on some advanced issues such as creating your own template or an extension, but does not explain how to use the templates or extensions that come with Joomla. For example he states that "The parameters for Mod_mainmenu can change everything from the menu style to the menu hierarchy" but provides no examples and then proceeds to list the more advanced options! At a minimum he should explain how modules position content as left, main, right etc. Also as an example of poor organization this topic is in "Extensions - Default Site Modules - Main Menu" rather than "Adding Menus to Point to Content".

Figuring out how to modify a template and use modules so that content is placed where you want it, is perhaps the hardest aspect of Joomla. I'm still struggling to understand what all the CSS styles are used for. The author provides a brief intro to CSS but it would be nice to have a list of the key Joomla CSS styles and where they are used, plus some real world examples of (say) changing a color scheme or widening a column.

I'm puzzled by the many glowing reviews for this book! It gets off to a good start but then wanders off to discuss editors, extensions, analytics etc. rather than providing a good foundation for building a solid Joomla website.

Going through the pages of "Drupal 5 Themes" I kept thinking how useful it would have been to have this book in my hands a little over a year ago, as I was first dabbling with Drupal. This title complements very nicely Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites by focusing on making your Drupal-based site look and feel the way you want it to, departing as much as possible from the native themes available through the Drupal community.

The book is not meant for those who are not familiar with a bit of PHP and CSS and should not be tackled before being clear on the basics of Drupal. The only downside to the book as far as I am concerned is the lack of color in the illustrations: while not critical, it would help get the point across better in a few places.

This book is exactly what I have been looking for. Being pretty new to Drupal I had been using the documentation at the Drupal site. It is good for starting off but my company, Savant Creative Group - [...] - needs to develop our own themes. The book is well written, well documented and not too heavy on PHP. It is great for design people who know html and css.

Great book for web-designers/developers who start with Drupal 6 Themes. Can't wait for the Drupal 6 version or a book that addresses the more experienced Drupal Developers.

The first thing new Drupal developers ask me is, "How do I make my new Drupal site look different from the rest?" Drupal 5 Themes by Ric Shreves is the first book dedicated entirely to theming Drupal. This topic certainly deserves its own book and I'm glad we now have it. (On the down side Drupal 6 is already released and Drupal 7 is in the works.)

Somehow I've been able to avoid advanced theming by using sub-contractors or taking themes from the Drupal Theme Garden. But I realize that designers and programmers cannot go it alone. In order to build the most interactive sites, we need to reach across the gap and learn a bit about each other's craft. Enter Drupal 5 Themes.

The book is written for designers who need to learn some base level Drupal theming. It covers Drupal's use of the abstraction layer in a way that is easy to understand. And while the pace and brevity are appropriate for the non-programmer, be prepared to look at some code: Chapter 8 does a good job of exposing novices to the template.php file and the form_alter api, allowing them to take advantage of some of Drupal's more advanced modification options.

As a programmer, my favorite section was Chapter 4 - A guide to Themeable Functions (p.87)--it makes an excellent quick reference guide by listing theme functions and their definitions, organized by module. I find these sorts of things super useful, relieving the poor souls who answer my endless questions in the Drupal-support IRC channel about "What is the right theme function to use?"

But this list, as well as the book in general, is limited as it only addresses theme functions in the Drupal core. Most sites I've developed have 20+ modules loaded, in addition to the Drupal core. It would be great to have additional references for popular modules and their theme functions. For instance, the Content Construction Kit and Views modules are becoming the preferred way of building forms, detail pages, and lists, therefore deserve addressing.

I recommend this book to designers who need to learn some Drupal, as well as to new Drupal programmers who are looking to get a handle on Drupal's abstracted theme layer. But the established Drupal programmer, like myself, will find it a little too brief and lacking in real world use cases, considering Drupal's modular capabilities.

A few months back, I was sent a review copy of Drupal 5 Themes by Ric Shreves from Packt Publishing. I have been thumbing through it since, and despite some odd editing I have found it to be very easy to read. The examples strongly illustrate concepts through out.

I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters which reinforced concepts that I already grasped providing very basic Drupal management and configuration and discussing what makes a Drupal theme. It goes on to illustrate setup and configuration. Chapter 3 looks at Theme engines--in depth for PHPTemplate and then touches on other engines. Chapter 4 explores style sheets. Chapter 5 looks at intercepts and overrides. Chapter 6 covers modifying existing themes using Zen primarily as the example theme. Chapter 7 explains the process to create a new theme from scratch. Finally Chapter 8 covers forms. Each chapter has a concise summary that re-iterates what was learned in during the chapter.

I appreciated that some effort was put into explaining how cascading operates in CSS--a touch that will definitely help folks who are new to the sphere and made following parts of the book much more accessible.
There is a form to download a copy of the sample files in the book. When you put in your request, an automatic email will be sent to you--be patient, it will take a few minutes for it to get to you. The email will contain a link to a ZIP file containing the files.

