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Thanks to the hard work of my editor and technical reviewers, the Tiki Essentials: the "real" book is moving closer to reality. Hopefully within two weeks it will be off to the printer (err... LuLu) and then available online.

I've set the price at $25.99 (USD) with a 20% discount for the first 90 days. That means you'll get almost 150 pages of "essential" Tiki information for under $20.00 (plus shipping).

Tiki Essentials will also be available and an E-book for $4.99 (USD) — what a bargain!

And if this turns out to be a success, look for other "real" books to be released as well.

I've recently upgraded Essentials to the latest Tiki 6 beta code. If you haven't tried Tiki 6 yet, I highly recommend it — this is the best version yet! You can read more on my Tiki blog.

Oh, and for those of you waiting, the Tiki Essentials book looks like it will be coming soon. It is currently being reviewed by an editor and several Tiki experts. I hope to make it available by December 1.

When I began Tiki for Dummies Smarties, my original plan was to produce a "real" print-on-demand book. However, I quickly realized that:

1. It would be a lot of effort to get the material from the wiki into a better format for printing
2. The material changes too quickly. Smarties, like Tiki itself, is always in a state of flux. By the time I got a book ready for printing, it would be out of date.

I provide PDF "snapshots" on Scribd (which only take an hour or so to produce) but they are filled with formatting issues.

Tiki Essentials is somewhat different than Smarties. I don't anticipate updates coming as quickly. As a result, I've thought of producing a printed version of Tiki Essentials. I started playing with methods for exporting from the wiki into a page-layout program for production (probably through LuLu.

I'm tentativley planning on:

• Soft cover (color)
• Perfect bound
• 175 pages (black and white)
• Full index
• US Letter size (8.5" x 11")

If I fix the price at $19.99 (USD) + shipping, is there a market? I'm thinking of making it available from Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com, as well as directly from LuLu.

What do think? Is there a market? Would you buy it?

You can now download the entire Tiki Essentials guide (in PDF, TXT, or DOC) from Scribd. As with Tiki for Dummies Smarties, I hope to produce updated PDFs on a regular basis.

Tiki Essentials: What all Smarties need to know about Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware

You can now create a PDF of any Tiki Essentials page with a single click. I've implemented Tiki's Print-to-PDF feature, using the hosted HTML-to-PDF converted by PDFmyURL.com.

To check it out, simply click the PDF button at the top of most pages. Enjoy!

Tiki for Dummies Smarties, the precursor to Tiki Essentials turns 3-years-old this month. In that time it has grown to 400+ pages with 100+ contributors. I hope that in three years from now, I can same the same thing about Essentials.

Read about the Smarties anniversary here: http://twbasics.keycontent.org/article50-Happy-Birthday-to-Me

I am proud to announce the formal release of Tiki Essentials. This Tiki resource, (which I hope other Tiki-ers will find as useful as Tiki for Dummies Smarties), is full of the "essential" information that "all Smarties need to know" in order to make the fullest use of Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware and become part of the Tiki Community.

With Tiki Essentials, I've attempted to collect and codify the "tribal knowledge"-esqe information that everyone should know, but most folks don't know how to find out. Inside Tiki Essentials you'll learn:

• How to customize a Tiki theme (CSS styles and TPL files)
• How to add Web 2.0 widgets and scripts to Tiki pages
• How to use trackers (including dynamic lists and pretty trackers)
• How to create your own custom plugin
• How to edit, update, and repair your database (including querying the database from a Tiki page)
• How to join the Tiki community (including getting commit access to SVN and where to go for help)

As with Smarties, Tiki Essentials is a wiki... I invite the entire Tiki community to edit, translate, correct, and expand the content.

For the remaining portion of the Tiki Essentials beta, I've opened the site registration! If you've been looking for a way to get involved with the Tiki community, here's your chance.

Registration is quick and painless, and takes only a few moments. Once verified (and I strive to approve all registrations as quickly as possible), you'll be able to edit nearly all of the pages on this site.

Not only am I looking for folks to help "fill the missing blanks" for the remaining empty pages, but I'm also actively seeking feedback for the site as a whole, and for the "contributor experience."

If you're up to it, why not jump right in!

I'm still busily working on getting Tiki Essentials ready for "publication." I still have some holes I want to fill (specifically the Trackers and Database sections) before I'll officially launch the site.

A special "Thank You" to everyone who has sent feedback, become a Facebook fan, or Twitter follower. These are really the only ways that I'll ever know if anyone fines this stuff useful (or not)!

I have enabled Tiki's freetag feature on Essentials. I know that some people are not too fond of tag clouds, but I personally find them highly useful. As Essentials continues to grow (I hope!) the tags will become an invaluable navigation and organization aid

And to make it easier for folks to tag pages, anonymous visitors can now tag pages, too! You can avoid the CAPTCHA by registering as a contributor.

See Using this Guide for complete information on how to tag pages in Tiki Essentials.