Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing (Paperback)

Amazon.co.uk Review
Computing and coffee tables go together like chalk and … artichokes, so this excellent volume comes as something of a surprise. There are no pages of closely packed type and dull screenshots here. Instead, expect amusing pictures (including ones of pig racing and Web-savvy dog Alex), well-chosen examples and engaging writing. Drawing on 20 years of Internet experience, MIT professor Philip Greenspun takes an in-depth look at the process of putting content on the Web. The book tackles a variety of conceptual and technical issues, including server set-up, building community, e-commerce architecture and how to learn HTML--in 21 minutes. Though the core of the book is quite technical, Greenspun's straightforward approach and amusing anecdotal style make the guide accessible to potential publishers of all skill levels.

Few introductions to Web publishing match this one in terms of insight, humour and adaptibility. Whether propped on a coffee table or used as office reference, it's sure to provoke interest and conversation. --Chris Russell

Book Description
From the author's preface:

This book is a catalog of the mistakes that I've made while building more than 100 Web sites in the last five years. I wrote it in the hopes that others won't have to repeat those mistakes.

For the manager in charge of a Web publication or service, this book gives you the big picture. It is designed to help you to affirmatively make the high-level decisions that determine whether a site will be manageable or unmanageable, profitable or unprofitable, popular or unpopular, reliable or unreliable. I don't expect you to be down in the trenches typing Oracle SQL queries. But you'll learn enough from this book to decide whether in fact you need a database, whom to hire as the high database priest, and whom to allow anywhere near the database.

For the literate computer scientist, I hope to expose the beautiful possibilities in Web service design. I want to inspire you to believe that this is the most interesting and exciting area in which we can work.

For the working Web designer or programmer, I want to arm you with a new vocabulary and mental framework for building sites. There can be more to life than making a client's bad ideas flesh with PhotoShop and Perl/CGI.

For the users of the world, I document a comprehensive open-source approach to building online communities and show a collaborative Web-based way that we can dig ourselves out of our desktop application morass.

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First Sentence
Why did the world buy 20 million expensive computers and connect them together? Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover