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Summary: The book is a joy to read (and to look at as well, with all
Review: Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing, is, in a word, great! The book is a joy to read (and to look at as well, with all those great photos). Philip has a very direct and straightforward way of thinking and writing about the web and the functions of web pages, and he keeps it all fun to read with his wonderful sense of humor. This is not the book to turn to if you want to learn how to make the flashiest pages - you know, the ones that are so full of bright blinking graphics that you can't figure out what they are about even after waiting a couple of minutes for it to finish downloading. This IS the book to turn to if you actually have some content that you'd like to make available to as many people as possible. Philip can show you how to get it out there in a clear and appealing way, while wasting as little time (both yours and the viewers) as possible.
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Summary: Something for everyone
Review: One of Philip's great strengths is writing to multiple audiences. Hard-core Web Nerds will learn tips and techniques in building large-scale web sites. Graphic designers can learn what not to do when designing web user interfaces. Technology novices can lean good-vs-bad criteria when evaluating web sites, and folks with no clue whatsoever can look at the pretty pictures.I worked on AOLserver (the web development platform used for many of the examples for the book) for two years. I'm familiar with the internals of the web server, but Philip's book put the details into perspective - how to take the tools and build something that's both useful and technically elegant.
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Summary: Good advice for anyone building a business online
Review: Greenspun's latest book is a great starting point for people who are setting up -- or just thinking about setting up -- a business on the web. The book does a good job of outlining the major steps along the way to building a successful site, from evaluating your business plan to actually building and maintaining your site. Greenspun's extensive experience in building real websites comes through clearly in his examples and anecdotes; his cynical wit makes the book unexpectedly entertaining.
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Summary: I liked it so much I joined the company
Review: For many years, I was a web developer building sites using junkware. I knew there had to be a better way. This book shows you how. Philip has combined his sharp intellect, experience, and sense of humor to produce a book that has something to offer everybody involved in web publishing. I'm not saying this because I work with Philip at ArsDigita. I work with Philip at ArsDigita because I believe in the ideas embodied in this book.
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Summary: Good book. Not great.
Review: I ordered this book because of the comments by readers here on Amazon. I feel a bit Star-Wars'd by the purchase -- yeah, it's good, but it doesn't live up to the hype. One problem I had with Philip's book is that I, too, have built some massive Web sites (tens of thousands of pages, millions of hits daily) and my stats don't agree with his. He says "after you've tarted up your site with frames, graphics, and color, check the server log to see how much traffic has fallen" -- as if it's a foregone conclusion. But I've had the luxury of deploying the same content in both functional and flashy formats, and watching the logs fill up with 4 times as many hits for the flashy site, even though it used technology that excluded older browsers. In other words, I'd hire Philip to build a Web site for our Support department, but I would not pay this guy to launch a new product. I also agree with some comments that the guy is self-absorbed. Having said all that, I still like the book. I think he makes valid points. I appreciated his experiences with building database-backed sites, especially his story about the catalog publisher who thought it'd be a snap to get his images into a database and serve them up, even though the images had random names that couldn't be associated with product numbers. I regularly get asked to do a "quick project" that is in reality a massive time-suck, so I am grateful to see how other people handle those situations, so I may handle them better, too. His comments on photography were enlightening. I'll be scanning from film, rather than from prints, from now on.
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Summary: An amazing book about web services
Review: This book is a fantastic blend of solid technology and wonderful writing and photography. I stumbled onto it on the web, and was intrigued by the idea that an author would put the entire text of his book on the web. Then I ordered the book. Wow. Even though the programming examples are over my head, it's probably done more to advance my thinking about web services than anything else I've read. More web publishers need to realize that services are what keep people coming back to their web sites.
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Summary: A Literate Technical Book
Review: Philip Greenspun writes well. That's reason enough to buy this book (plus, it's got a ton of cool pictures). Philip Greenspun has an opinion. It's based on his experience with Unix, Oracle, and AOLserver/Tcl. He won't tell you if Apache/mod_perl or Cold Fusion is better. But he makes a convincing case that his proven approach will work for you. And he gives away the tools. You can read this book online. I did. I bought it anyway. A book that makes you think is an invaluable asset, and its cost a small price to pay for the benefit. Vote with your dollars. There are undoubtedly other approaches to Web publishing, but I've yet to encounter a book like this one for those alternatives. One of the best technical books I've ever read.
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Summary: Valuable tales from the trenches
Review: Most web development books focus on a particular implementation strategy (Java, C++, Oracle WebServer, InterDev, what have you) and spend 600 pages explaining how to use it without really spending any time talking about what you should use those tools for in the first place. By the end of the book the reader may know how to use the tools, but isn't really any closer to building an interesting, dynamic site (not to mention a well architected, maintainable and scaleable one) than they were when they started. This book does talk about tools, and gives some very good advice (warts and all). But Greenspun also talks about what you can build with those tools--community sites, sensible electronic commerce platforms, and usable, content-rich general interest sites. The fact that the author spends most of his time building web sites (rather than researching tools for his next 600 page opus) sets this book apart. The free data models alone are worth the cover price. The anecdotes about the trials and tribulations of running a popular web site are just the type of information that an aspiring webmaster needs. I've been building dynamic web sites for several years, and I imagine I know the ropes. But when I have to bring someone else up to speed, not just on tools but on design fundamentals, it's a lot easier to steer them to Philip's web page or hand them a copy of the book than to spend a week training them. I made everyone who worked with me read Philip's first book, and I plan to continue that policy with this new edition. Of course, it's also a fun read. What other computer book opens a chapter with a photograph of pigeons mobbing a man in Trafalgar square? Even when I don't agree with what's on the page, I'd rather read an author who has the capacity to get me angry than one who manages to bore me out of my mind.
