Packt Publishing has announced its first ever Author of the Year award. The award will be given to the author or authors of one book published by Packt in 2008.

Packt is aggressively promoting Drupal by publishing numerous books, and 2008 was clearly a watershed year for Drupal books. Here's a list of Drupal books and authors that are eligible for the award (in the order Packt's search engine returned them):

Packt is asking the community to vote for their favorite authors. The top four authors' works will be submitted to a panel of judges who will select the winner.

Go vote and show Packt that their Drupal emphasis is appreciated.

Comments

Crell’s picture

Be aware that the list when voting is alphabetical, so "Building Powerful..." is way at the top, and "Learning Drupal 6 Module Dev..." is several lines below the other "Drupal..." books.

Go go gadget Drupal!

--
Larry Garfield
http://www.garfieldtech.com/
Thinking Functionally in PHP: https://leanpub.com/thinking-functionally-in-php

skyredwang’s picture

Learning Drupal 6 Module Development by Matt Butcher

mkinnan’s picture

This was the book that got me started making my own modules! It has some great examples is a good place to start.

yaph’s picture

For developers new to Drupal "Learning Drupal 6 Module Development" is a very good starting point. Kudos to mbutcher and the other authors of Drupal books who help spread the word.

hunthunthunt’s picture

Matt's book is an instant classic. Got me up to speed, building my own modules, in next to no time.

redndahead’s picture

It's also nice that http://authors.packtpub.com/ is a drupal site too.

mdev’s picture

Selling Online with Drupal e-Commerce is also eligible :-) http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-ecommerce/book

lpt6’s picture

I have learnt how to develop module through this book

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My Blog: www.his25.com
My Site: www.shuodui.com.cn

ijhana’s picture

With the multitude of updates that we are hit with, the amount of development time required to deploy the updates and the 50-75% failure rates of the updates my cost for maintaining Drupal has surpassed my cost for maintaining IBM Websphere.

When are you guys going to fix this? At this point I would not recommend Drupal to any of our partners or would I develop any other projects on this platform.

This constant update issues and the complexity of the updates makes Drupal a poor choice for enterprise grade deployments.

StevenPatz’s picture

Is there something related to the book you'd like to discuss?

marthinal’s picture

The Matt butcher book is perfect i think!if you want to start to understand and delopment in drupal you have to read it.

The only source of knowledge is experience. ~ Albert Einstein.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Agreed, I've read most of the above books and Matt Butchers book was the best in my opinion.

whatdoesitwant’s picture

3rd place: Drupal Multimedia

Packt is a great publishing house with incredible service. They have sent me a replacement copy of Drupal Multimedia when it didn't arrive originally. If you really want to appreciate Drupal Multimedia, also watch http://www.archive.org/details/DrupalconDc2009-DrupalMultimedia. In the book Aaron is very generous to point out different ways of doing things with Drupal. I like to lurk, lurk and lurk and then go for the best option. The talk is less friendly to modules that didn't make the cut and really focuses on the best options and on the direction in which Drupal's media revolution is likely to go. It is an hour long presentation with so-so sound but it is worth your time. Next, get your hands dirty with the book.

2nd place: Drupal 6 Themes

When I got to working through Ric Shreves' Drupal 6 Themes, Packt had erata at their site already covering any error I could point out. Shreves' book feels a bit technical or dated at some places (i could really have done without Bluemarine). But it is a valuable introduction into the technical side of theming. Chapters 4, 8 and 9 are invaluable and the book is great for reference. You are not going to learn more indepth theming elsewhere.
I would advise you to read Front End Drupal first to learn about usability and Drupal 6 themes for the technicalities of templating. They complement each other nicely.
The book's version of Zen is supplied at http://www.packtpub.com/support/book/drupal-6-themes, along with the code examples. A packaged installation profile of the Drupal installation used by the author would have been better still. I encountered some anomalies due to newer versions of Drupal and|or modules. Don't let that put you off. This book is still a gem.

On a side note, if you have some design experience outside of Drupal you may prefer Genesis as a starter theme above Zen. It is well documented and seems to have better semantics. Layoutstudio is also nice, but like Mothership it is not documented as well as Zen and Genesis.

On a second side note, this is actually from FED instead of D6T but you can replace Garlands afwul administration theme with RootCandy. This may be one of the first things new users should do to improve their appreciation of Drupal, while waiting for the Drupal 7 ux.

1st place: Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery

I choose Matt Butcher's Drupal 6 Javascript and jQuery. Sadly, it was published this year so it doesn't enter in the contest.
It has very practical real world examples though, like o'Reilly's cookbook series has. And the author's php-background helps the approach to jQuery because he knows exactly when to use what. Listening to talks by Konstantin Käfer and Dmitiri Gaskin, there is not enough focus on Drupal integration. Matt Butcher tackles that. I am too busy getting the hang of theming at the moment to read his Learning Drupal 6 Module Development but it is definitely on my list.

Cheers, Willem

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Agree whole heartedly, Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery rocks. I gathered this chapter by chapter as a raw book and its just great.

I'm actually currently reviewing Drupal 6 theme, nice to hear your impressions of this book. Frankly I've found it kind of hard to review, its seems to jump from very basic to very advanced, however, without blowing my own horn, I know it all already so its quite difficult for me to envision how a newbie might use this book.

Thanks for your reviews, very nice.

simeonabiola’s picture

I think the first position should given to David Mercer for his book "Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal". I think a novice to a computer and website design can really start well reading the book.

bobsimons’s picture

I will definitely be voting for my favorite author per Packt's request