Catapult into PyroCMS

It's been a little while in the making, but my first book is out: Catapult into PyroCMS. This is being released as an eBook only at this point, but who knows what the future might hold.

This is not just a rewritten user guide, it's an attempt to help people gain a full understanding of the core concepts of PyroCMS with as little trouble as possible. PyroCMS is not some jargon-crazed WTF-fest, but any system is going to have terms to learn, and to be fair "Widgets" might not immediately make sense to anybody.

You'll learn how to build themes, plugins, widgets and even the basics of a module, but of course I could write a LOT about building a whole module - there are a lot of different tools and libraries - so that is going to go into a different book. This book is:

• Chapter 1 - Core Concepts
  • Themes
  • Pages
  • Keywords
  • Streams
  • Addons

<li>
    Chapter 2 - Themes
    <ul>
        <li>Getting Started</li>
        <li>Assets</li>
        <li>Modular View Overloading</li>
        <li>Widget Areas</li>
        <li>Routes and Routing</li>
    </ul>
</li>

<li>
    Chapter 3 - Managing Your Content
    <ul>
        <li>Managing Pages</li>
        <li>Blogs</li>
        <li>Navigation</li>
        <li>Caching</li>
        <li>Search Engine Optimisation</li>
    </ul>
</li>

<li>
    Chapter 4 - Streams
    <ul>
        <li>Fields</li>
        <li>API</li>
    </ul>
</li>

<li>
    Chapter 5 - Addons
    <ul>
        <li>Writing Addons</li>
        <li>Modules</li>
        <li>Plugins</li>
        <li>Widgets</li>
    </ul>
</li>

The timing of this launch was pretty good but not perfect. PyroCMS 2.2.0 should have been out before this book was completed, but PyroCMS 2.2.0-rc1 is out so that's close enough. If you want to play with PyroCMS 2.2.0-rc1 (page types and custom blog fields really does make it epic) then you can either hop over to GitHub or if you own a copy of PyroCMS Professional then the 2.2.0-rc1 download is available from "My Downloads".

I look forward to writing another book on PyroCMS, especially once the 2.3.0 branch has died down a bit. Converting the old-fashioned CodeIgniter Query Builder syntax over to using PSR-1 autoloaded Eloquent models is an amazingly rewarding task. Several people have been helping out recently, so if you're interested pop on GitHub and pitch in.

Otherwise buy a copy of my book, and help me buy my boat. Seriously, I want a fucking boat already.