Learning eZ publish 3: Building Content Management Solutions--Leaders of the eZ publish community guide you through this complex and powerful PHP-based Content Management System

Rating:
Summary: Love the CMS, love the book!
Review: Having worked with Content Management Systems (CMS) for a good while now, it is always nice to run into a nice implementation of one and, with more than a million downloads, a very successful one at it.

In this case, for most matters and purposes, eZ Publish 3 comes accross as a platform that will cater to most content management needs. Perhaps it is a stretch to say that it will serve anyone and everyone, but from the book, it is clear that this PHP-based, open source CMS and development framework will answer the needs of most sites requiring to maintain their content dynamically.

The book is the result of the contribution of six leaders of the eZPublish community. The volume is very thorough in its discussion of the steps needed to set up, configure and maintain the system. In general, newcomers into eZPublish will find it extremely valuable and veterans will benefit from the shared experience of other eZPublish colleagues. All in all, highly recommendable as a content management tool and the book itself, as a reference to master it.

Rating:
Summary: Good book: very technical
Review: With this book, our intrepid micro-publisher has sought to lay out an understanding of the complex content management system eZ Publish (www.eZ.no). eZ Publish is a very powerful php based CMS solution, and really does meet the requirements of an Enterprise CMS solution.

However, it has not been a very well documented project despite great efforts by the developers, especially for the more complex functionality.

This book addresses many of the things that are left wanted by the documentation, such as the modification of core classes. However, it oddly combines them with basic information like how to set up the system -- information which was almost out of date before the book was released.

Sadly, the book fails to go deep enough to satiate the demand of our more technical users while also failing to provide enough introductory material for beginners. This lack of clear audience focus plagues the book and lessens it's utility for real world developer or beginners.

This book is absolutely worth the money, if you've got a little php under your belt and you're looking to really buckle down and start developing eZ Publish sites. But if you're a beginner, or you don't have a solid understanding of php, you'll probably find this book to be over your head past the first chapter.

This publisher is coming out with a revised version which I am sure will address many of these issues, as they are one of the best computer book publishers to hit the scene since WROX. The fourthcoming Plone book by the same publisher looks like a good title, and the OpenCMS book by Packt Publishers is very good.