Customer Reviews

WordPress Bible

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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

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.

I have purchased some of the Bible computer book series in the past and have generally found them to be useful for whatever level of experience and expertise one might have.

This Bible is different. Unless you are very sophisticated in the world of coding, web/blog construction, don't even think of getting this book. If you wish to build a blog buy a different book. If you wish to build widgits, plugins, or other code-level structures, this is for you.

I wanted to build a moderately sophisticated blog using wordPress and feel that I totally wasted my $31.

Beginners/Intermediates Beware!

I skimmed the first few chapters to get to Chapter 5 (Extending Wordpress with Plugins) as this is about where my limited knowledge of Wordpress ended. I must say, this book has caused more stress than help. The book is riddled with typos and the code examples have errors! Lots of them! I am not going to bother pointing out the typos beyond the most egregious: every URL for the accompanying code is wrong in Chapter 5..

When I did manage to get to the site, I found that Example 5.15 - The focus of the entire chapter - doesn't work. Indeed, there are errors on every other line! Same for chapter 6 on widgets. Also, too much of the coding is unexplained. The book is a descent rough draft, but is at this point very far from being useful to a beginner.

This book is not for programmers and it's not for novices. I've been a developer for decades. I'm new to Wordpress, so I bought Wordpress for Dummies - a great introduction to "using" Wordpress. Then, I decided I wanted to go deeper and check out the structure and coding opportunities within Wordpress. This book was been a huge disappointment. It is not in the same league as the other books in the "Bible" series. My advice - don't waste your money.

Aaron Brazell has outdone himself with this comprehensive tome of WordPress awesomeness.

I already consider myself pretty good at hacking around in WP but really wanted to cement my skill set with some real developer skills, building plug-ins and other features.

The first thing I did after getting my box in the mail (after a celebratory Tweet) was crack it open to Chapter 5 "Extending WordPress with Plugins" and start reading.

Folks, it's easy to understand, even if you're not a programmer and at the same time will satisfy the most hard core programmer with tips on how WordPress' inner set of hooks and code work together.

An awesome book.

This book is ridiculous. As others have posted, there are an egregious number of errors, both coding and grammatical. However, the most annoying aspect of this book is feeling like you have to read all 650 pages of it in order to get started. This book needs to be seriously reorganized. Chapter 1: Learning About WordPress. That's good! Chapter 2: Installing WordPress. Sweet! Chapter 3: WordPress, SEO, and Social Media Marketing. Is that Really the next step after installation? Chapter 4: Finding Help in the WordPress Support System. You'll need this chapter if you're using this book... Chapter 5: Extending WordPress with Plugins. What?!! We've just installed the thing. Now we're already extending it!! I'm not building a custom plugin yet! Just teach me how a theme works!

Unfortunately, all of the core concepts and functions are speckled throughout chapters devoted to ancillary topics. If you skip ahead to Part III: Working with Themes, you will not understand the code examples unless you have trudged through the previous chapters. I have B.S. in Computer Science and am well versed in Java, JavaScript, HTML, PHP, SQL, GWT, Hibernate, AJAX Frameworks, ActionScript etc etc. This book sucks.

I am totally new to wordpress but not in web development, I was encouraged to by this at the local bookstore(barnes & noble, sorry amazon don't want to wait) because I saw people here said good things about this book. The first few chapters is okay, although the examples are too basic but you will get the idea on how to start making your own plugins, widgets and themes. I must agree to other reviewers that the code has lots of typos or errors. The book said no worries whatever version you have, but for me as new to wordpress it is a big deal especially when the code breaks(just go to [...] and search the topic).

The back cover says "Whether you're a casual blogger or programming pro, this comprehensive guide covers WordPress from the basics through advanced application development". Programming pro, I don't think so! samples are not that impressive to consider you as a programming pro or even entry level programmer! a blogger more likely.

This book is totally not for wordpress developer or designer. The book will only give you lots of idea on what the wordpress can do and best practices on how to make a wordpress blog site(sorry Aaron and those people from the credits page).

I've read several "Bible" books, and have always been impressed with the level of detail and material covered in them. The WordPress Bible is no exception. It not only covers installing, configuring and running WordPress, but also delves under the hood and conquers advanced topics such as developing WordPress plugins and effective scaling techniques.

Often books that are this technical can be difficult to read and understand even for an experienced geek like myself, but the WordPress Bible is well written and easy to follow.

Even if you're an experienced WordPress website developer or theme designer, you will benefit from having this excellent resource on your desk.

As soon as I got this book I skipped straight to Chapter 6: "Widgetizing WordPress". I have to say I was pleased at how quickly I was able to create my first widget. So from that perspective this seems to be a good choice for my goal of creating my own widgets and themes. However I had to work through an unbelievable number of typos in the code. It seems like every other line had a typo. I can almost tolerate that if it's a book about a language that I already know well; I can just fix the typos as I go along. But my knowledge of PHP is pretty elementary - mostly just what you can pick up from reading WordPress templates. This book is targeted at "Beginner to Advanced" levels. A book for beginners needs to have rock-solid code samples that people can learn from instead of getting frustrated because the code they copy from the book doesn't work. So unfortunately what could have been an awesome book ends up getting the "Nice Try" award.