Packt Publishing News & Articles

Three cheers for Jeff Potts! The author of Alfresco Developer Guide took home Packt’s (news, site) Author of the Year award along with a cool US$ 1000 cash prize earlier this month. Not bad for a guy’s first published book, right?

“I am excited and honored to win the award,” said Potts, “especially because I know there were several popular and well-written books among the finalists.”

The finalists included 5 other nominated titles:

Drupal Multimedia by Aaron Winborn
Learning Drupal 6 Module Development by Matt Butcher
Learning Ext JS by Shea Fredrick, Colin Ramsay and Steve "Cutter" Blades
Object-Oriented JavaScript by Stoyan Stefanov
Service Oriented Architecture with Java by Vincenzo Caselli, Binildas A. Christudas and Malhar Barai

Judges praised Potts’ book in particular for “providing a strong balance of background, actionable items, and wisdom” and bringing a complex, challenging topic “down to earth”.

“Most of our authors write in their limited free time alongside demanding full time jobs and this award gives us another, more fun way to reward and thank our authors,” said David Barnes, Packt Acquisition Editor and organizer of the award.

Inspired? Check out Potts’ book here.

It's that time. Time to have a look at the finalists for the Packt Publishing (news, site) 2009 Open Source CMS Awards. Announced in August, the Open Source Awards offers US$ 24,000 in prizes to the best in open source content management solution.

Here's a look at who made the finalist list and what happens next.

If you feel your writing talents are not being appreciated or if you’ve finally decided to stop hiding your literary light under a bushel, then Packt Publishing (news, site) is looking for you.

Yep! This is probably the first time since the invention of the Nuremberg printing press over 500 years ago that a book publisher is looking for authors -- and paid authors at that.

The snag -- if it is, in fact a snag -- is that you really have to know your subject, and those subjects should include Oracle, IBM and Microsoft amongst others before you go looking for your first contract. Additionally, you need to be able to explain in less than five million words, what your particular 'thing' is.

Best known for their open source books, Packt Publishing produces a range of publications from large developer’s guides like the guide to Oracle SOA Suite 10g R3, or shorter and task-specific books that show how to get specific jobs done, like SharePoint Designer Tutorial, for example.

Packt aims to share the experiences of IT professionals in adapting and customizing current systems, applications and frameworks.

And now they are looking to extend their stable of talent. They plan to advance their line up of enterprise focused titles this year with an expected publishing list of over 30 titles.

Packt is inviting developers, architects, consultants and administrators alike, to send in their title suggestions and area of expertise to author@packtpub.com.

Last year we noted that the mid-size open source CMS Plone (news, site) looked like it was gearing up for a bigger and better 2009. Many things since then have solidified that observation, including the launch of a user feedback system, a relicensing policy, and much talk about the upcoming Plone 4 and 5.

Before we get too ahead of ourselves though, let's slow down and take a look at Plone 3. Author Veda Williams has just announced the release of her new book Plone 3 Theming through Packt Publishing.

Williams' book reportedly teaches best practices of Plone theme development, focusing on Plone 3. The book covers topics such as configuring the development environment, creating a basic theme product, add-on tools and skinning tricks, integrating multimedia with Plone, and configuring a site's look and feel through the Zope Management Interface (ZMI). Finally, for you future fiends, there is a sneak peek into the future of Plone's theming system.

Williams has worked in software development for a whopping 18 years. Her experience includes a three-year stint as a Plone skinner, and she is currently the editor for the documentation section of plone.org. In other words? This lady knows what she's talking about.

If you're a professional Web designer working with Plone and would fancy some theming help, you can pick up your electronic version here.

People who are new to content management systems find it a little overwhelming as they try to figure out which CMS is right for them. Packt Publishing (news, site) has released a book that hopes to help people make some sense out of so many choices.

The book is "Choosing an Open Source CMS," by Nirav Mehta.

On April 23, 2004, Packt Publishing (news, site) published its first book, "Mastering phpMyAdmin for Effective MySQL Management." Five years and two-hundred books later, Packt has made itself a force in publishing on content management topics.

As a thank you, Packt is offering both new and existing customers five exclusive deals:

• 5 Free eBooks
• Buy 5 books for $99
• Buy the book, get the eBook free
• Competitions with 5 special prizes
• Buy 2 eBooks, get the 3rd free

The free eBooks are:

• Building Online Communities with phpBB 2
• Upgrading to Lotus Notes and Domino 7
• Invision Power Board: A User Guide
• Building Websites with e107
• The PEAR Installer Manifesto

Over the next four weeks, each Monday Packt will announce a new birthday offer on PacktPub.com. No doubt the open source projects that Packt has donated to with proceeds from related books are looking forward to another successful five years.

As you rush to Packt for your free deals, don't forget to wish them a very Happy Birthday!

That's right, there's an entire book about SilverStripe CMS. Written by SilverStripe core developer Ingo Schommer with the help of designer, programmer and writer Steven Broschart, the book is a 450 page long guide to SilverStripe for Web developers with an intermediate familiarity with website development, PHP5, and object oriented code.

The company put out a call for writers specifically for the project in March 2008. Merely a year later they've not only kicked it out, they' also managed to land on Amazon.de's CMS bestseller list within two weeks of release.

We would say we're surprised, but given that the company just won the Most Promising Open Source Content Management System award from Packt Publishing, we're not. The folks over at SilverStripe are definitely on top of things. 

For now, the guide is only in German (bummer) but SilverStripe has stated that they're exploring the idea of an English translation in the near future. 

Always wanted to write a cool, customized Alfresco app, but didn’t know where to start? Put your worries to rest. There is now a way to learn all things related to Alfresco Enterprise CMS customization. You can even teach yourself how to roll your very own REST API — it’s all in the book.

Alfresco development and customization secrets are revealed in Alfresco Developer Guide, a new book from Packt about customizing Document Management and Content Management capabilities on the Alfresco platform — with actions, Web scripts, Web forms, workflows and more.

It just seems right to end the day with one final piece of news on SharePoint. This one comes from Packt Publishing who has released a new book on SharePoint entitled: SharePoint Designer Tutorial: Working with SharePoint Websites.

Packt Publishing has announced the finalists for each category of its 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. Last year, Drupal was the overall winner, pushing the ’06 overall winner, Joomla!, to the second place.

This year, both are finalists in two categories. But there are many other contenders that may change the final results.

Packt (pronounced Packed), published its first book in April 2004. From then on, they began to publish books on specific technologies and solutions, allowing developers and administrators to adapt and customize today’s systems, applications and frameworks.

Their dedication to open source has been apparent through their awards for “The Best Open Source CMS”, and their numerous books covering the ins and outs of a number of open source technologies and content management systems like eZ Publish and osCommerce.

And now their dedication to Open Source goes even further.