Category: WordPress Books

WordPress for Dummies Download

WordPress for Dummies is a highly recommended book for WordPress beginners. Wouldn't be nice if you can download and start reading it right away?

Yes, you can. Here's a few options you have:

You may also download WordPress for Dummies Cheat-sheets here.

WordPress For Dummies, 4th Ed.

Being an senior Web developer, I still love Dummies books when I want to show my clients or students how easy to learn things with these books. Lisa Sabin-Wilson's WordPress for Dummies are so great that people are expecting her new WordPress for Dummies 4th Edition to come on October 18, 2011. Previous editions of this guide have sold more than 85,000 copies, and interest in blogging continues to explode. If you don't want to miss it, you can pre-order it now

Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog 2nd Edition

One of the great books for WordPress development beginners was scheduled to publish on June, 2011, but it is available now. So it is the latest book for WordPress users or developers. It is not for WordPress beginners, but developers. If you are a Web developer who want to learn WordPress to develop a web site for business ( not just for a blog), and want to do the following things:

  • Build Beautiful WordPress Themes, including Child Themes
  • Create Custom Login Forms and Admin Themes
  • Use the Loop to Control Content
  • Build Plugins, including Widget Functionality
  • Use Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies
  • Use Post Formats
  • Integrate WordPress with the Social Web
  • Use Conditional Control Elements
  • Integrate Theme Options
  • Build Your WordPress Projects for SEO

You may read the detailed Table of Contents of Smashing WordPress :Beyond the Blog here. A former editor of the Blog Herald, a popular website for bloggers and WordPress users, the author Thord Daniel Hedengren, is a professional web designer and developer who has created numerous WordPress themes, developed plugins, and put WordPress to good use powering both blogs and big editorial sites. You sure can learn a lot from his new 350-page WordPress book. At Amazon, the 22 readers gave it 4 stars of 5 and as a WordPress developer, I agree with that. Got a copy and start your WordPress development today!

Left side is the Kindle version.

Teach Yourself Visually WordPress

A great book for WordPress beginners, on both WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress. Readers gave 4.4 of 5 stars.  It truly deserves the rating. By Janet Majure, this 288-page full color WordPress book can work as well as video tutorials if not better. It is easy to follow and can get any beginner up to speed with their new sites using WordPress.

This book's clear directions and visual approach helps you to quickly get started in WordPress and then take full advantage of all its features. Janet Majure, an experienced and popular WordPress user, demonstrates key points with examples from her blogs.

  • Provides visual step-by-step instructions for creating and setting up a WordPress site
  • Explains how to create engaging written and visual content
  • Shares advice on customizing sites through use of plug-ins and themes and custom site editing
  • Details more advanced procedures for self-hosted bloggers, including buying a domain, getting a Web host, and installing WordPress

The blogosphere beckons! Teach Yourself VISUALLY WordPress Brimming with clear instructions and exciting ideas for building a successful blog on WordPress.

Kindle Version:

I agree with HT's comment: "This book was a valuable companion to me as I wandered into the WordPress world with no experience at all. Like many people, I find it easier to work through a new program on-screen and not by reading about it. However, this book provided "screen shots" and entertaining graphics that led me through every challenge in setting up a WordPress blog. It gives detailed information in an easy to understand and to implement form. It made learning WordPress a fun and easy process. "

EBook: The Power of WordPress

This ebook's full title is
The Small Business Guide to Building & Managing a Website: The Power of WordPress

The author says: This book "will take you step-by-step through the process of finding a domain, registering it, finding a host, installing WordPress, building and managing business website using WordPress. "

Although I haven't read this book (as I've already known so much about WordPress and built so many powerful business sites with WP), it should be a pretty nice quick guide for those who need to build a business website powered by WordPress.

It covers WordPress 3.0 and 3.1 (the current version) as the author mentioned in his intro

WordPress 3.0 and 3.1x introduced some major features that may be of particular interest to the business owner, such as:

  • Mulit-site capability
  • Grand unifier updater
  • Custom background and header images
  • New menu navigation
  • Admin bar
  • Customizable post formats
  • Advanced taxonomy

At this point, you may not know what all of these new features mean to you. For now, trust me that these features go even further to help you design, build and maintain a successful business website.

Interested? Click the book image to order (it is priced very reasonably: less than $10) and you can download to read right away.  If you do order a copy, please tell me about it and share your feedback so we can write a better review.

Again, here what the author says:

Who Is This Guide For?
If you are a small to medium-sized business owner and are looking for a better way to create or re-design your website, then this guide is for you. Even if you’re an entrepreneur looking to test the waters with a website to market your latest idea, this guide will be invaluable for helping you develop and maintain a website.

If you are a web designer who has been creating static HTML websites for your clients and want to find a better, easier way to create and maintain your client’s sites, then this guide is for you too.

And lastly, if you are a dabbler in website design and have been hearing about WordPress and want to know more, this guide will give you a clear picture of the benefits of creating and maintaining a website with WordPress.

WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition

WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition is one of the great WordPress Books for bloggers and web site owners who are not Web developers themselves.

WordPress For Dummies teaches you how to use the WordPress Hosted Services (WordPress.com), how to use self-hosting with WordPress.org ( download the software and install it on your own Web server), how to make the most of WordPress Plugins, install and tweak WordPress themes. It also teach on how to host multiple sites with WordPress (set up the WordPress Network with only one installation.) It makes a great point of using WordPress as a content management system instead of just for blogging.

The Part of Tens are usually the most enjoyable part of the dummies book. It lists Ten Great Sites using WordPress as a CMS, Ten Popular WordPress Plugins, and Ten Free WordPress Themes. Most of the WordPress website owners may enjoy most part of this book. It is highly recommended for the WordPress beginners who want to build, run or maintain WordPress websites.

WordPress Bible 2nd Edition: Covers WordPress 3.1

Finally we have an updated WordPress book for WP newbies, WP developers and designers.

This book covers WordPress 3.1! Yes! It is a

WordPress 3.1 Book!

Introducing WordPress Bible 2nd Edition! 744 pages Published by Wiley
# ISBN-10: 0470937815
# ISBN-13: 978-0470937815

Part I: Getting Started With WordPress gives you basics to get a WordPress blog off the ground. You also find background information to help us to understand the philosophies to guide us to use WordPress as a platform software or application development.
Part II: Working with Plugins," shows us how to use the WordPress plugin APIs to make WordPress a real application or software development platform,
Part III: Working with Themes and Template Tags," is great for designers or developers who work with designers to create great user interface or workflow on WordPress system.
Part IV, "Creating Content" is mainly for newbies to just use WordPress to create contents. It helps the reader to understand the concepts and principles of the WordPress Admin and creating great contents on this semantic publishing platform.
Part V: "Keeping Up with the Joneses:Maintenance and Upgrades" talks about WP automatic upgrades, backup, maintenance and security. You'll also learn the caching strategy to make your WordPress site scale well.
Part VI talks about two major WordPress uses: as a blogging sytem or a CMS (content management system)
Part VII talks about WordPress Econsystem covering its multisite functionality, adding User Forums with bbPress, creating social networks with BuddyPress, using BackPress as a development framework ...

This book will be available in April, 2011, but you can order it now at Amazon.com: WordPress Bible.