Building Websites with Drupal 6 Site Blueprints

You'd rather not pay a developer to build a website for you and you've read about Drupal as a "do it yourself" alternative. What is it?

What Is Drupal?

Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS) software package. It is maintained and developed by a community of user practioners. With an investment of time and effort to learn the package a user can create websites ranging from blogs to e-commerce to social networking to resource directories. It can also be used to create and manage content for existing sites. So how much of an investment in time and effort is needed to be able to use Drupal?

What Can "Drupal 6 Site Blueprints" Do for You?

Some reviewers claim that Drupal can be difficult to learn. Drupal 6 Site Blueprints takes a "learn by doing" approach to help get you over that hump. Within the book there are twelve different project construction applications. You'll be guided -- step by step -- through the process of creating an actual website using Drupal. Here are the twelve project websites included in the book: 1) Personal Website, 2) School Website, 3) Aficionado's Website, 4) Events Site, 5) Community Portal Site, 6) Newspaper Site, 7) E-commerce site, 8) Directory Site, 9) Photo Sharing Site, 10) Hotel and Conference Booking Site, 11) Google Maps Site, and 12) News Aggregating Site. The tutorials used are well-illustrated and easy to navigate.

Despite its advantages this book is not for the complete Drupal novice. If you want to get the biggest "bang for your buck" with this book you should take the time to familiarize yourself with some Drupal basics. Remember, each of the twelve projects included is designed to build a model website - you'll still have to customize it to meet your individual needs. Take the time to go to Drupal.org and learn some basic Drupal terminology. Pay particular attention to the customization features. In short, this book will get you going quickly but you will still need to learn a little about Drupal to make full use of what you learn. As an alternative to learning about Drupal before you tackle the book you might consider digging into the book and checking the Drupal site when you encounter something you would like to learn a little more about. In this way, you can actually use the book to learn what you don't know about Drupal.