Design for Community guides the user through the difficulties and intricacies of building an online community in a novel and interesting way. Commentary from Derek Powazek's considerable experience in this field coupled with past anecdotes make the guidelines stand out.
If you're not planning on immediately starting out to build a community then the advice and commentary will have good general relevance, but the interviews conducted at the end of every chapter will be most revealing. I thoroughly enjoyed these informal sessions with community builders such as Matt Haughey, Noah Grey and Howard Rheingold, where they offers visions of future community along with tips.
Altogether, I bought DfC as some general web reading from an author whom I've heard a lot about on the web (from 'Fray', 'Powazek Productions','Blogger' et al) and I thoroughly enjoyed the read. I found the book to be a good informative read for a web developer along with being a valuable 'how to' for anyone starting out with community websites.
Recommended:
