Customer Reviews

Build Your Own Wicked Wordpress Themes

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I received the book Friday afternoon (8/20/2010) and finished reading it Sunday (8/22/2010), and my head is still spinning ... but in a good way. I am about three weeks new to WordPress, and I have to say that it's overwhelming trying to learn about everything that makes it what it is. I had been reading through the codex ([...]), which is a tremendous resource by the WordPress folks, but it has been difficult for me to tie it all together. This book is a great primer to theme building with WordPress and will help you to understand the main components that make up the WordPress software, and it does so in a pleasant and organized way. I dabble in web design, but my profession is that of web development and programming, and I'm pleased to say that this book, while aimed at web designers, will encourage the curiosity of developers alike.

I had some reservations about the book having four authors, as the flow of a tech book doesn't always work when there are too many "experts" coming to the table. I'm pleased to say that the book flows quite well, and the language and format with which the authors use to explain theme building is mostly consistent and cohesive. The only problem I had was in chapter 7: Theme Options, as it felt like the author of this chapter was jumping around a bit and not quite as organized and detailed with some of the explanations, and perhaps rushing a bit. Otherwise, I now feel much more confident in WordPress and theme building from not only a 10,000 foot view, but a 1,000 foot view as well. As with anything tech, you have to "pop the hood", and get your hands dirty, and I now feel like I can thanks to this book.

The book is broken into 8 chapters ... interestingly, each chapter fundamentally builds upon the last, but you could easily make a quick pass through the book to get familiarized with WordPress and themes, and then use it as a high-level reference thereafter (and using the codex will probably make much more sense after moving through this book). The chapters are:

1. Introducing WordPress
2. Planning Your Theme
3. Theme Design 101
4. Theme Frameworks
5. Advanced Theme Construction
6. Widgets
7. Theme Options
8. Selling Your Theme

I bought this book with two ideas in mind: learn about the "guts" of WordPress from a high level, and understand what goes into a WordPress theme to eventually make and sell them, and the book moves you forward in the right direction. This book, IMO, does a very good job of covering a great deal of ground in a short amount of time. I have only started to work on converting my business website to WordPress, but this book, and the information in it, has given me the confidence to play and experiment, and really go after the inner workings of the Thematic framework.

Thanks to SitePoint for a great book on the topic!

I read my decent share of Wordpress books so far, probably a dozen of them. So far this is one of the better ones, maybe the best, at least for me. Personally I am a designer with some basic coding skills in PHP. Setting up scripts from scratch is something I am not too good at, but I can understand scripts by reading them and tweaking them to my needs. This book helped me to understand PHP a little more and especially the ins and outs of Wordpress.

This book is probably not the best book to read in order to get rolling with your theme development, it is a bit too advanced for that. But after one or two other books serving you the typical spoon-fed chunks of what Wordpress is and how to install it, this book is great. It introduces you to the concept of frameworks, child-themes and action-hooks and filters. This might scare a lot of people away, but once you get the hang of it you will love the concept. If you are serious about developing professional themes you have to read this book.

There is an ebook version available as well.

The major part of the book is a showcase of wordpress powered websites. I have an intermediate level of wordpress I was expecting learn a few things or tricks for work with wordpress as a CMS. But after a looot of images and zero code, they begin "Building a Theme" and it's just create a child theme for Thematic. I think the fun part of wordpress it is build a theme from scratch.

It's a shame because I'm a big fan of sitepoint I own a couple more of books from theme but this one is just a showacase, that's it.

I purchased this book having never touched Wordpress before, and when I got to page 87 which stated we'd be using the Thematic Framework for the remainder of the book, I immediately regretted purchasing it. I wanted a book that would teach me how to build my own theme FROM SCRATCH. You know, "build your own" and all. I think this book would have been more helpful if it was titled "Build Your Own Thematic Child Themes". I did not want to go through an existing theme and try to tweak it to fit my needs. And that's basically what this book gets you to do. Except using the Thematic theme really just means you're going through THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of lines a code no matter how simple a change you wish to make. Which is HORRIBLE if you're just starting to learn.

And as if that wasn't bad enough for a first-timer, let's throw in the fact the book is pretty outdated. One of the starter concepts is completely wrong, and it took quite awhile for me to catch on to what was going on. And a lot of Googling. I think I've learned more from reading random things online than I did from this book. In fact, I stopped bothering at chapter 6. Because apparently up until then I should be able to do most of what I want, which is laughable. I'm still struggling through my first theme, and the online community of both Wordpress and Thematic have provided absolutely zero help to date.
And unfortunately I haven't found anything better :(

If I ever get to the point of being able to understand any of this, I'll write my own better book.

However, if you're already pretty familiar with Wordpress and theme development, then this would be a good book to get you familiar with Theme Frameworks. But considering it's outdated I'd suggest you just look online for better tutorials and explanations. That's what I ended up doing.

I see and understand the potential of the tool this book forces you to use, but this book fails to educate you on properly understanding it.
Maybe I had an incorrect assumption of what this book was supposed to teach. I wanted to be able to make my own Theme from scratch, rather than constantly trying to modify existing ones. And this book does not teach you how to make your own theme. It just tries to teach you how to modify an existing theme - except this theme is WAY more complicated and this book is extremely undetailed and outdated.