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Summary: Deja Vu
Review: "Philip and Alex'sGuide to Web Publishing" is a revised version of PhilipGreenspun's "Database Backed Web Sites: The Thinking Person's Guide to Web Publishing." The new version (from a new publisher, Morgan Kaufmann) has over 265 elegant color and BW photos on close to 600 pages of 70 lb. glossy paper. It has new chapters on community, e-commerce, and political action, and I suppose the code examples have been revised -- yet all the text all seems familiar to the repeat reader. The chief differences seem to be much more professional editing and restraint, less chauvinism about Lisp and MIT hacker culture, and deletion of an ill-fitting essay by Noam Chomsky. Philip seems to have solved the "filler problem" of his first book, about which he said "Chapters 1,2, and 3 are all just random flaming that I stuck in so that I wouldn't run afoul of my contract with Macmillan (calling for a minimum of 350 book pages). If I'd discovered the magic of screen shots sooner, I wouldn't have had to write this filler at all." The original book was a sales pitch for online collaboration and communities. There's much less selling of the community idea in this edition, perhaps to fit in all the photos. Philip hasn't changed his belief that open-source groups can build better knowledge bases than can individuals, if properly supported. His website says, "I built this site in 1993 to share what I knew. In 1995, I expanded the goal to also share what some other folks know." This book documents some of Philip's contributions. This is a self-indulgent book. (I decided this before the author himself mentioned it -- as Edward Tufte's opinion -- on p. xxviii.) Although relevant to Philip's life and work, the photos in the book have almost no connection to the text -- other than the chapter on photographic publishing technique. Philip calls this "the first coffee table Web nerd book." I call it Philip's geek autobiography. It's not about his family and childhood, but about problems he has solved and the code that he and his friends produced. It's also about how to be Philip Greenspun and why you would want to be. (In fact, he wanted to call his first book "How to be a Web Whore Just Like Me.") Philip and his partners in ArsDigita are top systems hackers who have implemented over 100 (now 200?) database-backed websites. With a few lines of code -- C, Lisp, Tcl, SQL, Perl, or whatever -- they can patch together Unix shells, Oracle databases, AOLserver Web servers, and other modules and components. These custom solutions do in milliseconds what commercial off-the-shelf software may take seconds to do. For sites serving millions of hits, that matters. It's a bottom-up software engineering approach to system construction, as opposed to commercial middleware purchase and integration. ArsDigita can now patch together previous solutions to create almost any kind of interactive Web service. All of the code described in the book is free, for those who can afford to run it. Or ArsDigita will build and maintain your website on their powerful Unix servers, if your budget is large and your problems pique their interest. This book amounts to a sales pitch, implying that there's nothing you and just a few of the world's most brilliant and experienced hackers can't accomplish (and that there's likely nothing much you *can* do reliably with only ordinary programmers and Windows NT). You should definitely read this book before you start building a million-dollar website. If you already have a website, you may want Philip's code for Web-based community services: mailing lists, chat groups, discussion forums, Q&A forums, birthday reminders, etc. For the small commercial website, Philip's database-backed e-commerce strategies only work if you're willing to run your own Linux or Unix system. He tells me that "Linux is free and Oracle on Linux is free for developers. AOLserver is free and our Shoppe code is free. But the whole thing is a bear to administer compared to Yahoo Store." This isn't the primer you need if you just want an online store hosted by an ISP. I've essentially read this book twice now, which I've done with almost no other book since high school. There's unquestionably good technical content here, and I like the way it's tied to a rich website instead of just a CD ROM of aging software. Still, I have to wonder about the eye candy and the something-for-everyone approach. It's the antithesis of the functional website design that Philip espouses. (The eye candy is "served" instantly and at almost no extra cost.Is this like using flashy Web graphics, or quite different? Is it justifiable only because of Philip's chapter on photographic publishing technique, or can anyone play this game?) I'd rather see this as several books, each with a different theme and target audience. The current organization is like getting all of the parts for the price of one, but with no focus, limited development, and little ability to skip and choose. Is this a bargain, or a dilution? Having seen the author's strongly worded opinions in his previous book, I'd say it's a dilution. We need more books from Philip Greenspun, not just one bigger book. Perhaps we will get them, now that he and Morgan Kaufmann have pioneered HTML-based book publishing. I give the book four stars by itself, but five if you include the website.
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Summary: Read it or forget Web Publishing
Review: This is easily the best technical book I have seen in the last few years. It is literally changing the way I look at Web services. Anybody who is serious about publishing RDBMS-backed sites NEEDS this book. PG is highly opinionated, and often obnoxious with his critique. We need more technical authors like that. Some of his gems (e.g why choose Oracle vs. SQL Server) are exactly the sort of stuff that people building Web services need, and often do not have. What would be nice is a broader technology review, and comparisons in other domains (e.g. Solaris vs NT vs HP-UX vs Linux) would have been good. But now I'm nit-picking.
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