WordPress Books

Review by B. Com:

I was somewhat hesitant to buy a tutorial book that had not been reviewed yet (this book is copyright 2010 and came out Dec. 09), but I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised. This book offers from-the-ground-up instruction with all the basics from how to install WordPress to customizing a template.

The author, George Plumley, has a pleasant style that is neither condescending to the newbie or goofy like I have found some of the “yellow books” to be. I haven’t found any fluff here, just solid step-by-step advice and lessons.

I really was just following along and not thinking about whether the book is “good” or “bad”, just going through it. Then, in Lesson 7: Working with the Text Editor, I found myself recognizing one of the many gems in this book. As someone who has struggled with more than one text editor until I found out that if you copy/paste from someplace else you need to get rid of the formatting first, I know that this author had the non-geek in mind when he wrote this. His advice is to open a text program such as Notepad and paste the text in there, then copy/paste from Notepad into the editor in WordPress and the excess coding will be stripped away. Now, this is basic information for a lot of people, but remember the first time you tried to figure out why that Word formatting kept showing up in your WordPress text editor? Yes, this author had that person in mind and gently drops in a paragraph with a couple of sentences in it addressing the problem and suggesting a solution.

I have hired a designer to do websites in WordPress for a couple of clients and I wanted to learn to do it myself. I am confident that I’ll be able to do it myself next time, thanks to the information provided in this book. The author spends some time going over some of the basics of site planning and organization, basic design, SEO, and backups. If you are a budding website builder, you’ll get a lot of time-tested information here. Yes, many books go deeper into each of these subjects, but for the person wanting to put their first site together or get a refresher on the basics, why buy another book if you don’t have to? There’s plenty of meat to digest here.

The CD is a great bonus, too.

If you have dabbled with WordPress but knew you were only scratching the surface, do yourself a favor and invest in this book. Certainly, there are those that will say that all of this information is available for free on the web. Yeah, but not in step-by-step form and not in a format you can carry along with you when you’re waiting somewhere or need to find the information quickly.

I don’t know this author, but I do know that if he writes any other books about a subject that I’m interested in, I’m quite likely to buy it based on my experience with this book/CD combo. I buy and read a lot of techy type books and if I ever owned a book that deserves “6 stars”, this is it. This is the gold standard by which all tech-related books should be measured for common sense writing style.

Review by D. Rosenberg:

I am just amazed at how thorough this book is, yet how easy it is to use and understand. Everything is in layman’s terms and shown, as well as having written explanations.

I was initially bummed at the price of the book but now that I’m using it I realize what an absolute STEAL it is at this price. I am SO thankful I found this guide.

Review by Jerry Saperstein:

This is Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s 3rd Edition of her bedrock “WordPress For Dummies”. I own all three editions and each is thicker and filled with more knowledge than the prior edition. If anyone asks me how to learn, manage and use WordPress, this is what I recommend.

It is truly A through Z coverage. Sabin-Wilson is, in my opinion, one of the best technical writers around. Her language is clear, uncluttered and free of artifice.

Logically enough, she begins at the very beginning explaining what WordPress can do for you. To her credit, she doesn’t hold it out as a panacea for all that ails you. She doesn’t promise you that you’ll earn millions or will win public office. Sabin-Wilson simply tells you how to set up your blog and then moves progressively into the minutiae of creating and managing a WordPress blog. (And yes, operating a blog is like most other things in the world – a series of small details that you must repeatedly (i.e., daily or thereabouts) attend to. In fact, one of the chapters is appropriately entitled “Establishing Your Blog Routine”.

“WordPress For Dummies” is thorough. The WordPress Dashboard is explained as is the use and, perhaps more importantly, the customization of themes. (With WordPress, your blog or website can look however you like it, but getting it right is not necessarily simple.)

Another important Sabin-Wilson covers in some detail is using WordPress as a Content Management System. Although she treats it in some detail, I personally wish that she would write a book on this subject alone.

In all, none of the other WordPress books I’ve read – and there are quite a few of them – measure up to the standard that Linda Sabin-Wilson has set in all three editions of “WordPress For Dummies”. Each edition has been extensively revised to stay as current as possible with WordPress releases.

A total delight to read and use, it is, in my opinion, the gold standard for learning, managing and using WordPress.

