Drupal 6.x

Drupal is a widely adopted open source Content Management System. For it's users, this wide adoption brings a number of advantages like, for example, well maintained code and ready to use solutions to many standard problems, but there is also one inherent disadvantage.
Out of the box, every Drupal installation looks the same. Being indistinguishable from other websites is a no-go in the web 2.0 world. Contributed themes may lessen this problem to a degree, but even they reach their limits, when corporate design becomes a requirement.

Drupal is a very powerful and feature rich content management framework with hundreds of contributed modules, extending it's core functionality. However, even with all of those third party add-ons, a lot of website owners will sooner or later find themselves in a situation, where a desired service can only be implemented by creating a custom module.

When it comes to module development, Drupal's biggest advantage is also it's biggest disadvantage.

Websites consisting entirely of static content have become out of fashion. In the Web 2.0 era, user interaction and community functions are expected features. However, such functionalities cannot be provided through plain HTML and CGI scripts in a manageable way any longer. This is where Content Management Systems come into play.

Using a CMS like Drupal to build a community website requires a lot of skill and training, both technically and in marketing. Michael Peacock's "Drupal 6 Social Networking" sets out to teach the freshman Drupalist the basic principles.

When I first read the title of the book, my thoughts were "Oh great, two nested niche topics, only specialists could be interested in. Nobody without a strong technical background in the field will be able to understand it". I'm glad to say, that my first impression was utterly wrong.