I think it’s high time I told you about my new book; or rather our book, Blog Design Solutions. Andy Budd, Simon Collison, Chris J. Davis, Michael Heilemann and John Oxton all contributed a chapter showcasing a great new blog design for a different blogging engine.
Conceived and introduced by Phil Sherry, the book is perfect for anyone wanting to get the most out of Moveable Type, Textpattern, Wordpress or Expression Engine. We’re all agreed that David Powers’ chapter on setting up a local development environment for your blog (on Windows or Mac) is worth the admission price alone.
And what of my chapter? Well I’ve explained how to build your own blogging engine using PHP and MySQL – in other words you’ll learn how the content management system underneath Clagnut was put together. I’m particularly pleased with the Samuel Pepys inspired design (ably assisted by my brother) which you can see in action.
Some have asked what the point is of building your own blogging engine – after all Blog Design Solutions highlights four perfectly honed off-the-shelf systems. Well I would say ‘because it’s fun’ and it’s also a really fulfilling way of learning MySQL and PHP.
To whet your appetite, you can download the full table of contents and a free chapter, or peruse a few snap shots from my chapter:
And if you fancy buying the book (or indeed any technical book), please do so through an author’s Amazon affiliate link – such is the world of technical writing that even a single author would get more money from the Amazon commission than from the book sale itself.
Comments
1
cough Phil Sherry cough no mention? cough
2
Nice one bruv. Cheers for the credit.
3
Tim – Phil wrote a fine introduction to the book and in many ways it’s his baby as he kick started the whole project. I neglected to mention Phil this post, I suppose, because I was talking about the designers who wrote the blogging engine chapters.
4
Rich, the intro at least is not quite just about the designers though – as you also mentioned David in your intro too. It wouldn’t have taken much thought to thank Phil for pulling the whole thing together. It just seemed a bit odd to me that 7 out of 8 names on the cover only got a mention.
5
OK Tim, point taken. I do appreciate Phil’s role in the book – it was his idea and he was good enough to ask me to contribute. So to give the whole picture, I’ve added Phil to my post.
6
Hi Richard,
I posted a review over at my blog
and it should appear on Amazon.co.uk soon (was submitted Saturday).Thanks to all involved with the book, for the hard work, clear explanations, neat tricks and inspiration to tinker :)
7
You clear:left guys just don’t give us a chance to finish reading one, let alone three! I’ll add it to the wish list for my next shopping spree. Nice one.
8
Looks like a great book!
I have to agree. That’s how I ended up learning my way around the LAMP. I’m just about to convert the last of my personal sites that used my homebrew content management system over to one of the “big 4”, but having a working knowledge of MySQL and PHP gives you a lot more power when working with those packages.
9
I just bought Blog Design Solutions and am already enjoying it – oh, the possibilities seem so exciting. One thing that tipped over to definitelly buy the book was your comment on this blog that this is a good way to learn PHP – I finally took the courage and now have a working local environment running PHP, MySQL and PHPMyAdmin on my Powerbook. At the moment I’m playing around with Wordpress, but soon enough I’ll delving into your own chapter and have a go at developing my own blog engine. Anyway, thanks for that, and keep the good work. See you in BRighton some time soon. Cheers,
10
Great book. very informative. especially in deciding what solution to use.
Thanks all!
http://flickr.com/photos/luxuryluke/121466418/
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