Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day, but if you teach them how to fish, then you feed them for a lifetime.

This saying is the inspiration behind our first book, Joomla! 1.5 Customization : Make Your Site Adapt to Your Needs .

When I started writing this Press release, I originally had a big, fancy intro here telling you all the great things about this book and how I wrote it just to help you get ahead. But the truth is I have a confession to make.

I wrote this book because I am lazy, and want to make my own life easier.

I was tired of wasting my time, and yours, fixing the same simple mistakes on your websites day after day. Tired of you asking me the same easy questions over and over. Tired of repeating myself a million times.

I got tired of giving out fish every day. I asked myself "Why can't you all just learn how to do these things yourselves? You are smart enough to do it, what's the problem?"

That's when I noticed that all the available Joomla! books and reference material is aimed at either total beginners or professional coders, with absolutely nothing in between, trapping many people in that void between beginner and professional developer.

So how could you know these things if there was nowhere to learn them?

Well thanks to this book there is no longer any excuse why all of you can't do these things by yourselves:

• Identify and use the right tools to speed up site development
• Set goals and a mission for your site to guide development
• Pick the right extensions for your site
• Plan and implement advanced configurations for extensions
• Modify module, plugin and component functionality to suit your needs
• Modify extension and template appearances to suit your needs
• Diagnose and fix common problems on Joomla! sites
• Market your site, via SEO, Social Marketing, and Traditional Marketing
• Monetize your site to make the maximum return

I really don't like making lots of money fixing your site and tweaking your extensions. So stop wasting your money paying developers for small tweaks, stop wasting your time trying to get support for things you can fix yourself, stop wasting your energy trying to explain your unique design and functionality needs to people.

Grab the book already, and learn how to do things faster, cheaper and exactly how you want them yourself, and lets all be happier for it!

Then I can go back to work adding fantastic new features to our extensions for you instead.

Yes, I know the book is about $30, or about $15 for the ebook. But look, I wanted you guys off my back so much that when Packt offered me an affiliate link, I said "No thanks. I just want people reading this book and doing things faster and cheaper themselves and letting me work in peace. Can you give me a discount instead? It's a lot easier to sell a discount than an affiliate link."(true story)

After much pushing and shoving, (ok, one email) they agreed to shave an extra 15% off the price of the book for you all if you use the coupon Joomla15-DC

So here is your rod, your bait, your net and your bucket. The river is that way.

As Yoda would say: "Need me, you no longer do".

Note: I am not really that annoyed, tired or angry, you know I love you guys. I just wanted something more interesting to read than a regular announcement. The book and it's benefits however, are real.