Feed your WordPress Demons!
You may have seen this book already, but I just came about it when I was surfing through a list of books that Amazon was recommending I should take a look at. It’s amazing the gems that you can find using the Amazon’s recommendation system. Well. After finishing up this book, I can tell you that this book is indeed a gem.
You have probably seen all these books that claim to teach you something unique. But when you are done with them you feel cheated as they show you only the theory but nothing pragmatic. Well. Wordpress Theme Design shows you how to build a custom design Wordpress theme from scratch. That’s right. It’s like having someone walk you through the code, showing you how Wordpress themes are designed. If you are familiar with PHP, but don’t know your way around Wordpress, this book is a must read. In fact, it’s the shortest way to finding your way to Wordpress mastery. And if you know programming but don’t know PHP, you can pick it up fast by reading this book. I do recommend you getting one of those PHP in 24 hours books to get you started, but you can certainly follow the code provided in this book and proper explanation is giving as well. Regardless of your level, after rading this book, you will understand the anatomy of a good Wordpress theme.
After reading this book, there is no doubt in my mind that Packt Publishing is the best publisher for Open Source technologies out there. They are the best.
We had a post about TV.Elements a few weeks ago as we evaluated this excellent video blogging premium theme. TV.Elements 2.0 is significantly improved and now comes in black and white, which means you are pretty much getting two designs for the price of one. The price has stayed the same which is a big plus, but now you can do normal blogging in addition to Videoblogging. Who can beat that?
We’ll post a full review on TV.Elements 2.0 soon. In the meantime, don’t forget to read our review of the earlier version to get a taste.
Packt publishing is pretty much known for creating the best books for Open source software such as Wordpress, Elgg, and Joomla. They have done it again with Wordpress for Business bloggers. This book is not about technical usage of Wordpress. It doesn’t show you how to run an automated blog, and it does not tell you which plugins are the best for your Wordpress blog. However, it does tell you how to get started with business blogging.
Business blogging is very much different than personal blogging., The rules of the game are very much different, and it’s not “everything goes” rules anymore. Think about it. If you are asked by HP to run their blog, you simply can’t talk about that silly picture that you took from your cat nor can you talk about how your Grandma’s food tastes awful. Depending on the nature of your company’s business, you will have to change your tone or refine it to reach their audience.
Business blogging is more about fostering solid relationships with your company’s customers and less about having fun and things like that. If you are working for a non-profit anti-AIDS organization, your goal is rally the troops behind your cause and raise the most money to support your cause. If you are working for a credit card company, your goal should be to address the concerns of customers about their rates or maybe answer some frequently asked questions, so you see, a geek like me wouldn’t have a chance at landing a job like that. But of course, I was offered to take on a project like that by a friend of a friend. Naturally, I was going to go in and go down with all guns blazing, but I picked up this book to give me the right mentality to approach the project. Now here is when I tell you that I read this book and became a master of corporate blogging. But in reality, I decided not to pursue the job because I find corporate blogging boring for my taste. The money is good. Don’t get me wrong, But I am not the type to follow a set of rules when it comes to blogging. I think the more limits you put on yourself, the more you hinder your innovative ways.
Nevertheless, Wordpress for Business bloggers teaches you the basics about business blogging. It does have chapters on SEO and blog marketing, which I found useful, but in general, it suits business bloggers,
Verdict: I was going to give this book 4 out of 5 for costing me that job, but in reality, this is a good book for business blogging. Business blogging is too difficult for a lot of us, but for those brave souls who can handle it, this book can serve as a good reference guide.
Wordpress is a wonderful CMS built with a wonderful technology. Unfortunately, there are not many books and training programs that address more advanced Wordpress issues such as custom fields and how to program them. For instance, I read somewhere a while ago that you can make your posts expire by using custom fields but nobody had proper explanation on it. Of course, it is not difficult to do once you figure it out or somebody tells you how to do it.
Wordpress for dummies was first published a year ago and received massive amount of coverage and praise from Wordpress experts and publishers alike. However, the book was a bit thin on more advanced techniques and the author has promised to cover those areas in the 2nd edition of this book. The author talks about a wide range of Wordpress issues, from the very basic stuff to more advanced Wordpress theme issues and even Wordpress Mu. The book is not going to cover everything but it is going to cover a whole range of issues that Wordpress bloggers face on a daily basis.
This excellent book was supposed to be released in October but was probably pushed back to November due to the new changes in the Wordpress platform. But I personally can’t wait till this book is released. Now if Wiley publishing did something about the horrifying title of Wordpress for Dummies.
Amazon has finally released the 2nd edition of Wordpress for Dummies. It took them a while but the book Wordpress fans have been waiting for some time is finally here. I personally was not impressed with the first book as it didn’t go too deep into more advanced areas of Wordpress, but the 2nd edition delves deeper in MU and other advance Wordpress topics. If you are in a hurry, try the Kindle edition. It’s cheaper and gets delivered in less than 30 seconds 
