Book - "Elgg 1.8 Social Networking" Still a good resource?

Not thats it's not in general ( I haven't received it yet and not looking to offend anyone anyway) just wondering for me.

I'm new to Elgg in general - have some amateur programming background - would like to start with Elgg 2.0.2. So my question is if this book is still applicable (and if so a lot of a little) to my learning of Elgg?

 

Thanks for the feed back,

Pete

  • I think it is still fully applicable. You can download finised plugins from tutorials in book on github and try them on 2.0.2. If they work, book is still relevant.

    https://github.com/cash/elgg-book-code

  • I think it can still be useful to "get into Elgg". The background chapters about social networks in general, installing Elgg, administring an Elgg site and the introduction of the core plugins shouldn't be outdated too much at all. The introduction to developing your own plugins shouldn't be much outdated either as the basic concepts haven't changed. I think the book makes much sense if you use it to get a good overview especially at the beginning and (with newer versions of Elgg at hand) not expecting that every little detail is still as described in the book. But it won't be too different even on 2.0. If you start with coding you could keep an Elgg 1.8 (or maybe 1.12) installation in parallel (or just compare the code alone with Elgg 2.X) to allow for a quick check of changes in code (also in the code and file structure of core plugins).

    It would also be helpful as reference to look at http://learn.elgg.org/en/2.0/guides/upgrading.html where all changes in Elgg core that would have to be taken into account for 3rd party plugins are described. If this page mentions some change that is still outlined otherwise in the book you can still use all the other info of the book but update just what is new in recent version of Elgg.

    As long-term reference it is also helpful to check http://reference.elgg.org/ for detailed info about the Elgg API functions.

  • Thanks for the replies. I look forward to the book arriving and going from there.

    pete