While writing has been complete for a few months now, the book is finally almost off the press. Aside from my first book on Advanced MCMS Development I did, I'm most proud of this work. What's funny though is the one book I have the last amount of contribution. The book, Real World SharePoint 2007: Indispensable Experiences from 16 MOSS & WSS MVPs, is roughly 500 pages of chapters that each one of us contributed (for the most part, only one chapter per author). We each picked an area we're close to within the product stack and wrote about our real world experience with it in the field.

For me, this is the area of Web Content Management. Similar to the BOF talk I did at TechEd, blogged about and is the subject of a session I'm presenting at SharePoint Connections in November (not to mention an underlying theme in my WCM developer class). In my chapter I explain another approach to developing your WCM site using templates & definitions via Features rather than using the browser to create site columns & content types or using SharePoint Designer to create your master pages & page layouts. In the chapter I explain the challenges associated with using SPD & the browser in your development environment and present an alternate way to build your site... the way I believe is the correct way. Best part: it is fully supported because it is how Microsoft implemented all the site templates OOTB (including Publishing Portal). I also present all the advantages and disadvantages to taking this approach.

As for the rest of the book, I have to admit I haven't read anyone else's chapters... decided to wait until I get my copy from the publisher to dig in... but I'm already eagerly awaiting reading some of the others. Where else will you get this consolidation of real world advice and input!

The book is supposed to be available the last week of July / first week of August (I know the Amazon est. date says 8/20/2007, but that's usually 2 weeks after it's available to stock the warehouse).