Great Book on Textpattern
Extremely easy to follow and well written. My only problem was a lot of the times the illustrations or images weren't on the same page as their textual reference. Not a big deal, but I lost my place a lot while flipping back and forth through pages.
This book is really aimed at beginners. Luckily for me, I was one. Since I purchased this book a few months ago, I've made three sites using Textpattern and they've all been a hit with my clients. The admin interface is superbly easy to use and I love the clean XHTML.
So, in conclusion, buy this book if you're wanting a beginner's guide to Textpattern, but do not buy if you already know your way around as a lot of this content may be redundant for you.
Good for beginners? For me, disappointing
I'd have liked to give this book more stars, because I do love Textpattern, but I just didn't get enough out of it. I don't consider myself an expert, but I've been using Textpattern for a couple of years. I'm not sure what I expected from this book, but mostly what I got was a validation that Yes, I'm doing this-or-that correctly or the most efficient way. I didn't gain a lot of new knowledge or tricks, except for the (small) section on plugins.
So this book might be good for Textpattern beginners, but even then most of the information presented is in the very complete Textpattern wiki, or elsewhere online.
So I'm glad this book was published, to promote Textpattern, but for me it was a slight disappointment.
Great resource
Textpattern solutions is a great resource for those looking to learn how to use this excellent Open Source CMS. The example site (Buzzbomb) is not quite as linear as I would have hoped and doesn't quite function like you would expect a tutorial to, but I was able to follow along with a little help from the TXP forums. Regardless, the book serves as a great launching pad to get into the nuts and bolts of the cms and begin creating your own sites using TXP. It is also the only book out there on the subject, so the choice is either to use this book, or to muddle through the online resources (which you will need anyway). The book certainly cuts down the learning curve (which isn't that steep, really) and gives you the tools you need to start using the cms with more confidence.
Poorly written book
I have been reading the e-book version and I am very dissapointed with this book. I needed a simple CMS for a 3 page site, and wanted an alternative to Jooma! which seemed overkill for this.
After doing some research I decided to use Texpattern due to its simple core, with this book as a guide. What can I say? The book is so poorly written that I am seriously considering to just use Joomla!
The authors use a sample site approach to illustrate how to use Textpattern. This usually is a great approach to learning, except they do an aweful job of it. The illustrations are never on the same page as the explanations. And instead of a clear and concise step by step approach (install this file here, modify it there...), authors dwell into lengthy passages including jokes and useless analogies, that by the time you wake up, you realized you missed some vital step which always seem to get lost in this verbosity. Usually actual instruction is merely mentioned or not clearly indicated.
In comparison, Building Websites with Joomla, is a much better text that makes Joomla! (a far more complex CMS than Texpattern) easy to understand.
If anything, "Textpattern Solutions" has made a potentially easy CMS become a nuisance to learn. You will be better off reading the online documentation.
Excellent Book for a Wonderful CMS
Despite using Textpattern (TXP) since I started my own website I knew there was still a lot for me to learn and also a few things that could be improved with the way I setup my site. Needless to say when I got wind of this book there was no doubt in my mind that it would help me to be a better TXP user.
The book is well-written and takes you through every aspect of TXP. Everything and I mean everything about TXP is covered in this book. You'll learn the ins and outs of installation, navigating and accomplishing various tasks in the administrative interface, go through the process of building a complete site covering articles, forms and pages, and even learn how to build you're own plugins. There are also 3 case studies that help to further demonstrate just how flexible TXP can be. What more could you ask for?
This book was a great read and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is new to TXP, thinking about using it or who currently uses it and would like to learn more about this wonderful CMS.
(15 reviews)
