Sitepoint Books - Think Before Buy

[mahesh2k 0]

If you're into web development then surely you heard the books from sitepoint company. Same company which started flippa and 99 designs. I'm sure you know them by their books and famous forum and blogs. I have one issue about them. Not complain exactly but sort of issue that is bugging me these days. I have read 2-3 books from them so far and it is really hard to judge their books if you're looking for the web development related stuff. Most of the time people suggest their stuff so it is better if you read reviews about the books. Why ? because most of the books are hardly worth the cost. I have seen 90% of the books from them being word salad and short on content.

 

Take example of - Build your own wicked wordpress themes. If you are interested in wordpress theme development then you'll find such books handy for reference for quick wordpress theme development. I have need of these books. So i ordered this book in printed form and got it for 49.90$ which is big amount. I don't know but i feeel little cheated here. It took 27 days to get that book to me. I can understand that considering i'm non-us user and have to wait and pay such fees and time is also another factor.

 

What was inside the book ? First chapter - what is wordpress and where it is used and blah blah. i mean really ? you need that information on first chapter ? why people are buying that book if they have no clue about wordpress? Chapter two - it is about planning your theme. 100% word salad, zero code, zero pointers towards wordpress theme development and just revolves around random BS of wordpress. Chapter three - this chapter shows some designs from other themes and blogs and blah talks about typography and stuff. It has no use for you at all in terms of wordpress because it lacks code and has no sense of direction for building wordpress theme. Chapter four - this chapter is basically overview of wordpress themes in the market. Nothing new and is usually found in most of the wordpress blogs. Advanced theme construction- still with me ? okay this is the only chapter that tells you about what files that goes into wordpress themes and which you can use for bare minimum theme layout. It explains thematic framework as it is free and is officially supported. Widgets - this chapter explains widgets and how to embed them into your theme. Nothing new and can be found online in documentation. Theme options - this chapter is about adding theme options with no live example, so stuff is rather hypothetical with codex explained as if there is some theme built alredy.

selling your theme - i don't know how come some person who failed to understand architecture of theme, have managed to build theme with help of this book that he dared to sell it. anyway, consider yourself warned for such word salad. I can't imagine how many garbage books like that they have written so far.

 

If you're going to buy printed or ebook of sitepoint then make sure that you think thrice or maybe n+1 times before buying their stuff. Not all stuff from them is bad but considering the amount of garbage people read these days in programming language books, this is yet another garbage book. so try to stick with code based or example+theory approach books instead of wasting time on sitepoint books. For the rest, risk buying their stuff on your own. If you're from non-us area then you'll also lose 30-day money back guarantee so it's upto you to buy book from them.

[8ennett 0]

You have got it exactly right about sitepoint books. I got a copy of the PHP anthology V1 and V2 from them, it was complete trash. I was hoping it would start off with the basics as with all books then move on to more advanced coding methods, but it never did. It started out by outlining the entire history of PHP and then moved on to garbage about proper code structure (several chapters in I might add and still not a single coding example). I was highly surprised to actually find coding examples in the book in the end, and not examples that are of any use either. If I wanted to learn how to echo static text then I wouldn't have bothered buying a book, I would have just used html to print the text instead. Volume 2 however was a completely different story, it actually starts out with a few coding examples strangely enough, then when you get to the next chapter OH NO, as starscream has so elequently put it, more word salad.It seems that these books are more designed for people that want to know ABOUT php but don't really want to learn php. It gives you just enough coding examples so you can understand basic terminology and methodology behind the code, but you don't actually know anything else about it. If you tried learning from these books then went on to do a project, I can guarantee you it will become very difficult to do very fast. I wonder what kind of qualifications the authors behind these books actually have. Maybe there are just slightly competant people being hired to write books by people who don't understand anything about the subject. This means the people hiring don't have a clue what they are looking for and the slightly competant authors have oversold their abilities. The people hiring wouldn't know the difference and ultimately they become a company of incompetant people spewing out incompetant word salad creating a new generation of incompetant people who believe they know more than they do.Anyway the point being, I want my money back!

[mahesh2k 0]

True. I have seen that most of the authors are only putting their name on books and rarely writing any text at all on the book. Most likely some freelance author is writing the book for them and these guys are getting their name on it. I have this worst experience from sitepoint, o'reilly, manning and few other publishers. Manning books is similar to sitepoint - they spend a lot of time in theory which you can easily found these days in docs and tutorials. More over you can also find some code examples in tutorial site these days. I don't know why anyone will buy manning books for reading theory. I guess those who are self starters need it for reference ? if so then what's wrong with asking for code ? i mean we learn by watching the code right ? But i guess they're in no way changing things around. I was thinking about posting this on stackoverflow. But considering that forum is populated with book authors. I guess i may get some bad replies or replies which mocks the original intention of thread. I have seen that on stackoverflow plenty of times with some thread starters who have concerns about this. Not sure if this will be taken in good heart. But let's see about that anyway. I may post this issue and see if o'reilly and sitepoint takes notice of this in that forum. Not sure but just hoping people get the garbage in the computer publishing industry.

[mahesh2k 0]

I got some mixed answers from stackoverflow. You can check the thread. I dont want to give my ID over there so it'll be mixup here and there. But you can checkout that thread. I have seen that there are some folks who say manning, apress and wrox publishing are better. I don't know what makes them say that but considering the poor quality of the books i digress to comment.i noticed that some of the titles under these publications are not worth buying. You'll hardly ever learn anything from these guys. For example, check manning book -"ironpython in action". it is written in form like some seminar notes or some workshop stuff. i never found out anything good with their books. authors are well known developers but i think there are some middle agents who write stuff for them. so it is definitely not worth to buy. same is the case with apress and wrox. i just hate their stuff. i mean you can't learn anything from the wrox and similar books at all. Starch press is one for the open source tech. but they have limited titles and some of them are worth to buy. I have not yet seen any worthy programming titles from them. so waiting for that before keeping them under ignore mode like wrox and apress. As for o'reilly i don't know what to say. basically they just publish the documentation of the programing language and then randomly make comments on it. *sigh* it is really hard to get good books on technology these days. What do you think ?