Book Love: Building an ExpressionEngine 2 Site
August, 11th 2010In case you missed the news last Friday, Michael Boyink has released the updated version of his book, Building an ExpressionEngine Site - Small Business, for EE2.
I was a big fan of the first edition of this book, as it laid a good foundation for beginning EE CMS work when I was starting out with it. Recently, I had the pleasure of being an early reviewer for the new edition and I’m happy to report there are a plethora of improvements while still maintaining all the awesome and smart that was in the original.
I’m often asked about if I like ExpressionEngine/whats the point/where does one get started learning it/blah blah blah and I would highly recommend this book being your starting point. It’s also a great read for those experienced with EE, but are curious to how other people do it. Something that I’ve always struggled with back-end dev/CMS implementation is not having something to compare my work to as easily as hitting Command + U (or whatever “View Source” is in your browser of choice) - so it was nice to see how Michael does it, where we agree (validity feels good), where I differ (mostly front-end code practices) and where my code could improve (there’s always room).
The book is available for purchase from the Train-ee site.
Comments
How does it compare to Ryan Irelan’s book?
Posted at 11:30 AM on August 11, 2010
Thanks for the post Jenn! I’ve been lobbying for more EE folks to “show your code” as I agree that it’s frustrating to not have many examples to learn from.
I also wish someone (named Brandon or Leevi) would create an EE add-on that would spit out some sort of back-end documentation document or diagram.
That would be a great addition to sites like show-ee.com.
Posted at 01:42 PM on August 11, 2010
@Kenny:
Ryan’s Book is a “Quick Start Guide”. It’s really Good, but not as comprehensive as Michaels. The Site build with Ryans Quickstartguide is a Newspapersite where Michaels Book takes you over a small Bussiness Site, with Products and Services etc., it goes deeper (350 Pages versus 190 Pages).
Depending on your planned type of work and previous experiences just choose the one that suits your needs better. You can’t go wrong with either.
Posted at 02:39 AM on August 13, 2010
I have followed the very good tutorials on how to create the small business site and therefore would like to know how much more information the book contains. i.e does it cover any additional functionality with regardst ths small business site that is being built or does the book more or less create the same site as the free online tutorials? I just want to know what added benefit there is in buying the book.
I realise the tutorial was for EE 1.X but fortunately it was mainly a case of swapping the word “weblog” to “channel”
Btw the tutorials were very good and I will buy the book if I feel there is added benefit.
Posted at 09:56 AM on August 13, 2010
Paul -
You can read a list of what’s changed in this news post on Train-ee.
Posted at 10:00 AM on August 13, 2010
@Boyink
Congratulations on the release, btw! Keep on rockin’!
Posted at 10:13 AM on August 13, 2010
There used to be someone on Twitter with that same avatar…;)
Thanks!
Posted at 10:21 AM on August 13, 2010
Thanks Boyink - it looks like you have added some great extra content in addition to the free tutorial content. Nice one!
Posted at 11:09 PM on August 13, 2010
Hello
I am looking at getting either Ryans book or Michael Boyink.
My purpose is to build a non-profit information website, and not a commercial business site.
So which book would be best suited for that purpose.
Posted at 12:38 PM on December 07, 2010
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