Book Description

This book takes a comprehensive look at Magento, a robust and flexible e-commerce platform built on the Zend framework. With over 750,000 downloads, Magento is the fastest growing open source e-commerce solution. This book walks you through all of the steps necessary to build a fully functional Magento-based web site. It also includes information on managing products, customers, and orders. This book is directed at web site designers and developers, but will also be extremely useful for business owners who have web sites built on the Magento platform.

• Introduces you to Magento, the fastest-growing open source e-commerce platform
• Demonstrates how to configure and use Magento
• Covers how to customize Magento and develop extensions for the Magento platform

What you’ll learn

• How to install and set up a Magento based e-commerce web site
• How to effectively manage products, customers, and orders
• How to sell products through Magento
• How to design a custom Magento web site
• How to add content to your Magento web site
• How to create your own Magento extensions Download Now »

Book Description

In just 24 sessions of one hour or less, learn how to build powerful, easy-to-maintain websites with Drupal–fast! Using this book’s straightforward, step-by-step approach, you’ll master every skill you’ll need, from organizing sites and using Drupal’s design themes to setting up search, polls, forums, and security. Each lesson builds on what you’ve already learned, giving you a rock-solid foundation for real-world success!

Step-by-step instructions carefully walk you through the most common Drupal tasks.

Quizzes and Exercises at the end of each chapter help you test your knowledge.

By the Way notes present interesting information related to the

discussion. Did You Know? tips offer advice or show you easier ways to

perform tasks. Watch Out! cautions alert you to possible problems and give you advice on how to avoid them.

Jesse Feiler provides consulting services to small businesses and non-profits through his company, North Country Consulting (northcountryconsulting.com). His recent books include FileMaker Pro 10 In Depth, The Bento Book, How to Do Everything with Web 2.0 Mashups, and iWork ‘09 For Dummies®. Download Now »

Book Description

With the recipes in this book, you can take full advantage of the vast collection of community-contributed modules that make the Drupal web framework useful and unique. You’ll get the information you need about how to combine modules in interesting ways (with a minimum of code-wrangling) to develop a variety of community-driven websites. Each chapter describes a case study and outlines specific requirements for one of several projects included in the book — a wiki, publishing workflow site, photo gallery, product review site, online store, user group site, and more. With Using Drupal, you will:

• Get an overview of Drupal concepts and key modules introduced in each chapter, with a bird’s-eye view of each module’s specialty and how it works
• Explore various solutions within Drupal that meet the requirements for the project, with details about which modules are selected and why
• Learn how to configure modules, with step-by-step recipes for building the precise functionality the project requires
• Get information on additional modules that will make the project even more powerful
• Be able to access the modules used in the chapter, along with other resources

Newcomers will find a thorough introduction to the framework, while experienced Drupal developers will learn best practices for building powerful websites. With Using Drupal, you’ll find concrete and creative solutions for developing the exact community website you have in mind. Download Now »

Book Description

Free Software now offers a creative platform with world-class programs. Just ask the people who have completed high quality projects using open source desktop applications, or developed popular multimedia Web 2.0 sites using Free Software libraries. This phenomenon is no longer underground, or restricted to techies – there have been more than 61 million downloads of the Audacity audio editor, and more than 60 million downloads of the GIMP for Windows photographic tool, from SourceForge.net alone.

It used to be that creative software had a high barrier to entry, not least because of the complexity and cost of the programs. Even among those who could afford a Mac, many creative people have resorted to crackware in order to access the software tools that they need. Thanks to the generosity and expertise of Free Software creators, shady downloads and bootleg CD-ROMs are no longer required. With Free Software you can be a digital artist without paying an entrance fee, and almost any computer will do – but you still have to learn how to use your tools.

Free Software for Creative People is your foundation course in photographic manipulation, illustration, animation, 3D modelling, publishing, recording audio and making music, DJ’ing, mixing and mastering audio CDs, video editing and web content delivery. Every technique described in the book can be achieved on GNU/Linux, but many of the applications covered run on Windows and Mac OS X as well. New to GNU/Linux, and a little daunted? Don’t worry, there is a step-by-step tutorial on Ubuntu, for either temporary use or permanent installation. Download Now »

Video Description

In this video, Addison Berry, Angie Byron, and Jeff Robbins illustrate Drupal’s concepts and define much of its jargon while building a complete website. You’ll see how to download and install modules, create and configure content types, build listing pages, and configure Drupal’s multi-user permission system. The team shows how to use Drupal’s taxonomy system to classify and organize your site’s content, how to create and configure sidebar content using blocks, and many common tasks such as setting up a rich-text editor. Also discussed are tips for choosing which contributed modules to use, how to create private content, and how to launch a site. The video also shows how many pre- and post-launch tasks such as configuring cron, and how to upgrade your site to a new version of Drupal. This video will give you the knowledge you need to building powerfully flexible and dynamic community websites.

Full chapter listing:

1. Introduction
2. Installing Drupal
3. Orientation to a new Drupal site
4. Installing & enabling modules
5. Building different content types
6. Creating listing pages
7. Creating user roles & permissions
8. Adding taxonomy fields to content Download Now »

Book Description

The earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. Despite several advantages, many Drupal sites suffer with poor search engine standings. Perhaps you are aware of the importance of SEO for increasing traffic to your site, but do you know how to apply it to your Drupal site? Here comes the first book about search engine optimization for Drupal sites.

This practical, step-by-step guide takes the mystery out of Drupal search engine optimization (SEO) by showing you the tricks of today’s top marketing pros to achieve top ranking in the search engines. This isn’t a book of Drupal SEO theory – it’s a practical guide showing you which modules to install, which settings to use, and dozens of the most closely guarded “tricks of the trade” to get your web site optimized, higher in the search engines, and more profitable.

With this book and basic Drupal 6 knowledge – how to log in, create content, and install modules – you can build a perfectly search engine optimized web site. Each chapter uses easy, step-by-step instructions to walk you through the Drupal SEO modules, configurations, and content you will need to increase traffic on your web site. You start by reviewing the modules and tools that you should use to optimize your site, how to set up your analytics, and so on. Each subsequent chapter gives detailed instructions on implementing these features in Drupal. Later chapters cover topics like site organization, A/B testing, and automatic content tagging to maximize SEO and increase the conversion rate of your web site. When you have completed the book, you will have implemented the changes to your site required to rank well in the search engines. Download Now »