Interestingly, there wasn't any information on two tools that I was taught back in the days of 4.x--CCK and Views. This seems to me to be an oversight given the prevalence of sites using CCK and Views.\

This book is terrific for a beginner who is getting his or her feet wet in Drupal theming. It makes for a strong reference for themers with more experience as well. I've got to say, that it has inspired me to dig deeper into the theme layer of Drupal and has provided me with insight that helps me to understand what our themers at work are engaged in.
All in all, I enjoyed the read and can recommend it.

I was really struggling with understanding Drupal before I read this book. This book laid out what I needed to know in a step by step manner that was easy for me to understand.

For example, I was having a hard time understanding how I could reference a page of content. How do you know what node number it is anyway? This book explained it to me.

There are many more advanced topics that I am sure will come in handy as I use Drupal more.

I am a Web developer/designer in the process learning Drupal for a personal project; a very large and complex community site. This book has been invaluable in this process. Drupal.org and Drupal's online community in combination with this book have quickly gotten me up-to-speed with what I need to know in order to create this complex community site. I'm grateful to the author for this excellent work.

I found the book to be a good introduction to Drupal. Despite Mercer's best efforts, I don't recommend Drupal to anyone who is unfamiliar with web publishing. I think it would be too much information to absorb at one time. I have enjoyed working with Drupal 6.2 and this book allowed me to learn and appreciate it fairly quickly.

An update to David Mercer's now two year old Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals and Community Websites, this version has been updated for the CMS' latest revision and guides the user through from setting up a development environment and installing drupal through to building custom themes and deploying a fully built site.

The book is designed to be read sequentially and assumes very little prior Drupal knowledge, though a little familiarity with the interface would be helpful, and a lot of willingness to explore and experiment are going to be necessary for complete newcomers. The first few chapters-focussed on explaining the benefits of using drupal and guide the user through the initial setup-are a little clunky and may deter those not comfortable with installing databases and scripting languages. The style improves as the book progresses and Mercer covers his topics well, with a considerably better structure than several Packt publications I've seen lately. (sadly the book retains Packt's )

Some of those topics are fairly complex and it might have been good to have a few more directions for exploring the power of taxonomies and getting to grip with best practices in designing them. Given the range of documentation (on blogs and elsewhere) available online, more references to resources outside the book would have been a useful addition. But the fact that Mercer takes users beyond the very basics is to his credit, and it's very good to see coverage of jquery, CCK, caching, and other topics that are key to recent versions of drupal but which could easily have been glossed over.

This is not a book for the seasoned developer coming from another platform or for those who have already have ample drupal experience (others have that covered) and it's not really the "user manual" I'd like to find to hand on to drupal-using clients. But for those with an itch to build their own site and a sense that drupal might be the right tool, this volume is well worth a look.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.

I am relatively new to Drupal and have read all the Drupal books in the last 2-3 months. This the best one and the most appropriate one for the beginner/intermediate person who wants to install and use Drupal to build a website. It is not so much geared to developers or themers, except maybe as a most basic intro. But if you are considering useing Drupal as a platform for your company's website or whatever, this is a good place to start. Probably the best place I know of.

That said, it is not sufficient and you will need to refer often to the drupal.org website as well, to get the real story on things as you get into building out your site.

One important point regarding installation of Drupal. As in his first book, he recommends using Apache2Triad to get your Apache/PHP/mySQL environment. I did this (using his first book) and it is a BAD IDEA. As I learned, A2T is very old (2 yrs+), is not likley to be updated anytime soon (see the A2T website for confirmation), provides practically no support, and has a rapidly diminishing community of users. There are many and much better options - such as XAMPP - and I recommend you use one of them instead. The install process and resulting functionality is much the same, so the book is still helpful. Just don't use the specific package he recommends.

Very pleased with the book, its content, and usefulness. Also, pleased with delivery and timing.

This is an excellent book for a teacher who would like to know a little bit more about Moodle. The teacher does not need to know much about course management software. This book gives a great overview, with examples, while not getting caught up in the technical details.

For example the Lesson module section starts off with non-Moodle classroom story told by Jason. Then the chapter gives a short overview and talks about the different features of Lesson. There are a couple of inserts on tips and examples of how a feature could be used. Plus a few screen shots.

If you are looking for examples of GIFT or XML formats, then this is not the book for you. On the other hand, after reading the Lesson and Quiz chapters, the potential teacher will know that these are a few of the question formats that can be imported into Moodle.

Moodle documentation and on-line forums are great resources but are not designed for the non-user or really new user. This book will help a teacher ask or find more information about what they want to do in their course. It is "Moodle 101 : An Introduction to teaching with Moodle."

Thank you to the authors of Using Moodle! This comprehensive introduction to Moodle is exactly what we needed in my school district. I recommend it to anyone charged with Moodle-related staff development.

Well-done, Fellow Moodlers.

An excellent introduction to Moodle -- a course management system I'm teaching myself. Yes, much of the information is available online at the Moodle site, but I'm a person who would rather look through a book as opposed to clicking links online and printing what I require.

I started out muddled over Moodle. I knew I wanted to do some of what this LMS could do, but fairly ignorant and hesitant to jump into the Moodle community to ask the most basic of questions. This book seems to do the job.