Screw book customers: Book code missing 4th Ed Build You Own Database Driven Web Site

48 hours trying to sort this out. Sorry if book questions should not be here but this is the only site I can find :slight_smile:

OK has anyone got a link to the code examples of 4th ed of Kevin Yank’s Build Your Own Database Driven Web Site? Not on the site where it is supposed to be and Sitepoint books have ignored my requests for help.

No need to read on just my opinion of a company I would NEVER buy a BOOK from nor do any business with.

Why the hel** does the link for code examples for an older edition not only NOT WORK but then FORCE YOU to the new edition. That is hugely disrespectful of existing customers.

I LIKE working with books. OK the 4th edition is not completely up to date but a quick run through would help lots.

I find it the height of arrogance for Sitepoint to not only remove the code from the book’s page (the link in the book implies it is good news as you will never lose the CD!!!) but then to have the gall to redirect the code link it to new book after not supporting the old one - unbelievably arrogant inappropriate marketing.

By all means do a redirect AFTER the code has started downloading but to delete the code and just point to the new book is the height of … I don’t know but I feel like I have been dumped on from a great height.

I have just spent eight hours in broken hardware hell and was going to charge through the book in about 4-8 hours. It was going to be light relief…

This book is still on sale and in many libraries. It really does Sitepoint no good being seen as “evil” (in the Google sense), rapacious and just plain mean.

I certainly will never buy any of your books again nor sign up for any of your courses. Sorry as a company Sitepoint is simply not to be trusted to honor its commitment to its customers.

Hmmm this was not a “support” question. This was a request for help from other members and a general complaint.

I continue to be very unimpressed with Sitepoint’s commitment to its customers.

Hi shomer, welcome to the forums,

It’s early morning SitePoint time. Assuming they work 9 to 5 they should be in the office soon.

@HAWK; can get in touch with the business side and find out what’s what.

TBH, I think it’s more a case of poor housekeeping than evil intent that the code links break. I see Mittineaque has provided the files in your other thread.

These days, SP is placing the code on GitHub, so hopefully that will stop this happening in future.

Thanks have got the files now I think. Just a HORRIBLE customer experience.

And it cold not have happened at a worse time.

My main i7 has broken down and five HOURS on trying to get a new SSD to work

Exhausted.

Hmm if you say so. Bit odd that the code link goes to the new book.

And even if an error why no response to email and…

Still lost three or four hours on this.

Hi @shomer; ,
Apologies for your bad experience, it sounds super frustrating.
We never ignore requests for support so I wonder if there is an issue with your emails getting through.
I’ll have one of our support team respond to you as soon as the office opens.

Thanks. To be honest my hardware problems have been sooooooooooooooo horrendous that I am not really in the mood for this venture.

Ah well.

Such is life.

Hey shomer, really sorry to hear about the trouble you’ve been having here. Are you able to DM me the email address you used to contact us? From a quick search in our support system I can’t seem to find your message, but I could just be looking in the wrong place.

Most importantly, here’s a Dropbox link you can use to download the code archive:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1gfk8mex6xansle/phpmysql4-code.zip

I agree it’s not ideal that we are pointing people to the updated edition of the book. That’s mainly down to technical limitations that came about when we retired SitePoint’s ancient shopping cart system last year — all of the code archives were tied up in there, and we had trouble finding a sensible way to manage older editions of our books. There was a big backlog of tasks involved in the changeover and this meant that we probably weren’t as diligent with our housekeeping (to borrow ralph.m’s phrase) on this particular issue as we could have been.

Now, it should go without saying that you’re welcome to contact us at support any time to request a copy of the code archive. Most of the time you shouldn’t have to wait more than 12 hours to get a response back from us, often much less.

I’m going to have a conversation with our dev team today and see whether we might be able to create some slightly better quality resources for readers of our older books, especially when we are redirecting people from older pages. In the meantime, if you need them all of our past code archives (going back to 2003) are linked here:
http://www.sitepoint.com/code-archives/

If you have any other questions or feedback, feel free to email me directly at tim.graham@sitepoint.com.

That’s a handy resource, Tim. Perhaps any outdated code URLs (listed in the books) could be redirected to this page?

I noticed not all titles were links. I’m assuming those books don’t have a code archive and so are not linked. But maybe it could be reworded a bit to make that clear?

Tim thanks for that. Sent Hawk the email. Just discovered the errata link points to the home page of the new book.

I have ZERO problem with the promotion of the new bool but the appropriate link should also work. Anyhoo have had a nightmare with WAMP installations trying out the old book so will try and look at the new :slight_smile: