Customer Reviews

Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"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.

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!

Having a Wordpress blog, I thought this would be a great book from which to get some tips.

And I got more than I bargained for.

Professional WordPress is an EXTREMELY detailed book, providing TONS of information for the Wordpress designer. However, because of its in-depth content, I have to admit it was a little over my head. (My first hint should have been the word "Professional.")

This would be definite must have reference guide for a web designer focusing on blogs. And even intermediates such as myself can walk away with some helpful information. Novices, however, should steer clear lest Wordpress becomes more complicated than it should be.

I've been looking for a WordPress book that was more advanced than the existing books out there. Professional WordPress is exactly what I needed. This book is a must-have for those looking to take plugin and theme development to the next level.

Professional WordPress provides clear and easy to follow code examples. Most importantly the code is up to date and written correctly. I'm looking forward to using Professional WordPress as one of my main WordPress resources.

Great job Hal Stern, David Damstra and Brad Williams!

-Scott

If you want to be a Wordpress developer, buy it and read it. I believe all WP newbies and beginners like to install WP, try playing with it and modifying code without proper knowledge how to create proper WP theme, WP plugins and WP widgets.

This book is perfect for every developer who wants to learn Wordpress architecture, how to organize theme code, plugin code, create shortcodes and use them. It's really one of the best beginner books I've ever read. In first chapters you will learn history of Wordpress and how to use it as end customer. Then you'll learn code architecture, how to use basic functions, how to search code, create themes, plugins, customize dashboard. Final chapters are about integrating Wordpress with RSS services, how to handle security, migrate your existing website to Wordpress.

It's really fantastic to see how this book can help anyone - PHP beginners and PHP pros. It contains lot of useful information, tips and tricks, security info, plugin recommendations. Plugin demos and examples are really nice. There's some space to fill in but I assume that's why you have to buy Wordpress Plugin Development by Wrox. I have both books and I'm really happy for it.

Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
***** Highly recommended with warm fuzzies!

This was the first detailed book on WordPress that I read and, along with reading lots of informative articles on the wordpress.org Web site, I learned a ton from this book. Now, how much you get out of this book may depend upon how deeply you intend to dive into WordPress. If your main goal is to install WordPress, load a free or premium theme, and just create a simple personal blog for your Web site, you may not need the wealth of information that is offered in this book. There is plenty of information on both the wordpress.org and other Web sites to help you set up a WordPress installation, especially if you just want to blog on wordpress.com or your Internet service provider provides one-click WordPress installation and set-up routines. However, the moment that you start wanting to tweak your WordPress installation, customize the theme that you installed, work with plugins, organize and develop a large complex site, get into the setup of advertising, or use it for your company's site, it would be good to read a book like this to learn more about the back-end infrastructure of WordPress, even if you are not a hardcore PHP programmer.

Readers who may be interested in this book fall into five categories:

1) "WordPress Personal User": You are interested in going beyond just blogging from a wordpress.com or Blogger account and want to set up a WordPress installation on your own Web site for use as a blogging or content management platform, but you have no programming experience.

2) "WordPress Business User": You are interested in setting up a WordPress installation, combined with a theme, for your company or business, but you have no programming experience.

3) "Web Designer": You are familiar with HTML and CSS, but you are not that familiar with PHP, CGI programming, or other programming or scripting languages.

4) "Web Hacker": You may still be a Web Designer, or someone who is proficient in programming or scripting in one or more languages like Java, .NET, or Perl, and even though you may not be a total PHP Ninja, you can combine this book with a good PHP programming book (or online PHP resources) to hack your way through code modifications.

5) "Experienced PHP Programmer": You are familiar with Web technologies and also are comfortable with PHP programming.

Since this book is called "Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)", you would obviously get the most out of this book if you are at least familiar with coding HTML and CSS (e.g. a Web Designer). PHP programming is not that arcane compared to other programming languages and if you are proficient at hacking your way through an existing code base, the examples in this book will still be helpful to you in modifying an existing WordPress installation, even if you do not know PHP programming. But even if your technical knowledge of Web plumbing ranks below that of a Web Designer (who usually knows HTML and CSS but may not know programming languages), about two-thirds of this book is still useful for someone who wants a better understanding of how WordPress works and how to use it and configure it effectively.

Chapter 1, "First Post", pages 1-18, describes the history and a nice overview of WordPress, installing WordPress and possible installation problems, and creating your first post.

Chapter 2, "Functional Overview", pages 19-48, provides an excellent overview of WordPress components, WordPress concepts, pages and posts, and overviews of how you can extend WordPress using themes and plugins.

Chapters 1 and 2 are useful and accessible to anyone interested in installing, setting up, and using WordPress.

