Chanh Ong is a Computer Specialist and has many years of experience in various computer platforms and operating systems; programming languages such as PHP, JavaScript (AJAX), C, VB, Perl, Microsoft Access, dBase, and FoxPro; system administration on Unix, Linux, Vax and Microsoft Windows; and DBA of various databases such as Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, Informix, MSSQL, and so on. He utilizes web servers such as Apache and IIS to help build web applications. He also does custom templates for clients.
He has an open source project called COAddOns, which develops several add-ons for Mambo, Joomla!, MiaCMS, and MoseCMS—which is an easy and extensible CMS. He is also a former Mambo CMS core developer.
He researches on CMSs and their tools. He has lot of experience in installing various CMS, including Wiki, and he also sets up sites using Microsoft SharePoint services.
He runs a web site where he blogs about his findings that help him in his research. His web site also provides support for his open source project, COAddOns.
I would like to thank Scott Goodwin for letting me help out at OpenSourceCMS and open my eyes to the world of CMS. He asked me to take on an open source project. I enjoyed working on it so much that it become the COAddOns project, which has grown into various add-ons. It also helped me start my own web site at http://ongetc.com.
I want to thank Damian Carvill for exposing me to the world of books by asking me to write an article for Packt Publishing, and involving me as a judge for the Packt Annual CMS Award event.
I want to thank Swapna Verlekar for inviting me to be a book reviewer for this book. I also want to thank Lata Basantani for working closely with me and ensuring that the reviewing of each chapter was on schedule.
I would like to thank the author of this book, who has done a very nice job in researching on the subject. He has written very easy-to-understand material for beginners to have a head start.
I want to thank my family who let me have the time to do this book review.
Daniel Chapman started his career as an Oracle database consultant and trainer, working for various Australian universities, telecommunication companies, and also Oracle Australia. He developed a keen sense of the value of development standards and analysis processes. After 10 years in this arena, he wanted a change and moved into web development in 2004. He quickly picked up PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and CSS while experimenting with various CMSs.
Finally deciding on Joomla! as his CMS of choice, Daniel initially began working as a consultant developing sites and producing a few small extensions before starting one of the first Open Source Extension Clubs: www.ninjoomla.com. Eventually, he changed the club's name to www.NinjaForge.com, and has become quite well known in the Joomla! sphere.
I would like to thank my wife Kyoko, for her seemingly endless support of my work, even when it takes away time from us being together. I can't thank her enough for being there for me.
Jeff Potts is the Director of the Enterprise Content Management Practice at Optaros, a global consulting firm focused on assembling Next Generation Internet solutions featuring open source components. Jeff brings over 10 years of ECM practice leadership and over 17 years of IT and technology implementation experience in IT departments and professional services organizations.
Jeff has a deep technical experience in content management with custom and packaged solutions (commercial and open source). For the last several years, he has focused on Alfresco. But he has also worked with other open source content management technologies including Drupal, WordPress, Zope/Plone, and Apache Cocoon.
Jeff's areas of business expertise include document management, content management, workflow, collaboration, portals, and search. Throughout his consulting career he has worked on a number of projects for Fortune 500 clients across the media & entertainment, airline, consumer packaged goods, and retail sectors.
Jeff is a frequent speaker at Alfresco and Content Management industry events and has written articles for technical journals. Last year he published his first book, the Alfresco Developer Guide (http://www.packtpub.com/alfresco-developer-guide/book).
Jeff blogs on all of these topics at ecmarchitect.com.
Mark Bowen is a web developer, musician, graphic designer, electronics engineer, and helicopter pilot amongst many other talents. He is currently living in Birmingham, United Kingdom. He is an avid Apple Macintosh user and has been so for well over 15 years now.
Mark studied Performing Arts in college and ended up getting a job at the college as a Music Technician. It was during this time that he gained his City & Guilds 224 in Electronics Servicing. So he is qualified to take a TV apart, put it back together again, leave bits out, and still charge for it!
Now working as a Senior Producer for the second largest independent commercial production house in the UK, Mark has made well over 30,000 adverts-jingles-music-based projects in his almost eight years of work there.
Mark has been developing with Adobe Flash, and was asked to review the Advanced PHP for Flash book by Friends Of Ed due to the work he did on a Flash-based chat application.
After Flash, Mark took up learning HTML/CSS, and now codes sites entirely by hand without the use of any WYSIWYG editors. These days, Mark's preferred tool of choice for creating Internet sites is the ExpressionEngine CMS platform. About this platform he states, "It is a designer's dream come true" due to its very nature of keeping code and content completely separate from each other. Mark is an avid reader of the ExpressionEngine forums, and can usually be found there each day answering questions wherever and whenever he can.
He is currently in the process of setting up an aviation-based photography web site with his wife Sarah (who is also a helicopter pilot—Flight Instructor). It will host and sell the most professional images in the world relating to aviation. This came about due to Mark being the sole designer for the largest military helicopter magazine in the world. Through his links with the magazine, he now has access to the best aviation photographers in the business. Keep an eye out on the ExpressionEngine forums for the site's launch!
I want to thank Packt Publishing for giving me the opportunity to take part in helping out with the book.
Sujit Pal started programming some 20 years ago, and never looked back. He currently works at Healthline Networks, Inc., a search vertical focused on health, as a part of its Research and Development team. Apart from his work, his favorite pastime is to explore new software technologies, techniques, and languages. He writes about his experiments at sujitpal.blogspot.com.