Elin Waring and Jennifer Marriot have teamed up to write "The Official Joomla Book."

Huh?  Official?  Yes, this book is official sanctioned by the Joomla project and the proceeds go to benefit the Open Source Matters foundation of the Joomla project.

I spent some time with book at my nearby Barnes and Noble and found it to be very well written with a lot of advanced tips as well as foundational material.  It is written primarily for Joomla 1.5, but includes sections that explain the new features that are available in Joomla 1.6, so it has good "staying power" with both versions of Joomla.

Click here for the book's websites.

Click here for the table of contents.

Barrie North has written a comprehensive book for Joomla 1.5 to help you get up to speed quickly and to build that killer site you want.  This link goes to the book website, and you can pick up a discount coupon there as well:   www.joomlabook.com

I have always enjoyed Barrie's writing style and I think this book is a winner.  It comes with a CD and a link to a private website with additional resources. 

The book is also offered as part of a boxed "learning kit" with video training tutorials and may be a valuable addition to your library.

Here's a review of the book on SlashDot.

Whenever I see a book titled "The ... Bible," I expect to find a fairly thick and fairly comprehensive book on the subject.

I don't own this book but several people on the Joomla forum have spoken positively about it, so I spent some time with it during a recent trip to the bookstore.

I almost bought it!  But that doesn't mean I would not recommend it especially to new and intermediate users.

It starts with the beginning (as the Bible does!) and builds a foundation of basic understanding.  And, it covers quite a few intermediate and advanced topics fairly well.

I think a year or two ago this would have been the perfect book for me.  And, it may be the perfect book for you, and it should be on your "list of Joomla books that I'm going to look very closely at."

I've been a fan of Cory Webb's website www.howtojoomla.com for years, and when his book came out I was sure that it would be well written, and I wasn't disappointed.

Even though this is titled as a book for "beginners" there are quite a few advanced topics covered in it.

Cory gives a good introduction to Joomla as a content management system and its theory of operation and a bit of the history of the project and then dives in to terminology and basic concepts as sites are built step by step.

Keep in mind the word "beginning" in the title.  There are more advanced Joomla books that you will want in your library as you go further with Joomla, but if you are trying to "wrap your head around Joomla" Cory wants to help you.

Part of the popular "... for Dummies" series, Joomla for Dummies has been out for a few years, and is an very helpful, if not particularly deep Joomla book.

I have recommended this to a number of people and they have found it very helpful and helped them get over the initial learning curve quite quickly.

The basic Joomla concepts are explained in a light, humorous way, and take the new user step-by-step through the various parts of Joomla.

You won't find advanced tips here ... you wouldn't expect to.

But, for the person new to Joomla, this book will serve very well and the price is reasonable.