WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook – A Review

WordPress is truly a wonderful platform to use to build websites. It’s powerful and can handle almost any type of website. While playing with WordPress themes is fun, developing a few themes of your own can be even more gratifying. Getting started with WordPress theme development is a process. Learning how to develop a theme from scratch or use existing code to come up with a killer design takes time. That’s what WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook aims to teach you (which packt publishing was kind enough to provide us a copy with). It uses a practical approach to show you how to get things done when developing your own themes. Even if you are not planning to develop a theme of your own, this book shows you how to modify your existing themes. Without further ado, let’s dig in and see what this book is all about (for more information on this book and other exciting Packt Publishing books, visit packtpub.com).

Learning Theme Development

As long as you are interested in coding, writing a theme for WordPress from scratch is not that difficult. You’ll need some creativity and a solid foundation of WordPress platform to develop a high quality theme though. Those of you familiar with coding know the importance of getting the basics right before moving to more advanced topics. Those coders that don’t understand the basics really well are more likely to make fundamental mistakes when developing their own themes. WordPress 2.8 Themes Cookbook is written for those of you who want to go beyond theory and learn how to get things done. It covers a variety of techniques developers need to know and understand to gain control over their website’s design and create the best themes possible.

In order to develop a killer theme for WordPress, developers need to have a solid understanding of all aspects of theme development. There is more to a theme that the technologies you use to develop it or shiny features that you decide to add to it. Here are just a few items theme developers need to pay attention to:

• Theme navigation
• Templates
• Sidebars (single or multiple)
  
• Media integration (galleries, videos, …)
  
• Theme usability
• Comments section
• Theme back-end
• Site layout
• Search Engine Optimization

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Book Spotlight: WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook

WordPress is a wonderful open source CMS that can handle almost any type of website one can come up with. It may be a powerful platform but not all WordPress users invest time and effort to get the most out of it. This platform can be used to develop highly dynamic websites. One of the most popular ways to do that is by adding Flash content to your website. That’s what WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook aims to help you master. WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook, which Packt Publishing was kind enough to provide us a copy with, discusses what every WordPress webmaster needs to know to get the most out of Flash on WordPress. Without further ado, let’s dig in and see what’s covered in this book (for more information on this book and other exciting Packt Publishing books, visit packtpub.com).

Let’s face it. WordPress is a tool,  given it’s a very powerful tool. One can use WordPress to develop an incredibly dull website.There are technologies that WordPress webmasters can take advantage of to add dynamic content to their websites. Flash is one of those technologies. Flash may look difficult on the surface, and it does take a lot of effort to master. But there are plenty of plugins, scripts, and other solutions available for WordPress. WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook covers some of those solutions and teaches you how to leverage Flash to make your website more dynamic and take it to the next level.

As the name suggests, WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook is written for WordPress site owners who are looking for practical tips on how to integrate Adobe Flash into their websites. You don’t have to be a Flash or WordPress expert to get started with this book. The authors do not throw you into deep waters right from the start. Building step by step is key for anyone who may not be too experienced in this area, and that’s exactly what you get here. Before you do anything on your website, you need to have a plan. You also need to know the basics about the platform you intend to implement Flash on. This book runs you through the basics of WordPress in the first couple of chapters (mostly second). You’ll learn how to modify files, add scripts, and work with plugins on WordPress. These concepts will come handy in later chapters (especially if you are a WordPress beginner). The book also covers:

• SEO Plugins for WordPress
• Google XML Sitemaps Plugin
• Breadcrumbs
• Website backup

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WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce: A Review

I have been a big fan of Packt Publishing books for quite a while now. Packt Publishing is the first place I check to find out about the latest open source and web technology books. It does have a ton of books on WordPress and related technologies, so that always helps. WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce, which Packt Publishing was kind enough to provide us a copy with, is not your average WordPress book. It is written for those who want to start an e-commerce website using the WP platform. If you want to sell your physical or information products on the web and would like to use WordPress to get it done, this book is for you. So let’s dig in and see what’s covered in this book (for more information on this book and other exciting Packt Publishing books, visit packtpub.com).

Many WordPress users assume that you can only use WordPress to start and manage a blog. That can not be further from the truth. Those who have been around WordPress for quite some time have come to realize the true power of this platform. WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce is written for small business owners and anybody who’s interested in starting an online store by tapping into the power of WordPress. Startups and small businesses may not have the budget to hire developers and experts to build a fancy online shop. In reality, you do not need to be an expert in PHP or other web technologies to get your own shop online. WordPress 2.9 E-Commerce walks you through all the steps you need to take and shows you the plugins and the themes you need to take advantage of to take your store online. (more…)

5 Fresh WordPress Books for WP Junkies

Whether you are a regular to WP Jedi or this is the first time you visit this website, there is a good chance you have some affection for WordPress. The good thing about WordPress is that there is always something new to learn and new techniques to master. Just before you have time to blink, a new version of WordPress is released with all kinds of new goodies. But that’s what makes WordPress fun. It’s tough for authors to take a snapshot of WordPress when it’s changing and evolving so fast, but if you are looking to learn new things, here are 5 recent WordPress books that you should read:

WordPress 2.8 E-Commerce: a WordPress book for advanced professionals and anyone who want to learn more about the art of WP e-commerce programming (expect a full review of this book shortly).

Professional WordPress: if you have mastered the basics of WordPress and are ready to tackle more advanced topics (plugins, database management, and more) this book is a good place to start.

WordPress Bible: teaches you all you need to know to use the WordPress the best way possible for your website. It covers WP MU as well. (more…)

How To Be a WordPress Rockstar – Review

We at WPJedi are a bunch of WordPress junkies that live and breathe WordPress. Considering that WordPress is one of the best open source content management systems on the market, we have a good excuse for what we do. Mastering WordPress is not as easy as it sounds. The code is expanding and getting better each day. Besides, there are plenty of additional platforms you can take advantage of to create highly sophisticated solutions for WordPress. So you definitely have to pay your dues before calling yourself a WordPress guru. One way to do that is by making sure you know what it takes to develop solutions (e.g. themes for WordPress platform). That’s where How To Be a WordPress Rockstar comes in handy. It’s a powerful WordPress book that is written to help anyone interested in the art of designing WordPress themes get a fast start in this field. WordPress provides you with amazing opportunities to develop highly innovative solutions. As long as you are familiar with those advanced concepts, there is no reason you can’t go on to develop highly innovative solutions for WordPress.

How To Be a WordPress Rockstar is not your average WordPress book. There are plenty of them around that show you how to install WordPress and add some plugins to it. Haven’t we seen enough of those books? If you are anything like me, you want a book that digs deeper and shows you how to do cool things with WordPress. This books takes a good shot at that. While it starts with the basics, it runs you through what you need to know to develop powerful themes for WordPress. It even covers a few theme ideas to get you started in your journey in the theme development world.

The book starts with the very basics of WordPress. But before you know it, you are learning about the loop, dealing with your sidebar, and changing your footer. You also learn how to build a basic plugin and how to deal with advanced fields. You are also provided with a ton of examples to help you get it. (more…)

4 Cool Twitter Resources To Help You Become a Tweetmaster

Twitter has quickly become “THE” community to be a part of. Not only it’s a great community to network with others and build relationships, but it can help drive lots of traffic to your blog as well. So if you have a WordPress blog, you can’t afford not to be involved on Twitter. But Twitter is more than just talking about what you are doing every minute or what you plan to eat for lunch. It’s about connecting with others and providing them with content that makes them want to come back for more. Perhaps the best way to get a handle on Twitter is learn from the masters. Thankfully, many top Twitter experts have written books or created courses on this very topic. So as long as you are willing to spend some time to get through them, you should have no trouble becoming a tweetmaster.

If you are looking for a killer resource to take your Twitter game to the next level, here are 4 cool resources (and books) you should consider reviewing:

The Twitter Book: a book by the legendary Tim O’reilly. It’s one of the best Twitter books around. The book shows you how to get started with Twitter and how to effectively push your business and brand on Twitter.

Twitter Power: Joel Comm needs no introduction. His Adsense books dominated the best sellers charts for long. Twitter Power shows you exactly what you need to do to dominate the world of Twitter. (more…)

WordPress Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

A lot of bloggers assume that once they switch from Blogger or other platforms to WordPress, their site is going to show up higher on Google’s search engine result pages. There was a time when some experts actually gave WordPress a big edge over its competitors as far as SEO was concerned. But these days, if you want to show up at the top of the search engines, you’ve got to work at it. Choosing the right keyword and writing magnetic content goes a long way towards helping you get better rankings on Google and other search engines but having a long-term SEO strategy always pay in the long run.

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is a wonderful book by Bruce Clay, a SEO legend, that shows you how to optimize any website for search engines. The books starts from zero and shows you how to take your website to the next level by optimizing all aspects that are deemed to be important by search engines. The book starts with an overview of how search engines work, and what they deem to be important when ranking a website. So you won’t have to follow instructions that others give you without understanding why they are important.

The keyword research section is rich and a must read for everyone. A lot of people tend to go overboard with their keyword research and target too many keywords per page. Bruce discusses what you need to look out for when conducting your keyword research. The author doesn’t just show you how to research keywords. He also discusses how you can develop a real keyword strategy for your website. Your keyword research process never stops. You always have to be on the top of things and find new ways to get ranked high on Google. But having a long-term strategy, you can keep targeting popular terms and grab more traffic share in your niche.

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