Drupal books
Drupal 5 themes book in the mail
Remember how I predicted that 10 Drupal books would get published in 2008? Well, the first book showed up in the mail this morning.
Ric Shreves has written a Drupal 5 themes book. The book is published by Packt, who mailed me a handful of copies to give away at future Drupal events.
I don't have a design background but it looks like a good book that explains the workings of the Drupal theme system and Drupal's PHPTemplate enginge, that explains you how to build a theme, and that provides practical solutions to common problems during that process. If you are a hardcore developer, this book might not be for you.
More information, including a free chapter on how to work with theme engines, can be found at the publisher's website
.
Drupal Pro Development numbers
You might remember that a week after the Pro Drupal Development book shipped, it cracked the Amazon top-100. The book remains in the 4,000-5,000 rank at Amazon, where it has 28 reviews and an average of 5/5 stars.
Well, John VanDyk, co-author of the Pro Drupal Development book, wrote in to say that during the first 2.5 months (April, May, June) more than 6,000 copies were sold. And this number doesn't include sales data for July, August, September or October.
Without a doubt, these numbers are truly amazing. It is simply astounding to think that in a few short months one book has given the world 10,000 new or greatly improved Drupal developers. It blows my mind.
I guess this explains why publishers are looking for Drupal book authors. And in case you are wondering, there is still room for more Drupal books.
Pro Drupal Development book
John VanDyk and Matt Westgate have written a Drupal book for developers: Pro Drupal Development, published by Apress.
Last week, I finally got a copy of the book in the mail and now I've read it, I can say that it is exactly what we expected it to be: awesome.
So, John and Matt -- for the love of God -- make sure there will be a Drupal 6 version of that book.
More information, including a free chapter on how to theme Drupal, can be found at http://drupalbook.com.
David's Drupal book in the mail
David Mercer has written a Drupal book: Drupal: creating blogs, forums, portals, and community websites. The book is published by Packt, who mailed me a number of free copies to give away at future Drupal events.
It looks like a thorough book with clear and useful examples. The book is geared towards people who are new to Drupal and that want practical advice on how to get a Drupal site up and running. It won't make you a Drupal expert, but it will give you a solid base from which to build. More information, including a free chapter on how to install Drupal, can be found at the publisher's website.
Drupal book spotted in Berlin
Pieter Baert spotted the German Drupal book in a store in Berlin, Germany. He sent me the photo below. Thanks!
Hagen's Drupal book in the mail
Hagen Graf has written a German Drupal book: Drupal: Community-Websites entwickeln und verwalten mit dem Open Source-CMS published by Addison-Wesley. I got a copy of the book in the mail today and took some pictures. Thanks Hagen, Boris and Uwe!
A note from the editor, Boris Karnikowski.
A note from the author, Hagen Graf.
Robert's Drupal book in the mail
Last year in February, I introduced Robert Douglass to Matt Wade, an editor at Apress. Yesterday, 11 months later, I received a copy of the book, Building online communities with Drupal, phpBB and Wordpress, as a result of that introduction.
In roughly 200 pages (the part about Drupal), Robert Douglas teaches you everything you need to know in order to install, configure and maintain a Drupal site. I only spent 2 hours exploring the book so far and already it teached me some new things about some of the contributed modules. I doubt any Drupal user will be disappointed with this book. Highly recommended.