This book could not have happened without the support and encouragement of Seth Cohn. When I was bitching about the lack of helpful content for the Windows user new to Drupal, Seth said, "You've written books before. Why don't you write a Drupal book for the Windows user?" Write a book that I need to read? That was such a ridiculous idea that I had to try it.

Seth was just a phone call or e-mail away from any questions I had (which were legion), even though he was building top-notch Drupal sites for his day job and running for the New Hampshire State House of Representatives at the same time. By the way, he won his race and promptly introduced bills to bring more open source usage and values (i.e., transparency and accessibility) to state government.

Seth has been involved in Drupal for quite a while and understands a lot more than just the technical aspects of the system. He follows the development community discussions and often knows the details about why any particular feature came about. That was very helpful for me to understand the plexus of Drupal. Without Seth, this book would just be some guy writing his observations about code. Seth helped me give it depth and direction.

Jake Strawn helped me understand the relationship between the theming layer and the business logic of Drupal modules. Jake is one of those rare types who is as talented in the design half of the web as he is in the back-end programming side.

Jake wrote the Omega theme and has been tireless in pitching its features and benefits to the community. Jake is committed to getting his theme into the Drupal 8 core and I believe he can pull it off. He has created a lot of innovations that will pull Drupal forward in the larger market of web-based content management systems.

Seth and Jake are both members of the New Hampshire Drupal Users' Group, which meets once a month in Manchester. At least three of the members of our group are writing books on various aspects of Drupal. This is a testament to the great sharing of ideas in that group.