So I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and here’s my first draft at an outline for a drupal recipie book.

1. Getting Started. This would a be a list of things you should know, resources you should have at your disposal, and some key concepts before the book would start showing its value. Might be things like setting up a test environment, some basic drupal terminology, and an overview of drupal at a farily high level.
2. About Drupal Modules (ingredients)
3. Recipies
   1. Social Networking Sites
   2. Media Hosting Sites
   3. Rating Sites
   4. Corporate Sites
   5. Small Business Sites
   6. Non-Profit Sites
   7. Personal Sites

Other notes

• What if the contribution back to the community was in install profiles for each of these

Reader Profile

These users typically have some PHP knowledge, some HTML/CSS knowledge, but aren’t yet up to the challenge of developing their own modules. Customizations would probably be very challenging for them.

These users start off with Drupal with a specific type of site in mind. They might use a brand name like Facebook, Flickr, or MySpace to describe their basic feature set. They want to know what combination of modules will help them acheive that type of site.

This type of user sits in a very wide expanse of confusion along the drupal learning curve. Getting started is easy, becoming an expert takes around a year or so. The middle ground that lies between is where users find frustration, confusion, and differing levels of complexity while they move their site from the generic to the specific and truly engage their target community.