PyroCMS is a pre-built CMS platform, conceptually similar to others, like WordPress. It’s built on CodeIgniter, and was started by the illustrious Phil Sturgeon. Recently, I was given a copy of this book to review, and what follows is an honest review.

I received a free copy of this book, to review.

Structure

This is not the first Packt book I have reviewed; and certainly not the first I have read. It does please me to say that the faults I find with it are not with the work of the author.

The earlier chapters are poorly formatted; containing many sentences of 30 words (or more). Reading, and understanding, the content of technical books requires a level of concentration not helped by trying to assimilate complex sentence structure, especially with the addition of punctuation to make the sentences technically correct. That last sentence contained 34 words. You see what I’m trying to say?

To make matters a little worse; there are times when the text is saying nothing at all. Take this next sentence as example:

Run the Installation: The second part of the fourth step is running the installation. Up until this point in the installation process, you’ve been completing the steps necessary for running the final installation step.

Sentences like this give the impression that there was a gap that needed to be filled. Not with knowledge but with text. I understand how this happens, because I have done it too. Sometimes an author gets into a pattern and breaking it, for the sake of context, is hard to do. That’s where the technical editor, the coordinating editor or even the copy editor needs to step in and flag the serious offenders as verbose or even unnecessary.

The last problem I want to talk about is the grouping of user and developer documentation. When it comes to pre-built CMS applications; the people who extend (and therefore develop) the CMS are usually not the same people who capture content. This distinction is absent from the book; so it explains concepts like template markup alongside concepts like data capture.

These problems do begin in the draft, but they are the responsibility of the editing staff to see that they do not make it into production. I feel as though the author was let down.

Content

The book is full of screen shots; demonstrating different states and results of interaction with PyroCMS. It has examples for all the tasks described in the book. While I would have liked more examples, it does end in a chapter centred around the building of a full application.

A book about PyroCMS could never be feature complete within 104 pages, but this book is a good primer. It goes into detail about creating pages, page types and even using streams. It demonstrates how to build templates and how to extend the CMS. While it is a little short; I would recommend it to developers who want to get to grips with PyroCMS.

Are the various editing faults concerning? Yes. Are they enough for me not to recommend this book? No.

Zachary Vineyard has done a marvellous job in creating a rich primer for beginning PyroCMS development.