Writing “Drupal 7 Media

My book, titled “Drupal 7 Media”, was released by Packt Publishing on July 2013. It started with an official e-mail from Packt Pub’s project coordinator for the book, asking if I’d be interested to take part in writing this book. I had some thoughts, as to whether this would be an appropriate time to work on it (writers have a schedule they need to meet), but after some quick thoughts which I tend to do more than often, I decided to go for it (after my wife Tal confirmed my gut feeling).

While I’ve written a book before, I didn’t have tight deadlines nor did I need to co-ordinate with project reviewers, commissioning editors or technical reviewers. It required me to focus, to be sharp and plan properly for this endeavor. I have worked with Packt Pub before when I technically reviewed Drupal Rules how-to and Elgg 1.8 Social Networking, but a reviewer’s job, as helpful as it may be, it’s hard to compare to authoring a book.

When authoring a title, there’s much thinking process in setting up the book’s outline. Each chapter must be practical for readers to actually learn and implement the knowledge gained through-out the chapter. Further more, chapters should probably build one upon the other, so that readers who follow would be able to also understand how the various components are integrated together to provide some functionality.About 4 months later, with incredible help from all of Packt Pub’s staff and my lovely wife’s patience and support the book was officially released. Much before the planned release date too. It was a great experience working on this book, collaborating and learning so much through out this amazing process.Drupal is no stranger to me. In fact it’s a close friend for the last two and a half years.

At HP’s Live Network R&D group, we’re using the open source Drupal CMS as a platform for building a content delivery and collaboration framework for HP Software’s product teams and their users. Anyone who has worked with Drupal before knows that there’s a love-and-hate relationship with it. It’s great at one time, and drives you mad the next, but you eventually learn to appreciate its weirdness.So last thing left to do after getting my long-awaited book paperback was to toast with my team mates at work. Thanks guys! :-)