All Things Patrick - Working Hard to be Lazy!

Quick details:

• Offer ends on Friday 13th February (2009).
• 100% of the proceeds from this sale will be donated to victims of the recent Australian bushfires.
• Choose any 5 books (in PDF format) and pay $29.95 USD.

A friend of mine just sent me an email today with the subject line of SitePoint 5 for 1 Bushfire Relief Sale and all the body contained was the link http://5for1.aws.sitepoint.com/. Copy/pasting the link into firefox dropped me at a page showing a fireman giving a koala a drink of water - how cute. Scrolling farther down the page past the form for selecting the PDFs you want I found the Why is SitePoint doing this? section and I'm stunned! Wow! Over 170 dead, 5000 now homeless... I hope my friends in Australia are all ok.

I found Sitepoint quite a number of years ago, picked up a couple of their books, read through the forums and articles and learned quite a bit at the time. I've still got my Sitepoint books and posters and continue to snag new books from them on occasion. I've been telling friends about the site ever since and forwarding new book offers to some on occasion.

Here's a list of SitePoint books I've picked up over the years... It starts off in order, but after the first 4 books the order gets fuzzy... After the 5 books I think I started snagging them during their release promotions:

• Build Your Own Database Driven Website Using PHP & MySQL (2nd Edition, PHP 4.3, Mac OSX) by Kevin Yank
• The PHP Anthology, Volume I: Foundations (PHP 5 Ready) by Harry Fuecks
• The PHP Anthology, Volume II: Applications (PHP 5 Ready) by Harry Fuecks
• HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS by Dan Shafer
• The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks by Rachel Andrew
• The Web Design Business Kit by Brendon Sinclair
• DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript & DOM by Stuart Langridge
• No Nonsense XML Web Development With PHP by Thomas Myer
• Build Your Own AJAX Web Applications by Matthew Eernisse
• Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists by Shirley Kaiser
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird

I think I also have The Art & Science Of CSS by Cameron Adams, Jina Bolton, David Johnson, Steve Smith, Jonathan Snook... but I can't find it to confirm that I actually ordered it or if it was just on my list of books to get... :(

Granted my list has a number of PHP books, but SitePoint is by no means limited in the back end technologies they cover. They also have quite a few books on ASP.Net and at least 1 on Ruby on Rails. I'm not sure there's enough of an audience for other languages except maybe ColdFusion, but that's such a closed social group that even O'Reilly got burned on the ColdFusion book they came out with.

Considering the number of books, even somebody who is just getting started should be able to fill up all 5 slots... Here's a couple I'd highly recommend:

• Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS, 2nd Edition by Ian Lloyd
• The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird
• The Art & Science Of CSS by Cameron Adams, Jina Bolton, David Johnson, Steve Smith, Jonathan Snook
• The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, 2nd Edition by Rachel Andrew
• Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists by Shirley Kaiser
• Simply JavaScript by Kevin Yank & Cameron Adams

As for me... I'm having a hard time deciding which to get:

• The PHP Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks, 2nd Edition by Davey Shafik, Ligaya Turmelle, Harry Fuecks, Matthew Weier O'Phinney & Ben Balbo (with those names how can you go wrong?)
• The Principles Of Successful Freelancing by Miles Burke
• Flipping Web Sites For Profit
• The Art & Science Of CSS by Cameron Adams, Jina Bolton, David Johnson, Steve Smith, Jonathan Snook
• The Principles Of Project Management by Meri Williams
• The Art & Science of JavaScript by Cameron Adams, James Edwards, Christian Heilmann, Michael Mahemoff, Ara Pehlivanian, Dan Webb & Simon Willison
• Outsourcing Web Projects: 6 Steps to a Smarter Business by Dave Hecker
• The JavaScript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks by James Edwards & Cameron Adams
• Simply JavaScript by Kevin Yank & Cameron Adams