Drupal Books

Book: 

Drupal 6 Themes: Create new themes for your Drupal 6 site with clean layout and powerful CSS styling

Drupal 6 Themes: Create new themes for your Drupal 6 site with clean layout and powerful CSS styling

The ideal introduction to theming in Drupal 6. The main requirements to make use of this book are knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a touch of creativity - you don't need to know anything about theming in Drupal, although you should be familiar with the basic operation of the Drupal system. Although this book aims to make Drupal theming accessible to designers, theming in Drupal 6 involves writing some PHP code, and a basic knowledge of PHP will be helpful. Regardless of your technical skills, this book will teach you to design themes for your Drupal websites in the easiest way.

Over at her Rock Tree Sky site Addison Berry reviewed Front End Drupal.

Ok, so long review already, but there is definitely a lot of stuff in here. I expected a "theming" book and got more than I bargained for. At times some of the things that had more to do with modules and configuration would surprise me, but then again, the front end of a website is more than just the theme, it is all of the pieces that play a part in both look and feel. So, while I found it surprising, I don't think it is off-base and honestly for people who are new to Drupal this is a freaking gem.

Book: 

Front End Drupal: Designing, Theming, Scripting

From the author:

While other Drupal books focus on module development, Front End Drupal is 100% focused on issues of site design, behavior, usability, and management. The authors show how to style Drupal sites, make the most of Drupal’s powerful templating system, build sophisticated community sites, streamline site management, and build more portable, flexible themes. You’ll also gain hands-on experience through several case studies that walk you through site creation and customization from start to finish.

Front End Drupal Designing, Theming, Scripting by Emma Jane Hogbin and Konstantin Kaeffer

As I am the author, I it wouldn't be fair to review my own book. I can give you some of the emails I have gotten about it though, I maintain an updated list here:
-------------------------------

The best down-to-earth-guide to Drupal site development I have come across.
If you want a practical, no nonsense eBook, the Ultimate Community Site
Guide is for you.

You can spend months wading through the countless forums, videos and
technical module pages on Drupal - I know, I did. Or you can read this
guide and go straight to the point and take you through each step to get
your site up and running with the minimum of complexity.

--Andrew

-------------------------------

I'm not exactly a drupal newbie - I've written modules, upgraded modules from 4->5 and 5->6, built themes from scratch. I could have figured out everything you lay out in the book, but I've never done anything with complex profiles and your book was just an incredibly good investment to save me time building my site. At 5.50 euros, it's really stupid to waste all that time going through the forums and modules lists trying to figure it out, when it's laid out so nicely in your book.

--Tom

-------------------------------

Holy shit Dorien,

I read the first edition when it first came out and it helped me enormously in my career. This book skips all the fluff that you can easily learn by reading threads in the handbook and heads straight to the "here's how to write code for Drupal."

* If you are a Drupal user who wants to become a developer, you need this book.
* If you are a programmer who needs to write some Drupal code you need this book (you probably also need an intro to Drupal).

The second edition is out now and even better. It makes some parts easier to read and expands on whole new areas. Perhaps most importantly it covers the newly released Drupal 6.x which is the current version of Drupal and will likely be around until at least 2011. This is a book that won't be outdated for a long time.

Review by greg.