If you're looking for a book on building a child theme using the "Thematic" theme as a framework, then this is for you! It doesn't show how to build a theme from scratch, but does provide a general primer on the parts of a WP theme, describing each element that makes up a theme without showing the actual code. If you want to get started right away making your own custom site, without having to learn all the nuts and bolts of coding, then this is a great book, as it builds on an existing theme by adding a coding tweaks.

I bought this book to become more fluent in Wordpress theme construction. The first few chapters were an informative read, leading up to tutorials that require the free Thematic theme framework. I learned the basics of making a child theme (including the ever-important "hands off the parent theme" mantra) and appreciably increased my WP vocabulary.

However, I find it difficult to work with the Thematic framework, good though it may be. I'm an HTML and CSS person; Thematic seems better suited to coders, especially PHP types. I have since found it WAY easier simply to create child themes from the Twenty Ten theme that comes with Wordpress. It's very flexible and a pleasure to customize.

This book is good if you like playing with PHP, because most of the magic regarding Thematic relies on editing the functions.php file. I'm more of a visual person, and prefer to work with good 'ol HTML and CSS. I tried the tutorials, but got stuck when one of the edits I made to functions.php caused the theme to break (affecting logins and logouts of my WP installation). I deleted the functions.php file to get back in, but didn't figure out what went wrong when I looked over the edits I'd made during the tutorial.

Anyway, I'd rather not spend my time learning a single framework - I want to learn Wordpress theming in a more general sense first. And Twenty Ten is a great starting theme to learn the basics of WP child theme creation, which is arguably the best way to get all the benefits of a particular theme or framework.

I rated this book three stars because it's well written and it did get me moving on creating child themes, increasing my understanding of WP in the process. But I'm probably going to sell this book on Ebay, since creating child themes with Twenty Ten turns out to be just what I wanted. And I've done that via some great free info from the WP Codex and other excellent online sources.

That's how this book should have been titled. Reading this book, the first half I felt I was waiting for the book to begin. I mean that's what they kept writing about. "We're going to cover this and you'll learn that and..." and when they got to it, it was about modifying an existing theme! I wish I could get my money back and the time wasted.

I am now officially pleased I was able to read and review Build Your Own Wicked Wordpress Themes by a grouping of authors: Allan Cole, Raena Jackson Armitage, Brandon R Jones and Jeffrey Way.

This book definitely took my thoughts on Wordpress theme design to new levels while simplifying the entire process. The book is made to teach you how to design, build and sell your own themes. But, it is just as informative for someone wanting to extend themes into your own creations for your Wordpress blog.

A brief few pages are placed at the beginning to introduce Wordpress and what a theme means inside the system. Chapter 2 starts the process of planning your theme and stresses the importance research of existing themes before building your site. Wireframe design is explained for the entire site and page layouts.

Theme design in Chapter 3 gives great example screenshots and explanations of color selection. The remainder of the chapter is a core port of the book breaking down each individual component of a Wordpress theme. I learned incredible amounts in these 30 pages of content.

Theme frameworks are an excellent starting point where you use existing themes and build child themes that refer to them. Chapter 4 gives examples to investigate and start the child theme build. Once we entered Chapter 5 for advanced theme construction I took away a lot of tips as someone that runs multiple Wordpress sites, but is not a developer. The simple way they show code usage, inserts and placement made it easy to understand. The authors then start bringing your child theme and customizations together.

Later chapters get into Wordpress widget placement, design and even building your own. They close the building process in Chapter 7 with theme options. This runs through creating extra options and controls panels, variants in color and more for someone interested in selling their new creation. it streamlines how a buyer would use and implement your new theme.

The last portion in Chapter 8 surprised me it was in the book as I would not have thought of including it, but it was definitely needed. Chapter 8 covers the licensing, GPL, around your theme and what it means. The authors make you think about support, proper documentation and even tutorials. Some tips at the end help you sell the theme by including options and where to best list it to be sold.

Overall, I am very impressed. Look for a bunch of changes coming to my Wordpress based sites very soon. With this book and some basic Wordpress knowledge, you can easily create or customize any Wordpress theme you can get your hands on.

With a background is in web design I often notice that basic design concepts are overlooked, but this book gave a good history on planning:
* Who is the audience?
* Who will be editing and what is the experience level?
* What will define success?
And designing:
* What is the layout and composition of a theme?
* What are the principles of good theme design?
It goes over the standard and enhanced elements that make up a Wordpress site template showing lots of examples for each element it reference
They suggest three free templates that one might start with (Thematic, Hybrid & Carrington), then proceed to use Thematic to build a child theme. They do not cover CSS or PHP, but give plenty of coding examples to change basic code and references to sites where you can learn more.
They help you understand the basic out-of-the-box directory structure and how to reorganize your files, all the possible options on post pages, how to place widgets and even how to create a simple one. It also covers adding an admin panel, custom templates and customizing menus.
Once you have completed your theme, the authors provide a good overview of General Public License on how best to market your theme.
It is full of helpful examples from the basic to the intricate. So I feel that this book would be helpful to anyone who is really interested in diving into WordPress, whether you wanted to sell your themes or not.

I picked this up expecting a step by step walkthrough of building a wordpress theme, and was pretty disappointed. Other reviewers have mentioned that it's more of a showcase and that it's a bit short on exercises and code. That's definitely true.

What the book does do well is get you thinking about how to successfully plan your theme, what features you'd like, what flexibility you need, and also what sorts of decisions you should be making if you're interested in selling your themes for money.

Don't buy this book looking for a good first step into WP theme building. It's not here.