Drupal 6 is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) widely used by many webmasters. However, I have personally observed that it is somewhat difficult to master the backend of the script. Drupal is not simple like WordPress but I recently received a copy of David Mercer book for review from Packt Publishing. Even though I don’t have any plan to incorporate Drupal into any of my websites I found that David has done a terrific job by examining all the features in a comprehensive manner. The book contains 10 chapters and an Appendix.

Chapter 1 provides a basic overview of Drupal including the various resources available to gain more knowledge about Drupal. Chapter 2 analyzes the installation procedure in detail. The author also provides solution to some of the common problems which occur during installation stage. The chapter ends with the steps required to create a basic page using Drupal. Chapters 3 and 4 provides a detailed overview of the configuration of Modules, Blocks, Menus, Links and Site related functionalities such as Search Engine Friendly URLs, Logging, Reporting, Uploads and much more.

While chapter 5 examines the permission related aspects, Chapters 6 and 7 enables you to work with various content types and also includes a detailed coverage of content related modules, implementation of Taxonomy and Tags. The author also outlines the various features of Content Construction Kit (CCK). Chapter 8 includes a detailed reference to Theming system including configuration and customization of Themes.

The book doesn’t provide the steps required to create a new theme, which I hope will disappoint advanced users of Drupal. The remaining chapters examines some of the advanced concepts such as Open ID, Actions, Triggers, Caching, Throtlling, JQuery, Backups, Management of Cron,  Scheduled Tasks including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), upgradation aspects of Drupal and its modules.

As mentioned in the beginning the book includes an Appendix which helps you to learn the steps involved to display, setup and test your site. The author has written the book in a lucid style and will help those users especially beginners who would like to explore the various features of Drupal. The book will benefit advanced users if it features the creation of Modules and Themes.

I very much liked the way of presentation of the content with lot of screenshots. I would definitely refer David’s book to master the backend of the system, if I ever decide to make use of Drupal in future. As a final note, I would say that this book is mainly oriented for beginners who want to explore the features of Drupal in a minimum amount of time.