Jerry

Review by ChurchCommunicationsPro.com:

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of getting to know Lisa Sabin-Wilson personally, read WordPress for Dummies, and can honestly say her expertise and talent is so rich that I’d highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to use WordPress.

It’s a great starting place for those just getting into WordPress, but also a great reference for your bookshelf for those of us who have used WP for a while now.

As an active (and successful) web designer using WordPress, she’s in code almost every day and I’ve leaned on her knowledge and asked her input and feedback many, many times for our own WP projects.

WordPress continues to get better and better with each new version and seeing the third edition of WordPress for Dummies is exciting to know that THE guide for WordPress is also keeping up with this awesome software.

We’ve given Lisa’s book out to many of our community members, and yes, even my own mom, and will do the same with this new updated version.

I treasure my signed copy. And because she frequently speaks at WordCamps around the US, you can get yours too.

Review by D. Day:

Let me preface this review by saying this is NOT a beginner WordPress book. That said, the folks who leave a mediocre review for this book due to this being over their head are ridiculous. If your looking for a book that teaches you “how to get started” with wordpress this is not your book. You will NOT find sections on how to create a post, add tags, install plugins, etcetera. This book is to teach you how to do advanced secure installs, understand the wordpress framework, template tags (the code snippets that make things work), how to create themes and plugins, and start working with some examples.

This book was an amazing for me because of where I am at in my wordpress development. Before reading this book I knew how to install wordpress, set up permalinks, work with .htaccess files, create posts, add plugins, and even do some minor tweaking. I did not however understand the core code concepts of wordpress that make it work, thus I could not advance beyond an “advanced beginner.” When I would go to read advanced wordpress books they were all written in techie speak and I always ended up feeling lost.

Enter Smashing WordPress:

From the moment I started reading this book it was right at the level I needed. I had finished my knowledge of the beginner to mid level stages of wordpress and Smashing WordPress took me to a solid level of advanced wordpress techniques and theme/plugin building. It is written in PLAIN ENGLISH and not techie speak like most advanced technology books (please remember you must have a solid beginner level understanding or this book will seem complicated).

If your looking to start understanding all that code that makes themes and plugins work and you have a solid understanding of the basics of wordpress this book is for you.

From the very first chapter this book I stated to absorb the wordpress code concepts and advanced techniques I was craving to learn. I am half way through this book and I am quickly becoming the advanced wordpress theme creator that I have been wanting to be. (This book will also give you a solid ability to modify even the most advanced themes)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO WORDPRESS USERS READY TO UNDERSTAND AND BUILD OR MODIFY WORDPRESS THEME AND PLUGINS.

Review by Mark Luetke:

I am fairly new to web design and wordpress theme development and have been searching for ways to go beyond the typical wordpress theme. This book gives you exactly what it says it will. It really does go beyond the blog. This is by far the most thorough wordpress themeing book I have found. The content within this book is dense and every bit of it is useful.

I would not recommend this book to the absolute beginner unless you really like jumping headfirst into the very deep end. You really need to have at least a moderate understanding of html css and php to get through this book. The author is able able to cover as much as he does in large part by assuming you can keep up.

The biggest problem with this book and the only reason I am not giving it 5 stars is the layout. I have heard this complaint regarding other books from smashing magazine and unfortunately it is very true. The guys at smashing mag are brilliant web designers but would do well to hire some equally brilliant print designers to layout their books. The biggest problem is the inner margins of the book. They have been designed as though this book were to be read on a vertical blog with identical margins on both pages instead of reflected margins resulting in having to force the book open to read the left page. Sorry to go on about this but it really is a big problem and I hope they will fix this in future versions (or at least in future publications).

Pros:

1. Spectacular content not found in any other single book

2. Covers up and coming wordpress features such as child themes

3. Tutorials for designing functioning job boards, faq knowledge bases, e-commerce sites, portfolio sites and more

4. 2 chapters on functions.php and plugin development

5. Too many great things content wise to list!

Cons:

1. Not recommended for the beginner

2. Layout of the book is quite poor and makes reading difficult

Overall:

If you are serious about creating your own wordpress themes and have experience with css html and php then this is absolutely the book you want.

