Straight From The Source - Douglas Paterson
The Source interviews Douglas Paterson of Packt Publishing.
The Source cornered Packt Editor and author Douglas Paterson and managed to get a few minutes of his time. Via IM, he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his new book Learning Mambo in particular and about the open source CMS world in general.
The Source: Learning Mambo is Packt's 3rd Mambo book. What inspired this particular title at this particular time?
Douglas Paterson: It came from thinking about the future. Our previous title, Building Websites with Mambo was written for 4.5.x, 2ish years ago and it made sense to prepare for future versions of Mambo. Learning Mambo also takes a slightly different approach.
The Source: The approach of this book is very different. Why did you change the approach in this text?
Douglas Paterson: Mambo has good documentation - on almost every screen in the admin area, there are things to hover over with your mouse to learn more or less what that part of the page does. What is not quite so clear is how everything fits together, what the route is from start of a website project to the end. I mean, you've got Mambo installed, you're clicking round, you're finding out what this option does, but still you're not moving much further toward an actual site.
The Source: In this book, you take a fictional client all the way from project specs to site launch. Weren't you concerned about focusing on just one specific site's needs?
Douglas Paterson: The fictional client's needs were (conveniently!) quite "general", in the sense that many sites will want them so were going through the most "common" of functionality you would be after.
The Source: For the fictional client's site, you install several extensions, including zOOm Gallery, ExtCal and MamboBoard. How did you choose those?
Douglas Paterson: The type of extension was obviously determined by the task it had to do, but within the different extensions available, the popularity of the extension, the stability, and also, if it looked good, these were all factors
The Source: What sets this book apart from the other Mambo books on the market?
Douglas Paterson:It is written for the final release of Mambo 4.6, so it will be current with the version you can download today. Also, I think the emphasis on the tasks required to put together your site rather than the tasks required to operate the system is quite special.
The Source: Are eBook versions of this title available?
Douglas Paterson: Yes
The Source: Does Packt have plans for any more Mambo books in the future?
Douglas Paterson: We are always open to ideas.......
The Source: You normally work at Packt as the Development Editor. This is a bit of change for you. How did you wind up as the author for this title?
Douglas Paterson: I had been spending time working with Mambo, and I already had developed an approach to this kind of topic from working on my previous title about PHP-Nuke (which had been appreciated judging by the reader feedback we'd received) so I felt I would give it a go. I began taking a look at it to try and see what was getting everyone so excited. It's one of these systems you can spend a long time with and still learn new things
The Source: You mention your previous book on PHP Nuke. I see Packt has a wide number of titles on Open Source systems, what's the company's philosophy and why the focus on these particular systems?
Douglas Paterson: It makes a lot of sense to use something like an open source CMS and extending or customizing an existing architecture rather than building from scratch. That strength of that logic is one explanation for Packt's continuing interest in this area as a publisher. The same thinking also applies to open source more generally - you have the facilities to build on existing systems without restriction. Now, if only you knew how those systems worked and what you can do with them... That's where we can see opportunities to help out.
The Source: In addition to publishing books on these systems you also help out the projects themselves. I know Mambo benefits from this. How does that work?
Douglas Paterson: We have our open source project royalty scheme whereby the project that the book is based on receives royalties from each sale of the book
The Source: Do you have an opinion about the current state of Mambo development?
Douglas Paterson: I did like the Universal Installer in 4.6 I liked that single "interface" for installing any type of extension I was quite disappointed to see the "image browser" plugin for the HTML editor removed I think that was moved out of the core in one of the beta versions of 4.6 (which does actually make a lot of sense), but that was good fun
The Source: The Image browser will be back -- along with a file manager!
Douglas Paterson: sweet
The Source: You chose to document the 4.6 Complete Edition - any thoughts on the Lite Edition?
Douglas Paterson]: I actually had an Appendix on the Lite edition I never completed!
The Source: What are your thoughts about the current state of the Open Source CMS market?
Douglas Paterson: Things seem quite stable at the moment, in the world of PHP-based systems anyway. I guess we're entering a phase were a number of established systems will be looking to AJAXify themselves even further. I think the integration of JavaScript for effects and more familiar user interfaces can make a number of systems more user friendly user friendliness is very important to the success of an open source CMS, or indeed, any system.
The Source: Any parting words for the members of the Mambo community?
Douglas Paterson: I would like to thank everybody who's been involved in the Mambo project, for putting together the system in the first place. And also, to everyone who's posted questions to the forums so that you never have to feel like you're alone in the world when you can't get something to work...
To Learn More about Learning Mambo, visit the Packt Publishing site -- and remember: a portion of every purchase goes back to help the project!
|
