Head First WordPress: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog [Paperback]

Jeff Siarto (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

A Brain-Friendly Guide to Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog

Product Description

Whether you’re promoting your business or writing about your travel adventures, Head First WordPress will teach you not only how to make your blog look unique and attention-grabbing, but also how to dig into the more complex features of WordPress 3.0 to make your website work well, too.

You’ll learn how to move beyond the standard WordPress look and feel by customizing your blog with your own URL, templates, plugin functionality, and more. As you learn, you’ll be working with real WordPress files: The book’s website provides pre-fab WordPress themes to download and work with as you follow along with the text.

• Gain immediate experience with WordPress 3.0, the June 2010 release of the software
• Get your site up and running by setting up a MySQL database and creating configuration files
• Work with the Wordpress platform to create posts and pages, learn the difference between tags and categories, edit content, moderate comments, and manage spam
• Explore how to extend Wordpress with plugins and templates
• Convert custom designs (in HTML and CSS) into functional themes and use them in WordPress

We think your time is too valuable to waste struggling with new concepts. Using the latest research in cognitive science and learning theory to craft a multi-sensory learning experience, Head First WordPress uses a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works, not a text-heavy approach that puts you to sleep.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (July 23, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596806280
• ISBN-13: 978-0596806286
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #19,822 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

  #12 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Blogging & Blogs
  #48 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Home Computing > Internet
  #16 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Web Services

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Want to know more about Wordpress? This is THE resource to start (and for most people finish) with, August 3, 2010

By	Steven Chambers (Las Vegas, NV USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Head First WordPress: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog (Paperback)

I absolutely love the Head First Series of books and, while they are not the most in depth and complex books on a subject, I consider them the most user friendly way to quickly and easily learn a challenging and difficult topic. So when I learned they were coming out with a book on Wordpress I quickly preordered it and then waited, and waited, and waited until...now. At last the book arrived and I'm not disappointed. For the average user (and let's face it, even the above average user) this is everything you need to know about how to install and use Wordpress for all but the most advanced website tasks.

While most people will choose to install Wordpress using the "one click" installation service offered by their hosting provider, the Headfirst book starts with a detailed description of how to download and install it the old fashioned way...manually. Even if you were to choose not to use the "one click" method (which I would advise against), reviewing this section gives you a good idea of the nuts and bolts of your Wordpress installation.

Next they cover the basics of posting and using images in your posts, including basic problems, troubleshooting and even covering file permissions. When it comes to changing your blogs appearance they do a very good job of describing templates, including third party templates, and also provide a solid overviews of HTML, PHP and CSS and how you can use it to modify your sight. Widgets are covered in depth as well.

The aspect of Wordpress I was most interested in learning more about was how to use it as a Content Management System (CMS) and the book covers the subject well, including a very good discussion on how to structure your website, how to modify your permalinks, set up the navigation bar and to use the visual editor.

There is an entire chapter devoted to embedding and handling video on the site which I felt was very important. Again, they covered not just how to embed video, but how to keep the video on your site organized and well structured, as well as various plugins that can be used to add extra functionality to the site. One part I didn't expect was the information on how to podcast, which I thought was interesting. This was covered in conjunction with advice on setting up syndication and using Feedburner. I personally have never done any podcasting, but it's nice to know that the information is there if I need it. I did appreciate the discussion on syndication however and thought it made getting set up on Feedburner easier and less confusing I remember it being.

There is a chapter devoted to Wordpress security which, having suffered from malware and virus attacks on my Wordpress blogs in the past, I thought was a good idea. One can never be too secure when it comes to the Internet and the advice in this chapter is solid.

If your new to Wordpress this is a excellent book to get you started. I highly recommend it. I found this more user friendly and readable than any other Wordpress book I have read or reviewed. If you use Wordpress but want to understand it and get more out of it I highly recommend this book as well, especially if you want to learn how to go into the code to modify the appearance of your site. IF you want to use Wordpress to it's full functionality get this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The only way to start your WordPress path, August 31, 2010

By	C. Miller "IdoNotes" (Missouri) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Head First WordPress: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog (Paperback)

Recently, I seem to be receiving quite a few WordPress books for review. For anyone investigating building your blog initiative, Head First WordPress is the best I have read yet. The Head First books always present the information numerous ways to catch your attention, highlight key areas and make you contemplate new topics before moving along.

Head First Wordpress starts the reader with a basic understanding of the platform, quick install, dashboard and a quick walk through making your first posting. While I run many blogs (including this one) on Wordpress, I appreciated the way anyone could have read this first chapter and felt comfortable in posting via WordPress.

Chapter 2 moves into simple and advanced design changes with a ground floor introduction to the anatomy of WordPress, PHP usage, templates, themes, stylesheets, widgets and more. With these 40 pages you should be able to make simple changes, add widgets, change a few PHP files and create a custom homepage.

Chapters 3 and 4 work together in organization and showing how WordPress can be a content management system using categories and the strength of using tags in conjunction. Simplifying navigation and changing colors is a focus in the CSS section. Roles of users and commenting ability rounds out the 70+ pages in these two chapters.

Podcasting and video embedding are a major focus in social media right now and Chapter 5 covers all aspects. Even a sample breakdown of xml usage and possible plug-ins are listed so anyone could begin sharing media quickly. I appreciated how they showed numerous examples of hosting your own, embedding and pulling content from remote sites in Chapter 5. They carried this into Chpater 6 with the explanation of RSS and how this shares your content further than anyone just reading your blog on the web.

Now even I learned some tricks in Chapter 7 for locking down your WordPress servers. From security in accounts, directory security, backups and the power of plug-ins was covered in a middle level with plenty of diagrams, pictures and step-by-step tutorials.

Chapter 8 dove into external versus self hosting, WordPress speed improvements, tracking (such as Google Analytics) and caching of your files. I knew of some of the plug-ins they explained and suggested, but the breakdown of how they functioned was incredibly helpful.

Just when you felt they were done they toss another 10 pages of 10 tips that didn't quite fit anywhere else in the book. The book is based on recent WordPress versions as they used the beta of 3.0 for examples and screenshots making it a must have for anyone upgrading and new to Wordpress.

This will make it into TheSocialNetworker book selections. I place the top technical books I have reviewed there.