The world of Web-based content management systems has been booming, and developers of Joomla! and Drupal systems are feeling the crunch. Most developers in a wide variety of domains realize that reuse of tested code is an important aid, and that template-based customization can be a great help.

That being said, the variety of challenges in template design itself can be a challenge to evaluate. This is where a book like this comes into its own. Not only does it guide in the construction of templates, but it also evaluates template structure and behavior. The important areas of accessibility are addressed, as is the integration of Joomla! templates with JavaScript and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code.

The discussions of PHP are precise and not overcomplicated. However, one might quibble with the decision to focus the JavaScript discussion on one particular tool (MooTools). Fortunately, this does not get in the way of the important overall discussion, which is the focus of over half the book, up to page 217. This is followed by a sort of case study in modification of the case example, which is helpful but not crucial.

The author’s writing style is direct and to the point. The page count is slightly inflated by needlessly printing code and by the inclusion of screen shots that are often of little value.

On balance, any Joomla! developer would benefit from a review of this book, along with the adoption of many of the templating techniques discussed therein. For the practitioner, it is the best of its kind with very little existing competition.