Chapter 3, "Code Overview", pages 49-64, starts to talk a bit about the code, but focuses more on the configuration components of WordPress, plugins, themes, and media directories, and the important wp-config.php and .htaccess files (which are important to anyone setting up a WordPress installation). This chapter is highly useful and understandable to all levels of WordPress users.

Chapter 4 through Chapter 7, pages 65-182, provide a wealth of detailed information for both Web hackers and professional programmers, including code layout, the WordPress "Loop", database schema and taxonomy, and plugin development. For Web Designers, WordPress Business Users, and WordPress Personal Users, the 100+ pages here may be too technical. And non-programmers would likely search for a plugin of interest from the plethora of freely available plugins that are searchable on the wordpress.org site anyway.

Part of Chapter 8, pages 183-228, deals with coding and creating your own theme, and this may be both too technical and unnecessary for non-programmers/non-hackers who, as with plugins, may opt to use either a free or for-fee premium theme. But even if you are not going to create your own theme but are going to use a prepackaged theme, or you are a non-programming Web Designer or general user, the information covered in this chapter may be useful if you decide to make modifications to an existing theme. Many users invariably end up making tweaks and adjustments to an existing theme that they downloaded and installed. So this Chapter 8 would be also useful to non-programmers since it includes much information that would be useful even if you are just going to download and install an existing theme instead of creating your own.

Chapter 9, "Content Aggregation", pages 229-248, covers integrating your WordPress content with social networking sites, other external sites, and setting up advertising on your site. This chapter is useful for both programmers and non-programmers.

Chapter 10, "Crafting A User Experience", pages 249-272, covers user experience and usability, and search engines and searching your own site. While Web Designers usually think about these concepts on a Web design, many programmers who are more focused on functional coding may not think about usability as much, and I personally have seen too many WordPress blogs that are ugly and nonintuitive to use. So this chapter is both useful and understandable to everyone.

Chapter 11, "Statistics, Scalability, Security, and Spam", pages 273-298, covers various administrative aspects of maintaining your WordPress site. This information might seem mundane if you are just wanting to use WordPress for a personal blog site, but the seven pages on "Securing Your WordPress Site" should be read by all users of WordPress. As with any kind of Internet software, especially once you start including third-party plugins into your WordPress installation, there can a risk of having your site hacked. This chapter only covers a subset of useful security tips, although they include some of the common and most useful tips. To find more great security tips, do an Internet search on "WordPress security" since there are other additional methods and tips for keeping your WordPress site safe from malicious hackers that are not mentioned in this chapter.

Chapter 12, "WordPress As A Content Management System", pages 299-316, discusses various factors to consider in using your WordPress installation for a multi-user multi-author setup, and even though WordPress started as a blogging engine, it has reached far into the world of e-commerce, shopping carts, online catalogues, corporate Web sies, and multi-media uses.

Chapter 13, "WordPress In The Enterprise", pages 317-328, deals with scalability and integration issues to consider if you are using WordPress for a corporate Web site. Chapter 14, "Migrating To WordPress", pages 329-350, is useful if you are moving content from an existing blog or content management system into WordPress. And, finally, Chapter 15, "WordPress Developer Community", pages 351-364, talks about how you can interact and work with the ever-expanding WordPress open source community.

If you are not the least bit able to tinker with PHP coding, the 118 pages that encompass Chapters 4 through 7 would not be useful to you, but the remaining 246 pages would still be highly useful. But if you are not averse to hacking your way through PHP code, perhaps accompanied by a good book on PHP next to your keyboard, even these four chapters on programming may prove useful as you decide to make customized enhancements to your WordPress installation. I have been working with customized WordPress installations for many years now, and from what I have seen of most people who install WordPress onto their own Web site, most people eventually want to make adjustments to a theme that they downloaded and installed onto their site. They may not like the spacing and alignment of some of the layout that is used by the theme and want to adjust it, they want to add extra styling or change fonts or colors on some pages, etc, etc. So if you are not familiar with PHP scripting and do not know how to modify the ".css" CSS files, in addition to this useful book, you should also get a good PHP primer and CSS guide. And do not be intimidated if you have never worked with computer "code" before. Helped along with guides and primers on PHP and CSS (either in book or online form), it is a lot easier to tweak an existing layout of code than to write everything from scratch. So if you want to change the font size/style/color that a theme came with or move an image display higher up on a page, since you will be mainly modifying ".css" and ".php" files, you can be guided along using three reference books: this book on WordPress, a PHP book, and a CSS book. Along with this book's recommendation to not hack on the WordPress Core code, another always-useful rule to code hacking is to always save a pristine copy of the original file before you start to hack on it. Copy and rename an original version of the file, and as you make further edits to a file over time, I would also retain renamed versions of previously edited files that you have used on your live site.

