Drupal Gardens is a software as a service (Saas) offering from Acquia. There is nothing to install, simply create an account, login and begin creating a Drupal site. Drupal Gardens offers an almost zero degree entry point and is ideal for those evaluating Drupal, you can jump in and get a feel for Drupal immediately, without any concern or effort of setting up a LAMP stack, or maintaining a system. It also means you may use what ever local enviroment/OS you want.
Running multiple sites on a single codebase is only one of Drupal's tricks, and it is a cool one! Packt's new mini book digs into the multi-site topics and provides a wealth of info for all levels of site builders.
The Monkey was very happy to see that Dani Nordin didn't waste anytime jumping straight into the content with her designer oriented book. Admittedly at 170 pages, there isn't room for fluff! However she does manage to pack in some good stuff that should appeal to those that are more oriented towards the front end and visual side of Drupal. Drupal is complex enough that there are several processes a good project should go through before code or pixels are laid down.
