Mercer - Drupal 7

David Mercer was born in August 1976 in Harare, Zimbabwe. As he always had a strong interest in science, he came into regular contact with computers at the university where he graduated cum laude with majors in applied math and math (although he minored in computer science).

As a programmer and professional writer who has been writing both code and books for about ten years, he has worked on a number of well known titles, in various capacities, on a wide variety of topics. His books have been translated into over nine different languages to date.

David believes that everyone should be able to benefit from the vast potential of the Internet. He founded Site prebuilder (http://www.siteprebuilder.com) to provide education and services to reduce the barrier to entry for Internet newcomers. The aim of Site prebuilder is to empower ordinary, non-techie people with the knowledge and skill required to run any website efficiently.

When he isn't working, which isn't that often, he enjoys playing the guitar (generally on stage and unrehearsed) and getting involved in outdoor activities ranging from touch rugby and golf to water skiing and snowboarding.

It is necessary to first thank the Packt team for making this possible, along with Diliny Corlosquet who did the review. In addition, my ever supportive family was always at hand to provide a change of pace and scenery that enabled me to work with greater effort throughout. Finally, I would like to thank my readers. The success of the first few editions of this book has made it possible (and necessary) to sit down and update it on a regular basis. I hope it does its job well.

Diliny Corlosquet is a freelance web developer who was introduced to Drupal by the vibrant community in Ireland back in 2006. Having attended several DrupalCamps and DrupalCons, she keeps up-to-date with the latest and greatest in the Drupal community and maintains several Drupal websites. She now lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with her Drupalite husband of RDF/Semantic web fame, Stphane, and their dog Maya.

I would like to thank my husband for his constant encouragement and commitment to Drupal as a whole, without whom I would never have become so involved!

The Internet is a magical place where any type of media and information can be accessed any time, day or night. Online medical diagnosis websites pander to every whim of the world's hypochondriacs, while media sites stream endless clips of the latest celebrity meltdowns. It's a huge and wildly variable place, which is great if you're only browsing.

The second you take it upon yourself to contribute to this melee of information, the magic has a tendency to be replaced by cold, hard reality. It's no longer sufficient to learn how to create a "Hello world" web page by hand. Those days are gone, and no-one is interested anymore.

Today, no matter who you are, you have to worry about things like SEO, sessions, hackers, RSS, DNS, Flash, Analytics, bots, and thousands of other things, all at once. Things have become so complex that it's simply not possible to do this as an individual anymore. More to the point, why would you want to?

What's important is that you can achieve whatever you want without ever having to learn the fundamentals of session state management or OOP, for example. This is where Drupal comes in. Thousands of developers work in, on, and around the Drupal project to provide a platform that is cutting edge and does its job "under the hood".

Your job is to take Drupal and turn it into what you need in order to meet your goalsregardless of what they are. Sure, you'll need to become knowledgeable about some things, and you'll have to invest a bit of your time learning the ropes, but that isn't a very high price to pay for what you get.

Learning new concepts, techniques, and technologies can be frustratingbelieve me, I know. That's why this book contains everything I would want to know about Drupal, if I was starting out again. It has a focus on practical, real world information that will turn you into an adaptable and competent Drupal 7 webmaster.

What you do with your newfound knowledge and experience after that is entirely up to you. The sky is the limit!