Review by Matt Rowe:

I generally don’t complain about someone else’s hard work and I’ve stumbled across some bad books in the past. This is the only negative review of a book that I’ve felt compelled to write.

Although this book may be fine for taking care of basic tasks, it doesn’t offer much help in terms of getting the program installed and running on your server so that you can actually use the functionality. If you want that kind of support, the authors pretty much refer you to the WordPress support online or the documents that came with your various software programs. If you’ve never been to the WordPress support forums and you are a beginner, it can be very confusing. They do go into detail on some pretty simple tasks like logging in, which anyone who uses the web for anything ought to know already.

The book calls itself a “visual quick start guide,” but be warned…the graphical diagrams (figures) are predominantly only 2″ x 2.5″ and they are entire screenshots. The ink used to produce them is more grey than black, so even if you don’t have any eye trouble you’ll find them almost useless (even with the diagrams that are slightly bigger). For example, the authors tell you to look at the figures to understand how your directories should appear in more detail than the written steps in the book, but the font is so small in the figures that it is unreadable.

Sadly, this book has proved of absolutely no use to me so far.

Review by Biff Bechenschnifter:

I’ve had reasonable luck with the Visual Quickstart series (the PHP/MySQL books are very helpful, in my opinion) but this volume has proven confusing right from the start, and that seems pretty odd for a how-to book on software that’s basically self-explanatory. I got as far as the discussion on how use sidebar widgets, which precedes by 5 chapters the discussion of how to install a theme that utilizes sidebar widgets. Pretty crazy. Buy a different book (or just use the WordPress documents on-line).

Review by Michael S. Ball:

I just got the book this morning, and I’m halfway through it. It’s exactly what I needed, a guided tour that cuts through the mass of undigested information that is [...]. This is the Baedeker’s guide for the blog maintainer. I like WordPress, really I do, but how do I find the proper plugin to solve my problem? There are almost nine thousand of them! Knowing the vocabulary and how the system works makes it much easier to sort through them. After reading this, I can probably even use the WordPress Codex without spending a week sorting out what goes where.

What I like best is that it’s written for a programmer, without all the gushing about how great a system it is. The facts, with just enough evaluation to say what’s important.

Way to go, guys!

Review by M. Erb:

“Professional WordPress – Design and Development” is a superb book that will be appreciated greatly by developers looking to WordPress (WP) for the first time or for giving them a more thorough understanding of the inner-workings of WP. WordPress, as I write this, is at the WordPress 3.0 beta 2 cycle of development. This book will still be pertinent even though it was not specifically written as a WP v3.0 book.

The book’s chapters are arranged in 3 major sections. Chapters 1 thru 4 are a top-level look at WordPress. The history and development of WordPress is discussed as well as the presentation of a functional overview, discussion of installation (including a valuable discussion of debugging errors you may have during installation), a code overview and a tour of the core. There is good stuff here. For instance if you are unclear of the distinction between tags and categories, this will clear things up for you. Or if you’ve ever wondered what the Turbo option in the Dashboard is, your answer will be found in these chapters. There is even an excellent discussion of advanced wp-config options that is sure to be helpful to the developer as well as a lot of information on configuring your .htaccess file.

Chapters 5 thru 8 thoroughly explore the Loop, understanding the WordPress database and how to directly manipulate it (database queries, building your own taxonomies, direct database manipulation), plugins development & WordPress integration (shortcodes, widgets, plugin security) and theme development (modifying existing themes, creating new themes.)

Chapters 9 thru 15 cover everything else including content aggregation (how to get information into your WordPress site by various means such as XML feeds, integrating twitter, RSS feeds), creating a user experience through consistent navigation, design elements, how to structure your information, searching your site, mobile access & statistics, cache performance, dealing with spam, using WordPress as a content management system (CMS). For developers considering a new web site with WordPress, migrating an existing site to WP is an important consideration and this is discussed in Chapter 14. Chapter 15 concludes the book with a discussion on the WordPress developer community; how you can contribute, working on the core using Subversion and a look at other WordPress resources.

I am not a hardcore developer by any means. My experience with PHP and CSS is marginal, yet I learned a lot from reading this book. Using the code samples helped further my understanding of PHP and this has given me a new interest in learning more about the “inside” of WordPress.