Overall, this book is very well-balanced in having its level of detail be useful for everyone from experienced PHP programmers to Web Designers to Web hackers to newbie bloggers. If you hope to avoid tinkering with WordPress setup and configurations as much as possible, and if you also are not familiar with HTML and CSS, the large repository of information on the wordpress.org site may be all that you need to set up a basic WordPress site and add a theme and some plugins. But most WordPress users, over time, end up adding on extra plugins and themes, and wanting to make a variety of tweaks and adjustments to their site's functionality and layout. And as your WordPress site grows, it may require maintenance and enhancements. This book combines lots of great information in a sequence of chapters that is useful for anyone setting up a WordPress site.

I never wrote a review here in amazon. But as a programmer, this time I think it's good thing, because I know how difficult is to find good tech books. I'm not english, so if I do some mistake, please be patient..
So, first of all, my profile: I'm a web designer and (really) advanced html/css/js/as programmer. I'm also a php programmer, but not so good. I also use a little bit of SQL, but I'm not a database expert at all. I'm primary a web designer and a client side programmer. I already used wordpress, made 2 or 3 projects till know, building simple custom templates.

Well, now I've got to do more advanced things with wordpress. As of my method of studying, when things get serious, I like to have really strong fundamentals before going on. So, I searched for books and tried to buy this one, as well as the other about plugin development. I found that I did the right thing.

This book is REALLY good. I study about 5 or 6 books per year, about various languages or programs, so I have some experience about how tech books are written.. This one is AWESOME.
It gives you really strong fundamentals, explaining the inner functional things of wordpress, so you can understand very well the way it works. It is more for a programmer than a pure designer. And it's exacly what I needed. Too much books out there focus on the admin panel, on what button you've got to click to do this or that. Well, you know, that things are for dummies. Or too much books are too superficial, like often the Packt ones... You know.. You have to buy 3 or 4 Packt books to have a really deep knowledge of a single argument..
THIS book is REALLY deep and well organized instead. It lets you learn how to build custom themes exactly as you want. Obviously, you must be a programmer, you must not be afraid of code. This is definitely a book for pro webmasters, not for hobbysts. If you're an hobbyst or a pure web designer with little or no code experience, this is not for you.

Now I'm curious to see how it is its 'companion' book: Professional WordPress Plugin Development. Probably it will digg even deeper in the wordpress mechanics. But I guarantee that also Professional WordPress Design and Development is already quite deep. It already helps a lot with plugins, data management (database) and customization in general.

The only thing I hope is that it will be updated. I mean, well, it's alerady ok, but you know, since it was published, WP already changed versionw, so.. For now, anyway, I think it's probably the best wordpress book out there.

I got this book to learn how to create themes for Wordpress from scratch. I can already take an existing theme and modify it. The book only has one chapter on this, and really only tells you to use a framework. So the book was a little disappointing for the main reason I purchased the book.

However, the book contains very little filler, and covers the in-and-outs of Wordpress, and provided a lot of resources I didn't know about. The first couple chapters were kind of dumb, since most people buying this will already know how to install wordpress and make a basic post. I can see why the author might do this though. Ease people into the book so they get comfortable with it before dropping raw code on them. It also goes against his claim of showing how wordpress works from the core working out.

Really minor complaints, just wanted to give a balanced review. With no good books on the market about making themes, this makes the perfect companion to one of those books. After reading it I doubled my knowledge of Wordpress, and I have been working with it for a couple years now. Solid 5 stars.

I love WordPress. But, what I have found most frustrating about is documentation... the WordPress Codex (like much of the online resources for coding and programming) is a dense sea of information with not enough organization. "Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)" cuts through the morass and delivers a great resource for the coder. This book organizes the most important aspects of WordPress into a usable and readable guide; once I was more than half-way through it, I felt like I had just learned what it would have taken me weeks to get out of the Codex and other online resources. Now, I feel like I have the guts figured out and am ready to really tackle what I want to do with WordPress.

Thanks for the time-savings help!

"Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)" is a solid, comprehensive overview of the step by step issues and tasks involved in setting up a WordPress Blog site. It is concise and easy to understand and make use of.

That said, "Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)" is probably not for absolute beginners. But anyone with a general understanding of the basics of both HTML and website design should be able to quickly work through the subjects and steps involved, from the basics on through advanced issues involved in creating and managing a WordPress blog. The book succinctly covers basic principles, origins and mission elements of WordPress, plugins, themes, CSS style sheet issues, core programming and functions, and delves into issues such as copyright and content management, tasking the platform for enterprise and migrating other blogs and website content to WordPress.

Although WordPress is in a state of ongoing, constant development, and the exact version used for examples in the book may have been superceded by new releases, the core issues and functionality remain the same. "Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)" is a solid tutorial. RECOMMENDED.