Early in your career using open-source tools, you’ll probably run up against the highly uneven quality and quantity of documentation.

With nobody actually getting paid by the programmers to crank out user manuals and training material, the job falls to volunteers and after-market publishers. Some programs – especially those a little longer in the tooth – have evolved a sophisticated library of materials suited for any level of expertise. Others are simple enough that they don’t need much anyway.

The gaps start opening up with highly complex software that hasn’t been around for years and years. Case in point: the Drupal content management system.

In some respects, Drupal is very well-documented. If you’re a hard-core coder, you’re in luck; Drupal’s underlying wiring is exposed for all to see, and the thriving Drupal.org online community posts various tricks and hacks. If you’re an absolute beginner looking for a very, very introductory tutorial, there are a number out there online – along with some very handy step-by-step guides for accomplishing specific tasks.

But if you’re a non-coder who wants to learn the system inside and out so you can create kick-ass Drupal web sites, you’ve probably had to pester Drupal-savvy friends, ask endless questions (and endure a certain amount of flaming) on Drupal discussion boards, and generally grope your way to an understanding of this powerful but occasionally quirky content management system. The efforts of volunteers and developers notwithstanding, we’ve all had to make do without anything you could call a coherent, comprehensive user manual.

Until now. Two new publications are on the scene:

One, Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress from Apress, offers insiders’ perspectives not just on Drupal but on phpBB, a bulletin board system, and WordPress, the blogging software that drives this site as well as roughly a kabillion others.

It’s available now and I’ve already read the Drupal section. You’ll see a more thorough review here in a few weeks once I’ve read the rest of the book but, for now, suffice to say that it’s great. It walks you through Drupal’s ins and outs, explains some previously-intractible concepts like taxonomy and provides something of a Rosetta stone for grasping the PHP functions that make killer theming possible. And throughout, author Robert T. Douglass employs an approachable writing style that should engage novices without exasperating more experienced users.

Despite the title, though, this isn’t a guide to creating online communities – at least, not in the sense I use the term. You can lay the foundations of those communities with the information in the book, but actually building living, breathing communities – or even just designing an optimal network of modules, navigation and content those communities can live in – requires a whole new level of discussion. That book has yet to be written; thank goodness this one has.

The second book, Building Websites with Drupal, is still on its way from the people at Packt Publishing. It’s by David Mercer, a programmer, writer and editorial consultant. While the publisher’s site doesn’t yet have a sample chapter, the table of contents is certainly promising.

They’re shipping me a review copy, and you’ll hear more about it once they do – probably sometime next month.

(Incidentally, if content management is your game, check out Packt’s incredible library of CMS titles – including your full recommended daily allowance of open-sourcey goodness.)