This is a substantial book on WordPress especially geared to developers and secondarily to enthusiasts who wish to dig into WordPress more deeply and begin to explore what makes WordPress tick and how to extend WordPress. Even though the topics are discussed at an advanced level, the writing is not nearly as dry and cumbersome as other technical books can be.

This is an extremely valuable resource for the developer yet there is a thorough approach taken in the early chapters that even a fledgling WP user would find valuable (but not a non-technically minded reader.) However, it is certainly not an appropriate “first” book for the non-technical person simply desiring to get started with WordPress. There are more appropriate books for the non-technical reader. Having said that, there are certain users who may be inspired enough by the easily readable approach taken by the authors to be propelled to learn more because of the depth of information that is contained in this book. Merely using some of the existing code samples can help you learn more about writing and debugging PHP code and serve as a platform for future growth in your knowledge and skills.

This is a stand-out book on WordPress and anyone doing serious development with WordPress could benefit from “Professional WordPress.” Highly recommended.

Review by M. Erb:

I have been developing websites on the WordPress platform for a few years. Most of what I have learned has been learned by experimentation, lurking in forums and reading the WordPress Codex. I’ve been hoping that some day, a book that would delve into the inner-workings of WordPress would appear. The WordPress Bible is that book and it does not disappoint. It covers WordPress 2.9

Of the various WordPress books in the marketplace, few excel in the ways that this book does. The author writes in an engaging way that never makes you feel like you can’t grasp his points or aren’t technically savvy enough to understand. The book therefore appeals to both the learning student of WordPress as well as more experienced developers.

The structure of the book is such that you do not have to work through it in a linear fashion. It is not necessary to read the chapters sequentially. Instead you can flip to the chapter that deals with the topic you want to explore. If you want to learn how to begin construction your own themes for instance, Chapter 12 discusses best practices. The author leaves no stone unturned and looks at every significant aspect of development using WordPress including how to ensure you website will scale well by using proper caching strategy and how to leverage the power of using WordPress MU with its multi-blog functionality.

The author also explains in very clear terms how the implementation of Hooks has made the platform extendable. An appendix includes useful information including a WordPress Hook Reference, Template Tags, what to look for in WordPress hosting and a good discussion of PHP 5 and how that will affect WordPress development moving forward.

I wasn’t sure if the more technical topics would be over my head, but the author does a fine job of explaining complex subjects in easy to understand terms.

I have scores of computer books on my shelves, but this is one of only a few that I would rate as being at the absolute top of the pile. An excellent resource for anyone working with WordPress. Although this book is based on WordPress 2.9, it should remain relevant for some time since WordPress 3.0 is still off in the distance as of the writing of this review (February 2010) and as the author states in his Preface, “Though there will be new versions of WordPress 3.0 that will not be covered in this book, the bulk of the software will remain intact and version neutral.

Review by Jerry Saperstein:

If you are just starting out with WordPress, then the best book I’ve found for that is Lisa Sabin Wilson’s “WordPress For Dummies” (WPD). WPD will carry you surprisingly far into the installation, use, maintenance and extension of WordPress. It is now in its second edition with a third expected soon.

For most people, WPD will suffice.

But If your needs are more demanding, then Aaron Brazell’s “WordPress Bible” is a good place to go.

Brazell gets much deeper under the WordPress hood than Sabin-Wilson. – and this content is not for the neophyte.

The content is eclectic, with a lot of emphasis on building plugins. Installing WordPress is covered, but not in the same supportive way you’ll find in WPD. Some chapters are head-scratchers: why are nine pages devoted to the WordPress help system (“Codex”) and other support groups? Chapters like “Extending WordPress with Plugins”, “Widgetizing WordPress”, “Understanding the WordPress Database Class” and the doozy “Dissecting the Loop and WP_Query” give you what you need to know to write and manage plugns. Another chapter talks about using WordPress as a Content Management System, which I found helpful, and wish was three times longer.

Overall, “WordPress Bible” is a valuable addition to any serious WordPress library. My one criticism of the book is about Wiley, the publisher: they have a adopted a design that makes it look as if the type is printed in gray, which I find very difficult to read for more than a few minutes at a time. Wiley does not respond to customer comments. Because of this flaw, I will buy Wiley books only when they appear to be best in class.

Jerry