3 Comments for Web Site Cookbook

• 1. Frisco  |  December 1st, 2009 at 9:25 pm

  The author says this is the book he wished he’d had when he started building websites ten years ago. I agree. The book is structured as a series of problems posed, with solutions, a discussion, and related links for follow-up. Some of the problem/solution match-ups certainly sometimes read like notes kept handy after some bit of knowledge was learned the hard way.

  The book is written for those who make a living by designing, developing, maintaining, and marketing Web sites for themselves or other people. The exclusive focus is on the familiar world of LAMP — Linux/Unix with Apache, MySQL, and PHP.

  The author shares lots of handy code snippets (mostly PHP) to deal with technical issues but he does not neglect the soft skills, such as approaching the information architecture of a proposed site — and marketing the finished one.

  Addison goes into as much depth as is necessary to solve a problem and resists the temptation to go further. He clearly keeps up with best practices. I was impressed that his advice for a printer-friendly site is to use print media CSS. Most sites, even new ones, use more expensive and labor-intensive methods, like adding middle-layer software or creating separate content versions.

  Quibble: the book does not mention, nor do the publisher’s or author’s sites offer any way to download the code snippets and the lists of related links. That is very odd for a book of this nature and I hope the author corrects the oversight for readers soon.

• 2. Oracle  |  December 1st, 2009 at 11:22 pm

  This is one of the few books where I would say that I wanted more from it. The choice of recipes is good. And it certainly covers my top ten. But I liked how the material was presented so much that I found myself wanting more.

  This is a grab bag book, so you will want to check the table of cotents out before buying to make sure you will get enough material for your dollar. What is in the book is covered well.

• 3. Luvenia  |  December 2nd, 2009 at 1:56 am

  Excellent for beginners, but I would have liked to have gotten more detail. Perhaps that is the trade-off for so broad a subject. This book has answers to alot of questions that beginners (like me) might have. For instance, when I was shopping around for a hosting service for a personal website, features that were common to most hosting plans were cron (a scheduling utility) and ssi (server side includes). What are they? Why would they list them as a plus for hosting? Why would I care if they featured these or not? Well the Web Site Cookbook not only tells you what they are, but also gives you examples as to when, how, and why you might use them.

  Each topic (recipe) is broken down into 4 sections:
  1. Problem: A one or two sentence description of what you need or want to do.

  2. Solution: A step by step solution.

  3. Discussion: A discussion of the applied solution.

  4. See Also: Additional information from other “recipes” in the book and/or outside resources.

  There are also sections on planning your site, organizing directories, creating color schemes, as well as tips on making URL’s easy to find and remember. (just to name a few). This book will get you well on your way to putting together a well designed web site. Highly recommended.

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