Book Review: Drupal 7 by David Mercer

Packt Publishing keeps churning out Drupal-related books - by my count they've published nine this year alone! One of their latest efforts is Drupal 7 by David Mercer. It's a basic "intro to Drupal" book based on Drupal 7 geared towards readers new to the platform.

There are a number of topics in the book that are a bit unique, starting with a nice discussion about the GPL and the rules governing its basic usage. It's not something that is seen very often in Drupal books, and it a great introduction to open-source licensing. There is also a short section on Open ID that provides the basics without trying to go into too much detail.

The author dives deep in the taxonomy chapter, covering the complex topic of "multiple hierarchies" - something that not too many sites utilize, probably due to the complexity in setting it up. It appears that Drupal 7 makes it a bit easier - combine that with the authors explanation, and it quickly becomes a much more approachable subject.

For people familiar with Drupal 6, this book provides a few instances where new features in Drupal 7 are highlighted. The "shortcuts" feature of Drupal 7 is given a nice section explaining how it can be leveraged for different types of administrative users. Drupal 7's much-improved handling of public and private files is also covered, as is the new functionality to update modules from within Drupal's administrative interface.

Sections on subtheming (with the Zen basetheme), Panels, deployment (even if it was heavy on cPanel), and jQuery (a pleasant surprise) were of adequate depth - enough to give the reader an incentive to learn more.

While the author does a nice job of covering most of the basics of using Drupal, he falls short in a number of areas that make it difficult for me to recommend this book. My biggest complaint is the fact that most sections jump right into Drupal's interface without giving the user any background as to what is coming. The Views chapter in particular, builds a sample view piece-by-piece but at no time provides a roadmap to the user as to where the process is leading. This makes it difficult for the user to follow if they don't know where the finish line it.

There are several instances in the book where explanations are non-existent (node and user references), diagrams are confusing (taxonomy), and discussions are hard to follow (Views arguments). It seems that with a some additional well-placed examples, screenshots, or diagrams, much of the confusion could be avoided.

A pet peeve of mine is finding things that are flat-out incorrect - I found three instances in this book, albeit all of them relatively minor. Explanations of search re-indexing, main link sources, and Internet Explorer .png support have issues that will leave readers confused.

Overall, this will be a hit-or-miss book for most readers. There are definite strong sections in this book that you won't find in any other printed book, but if you're looking for a general introduction into Drupal, I fear that some people will be disappointed with this effort.