How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer: teaches you how to build a blog, a portfolio site and a general portal for WordPress. It has a pragmatic approach to it and has something for everyone.

Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes: another good introductory book for those into WordPress designers. It gets you even more prepared for your first project.

Smashing WordPress: written for those who want to know more than the basic about WordPress (enough to be dangerous). It can help you deploy your WordPress sites faster.

How to Build a Successful Blog Business: interested in turning your blog into a fully-fledged successful business? This book uses case studies to show you how it’s done.

WordPress 3 Site Blueprints: goes beyond blog sites and shows you how to build job boards, local sites, business directories, and other types of portals with WordPress.

Please feel free to share your favorite WordPress books here.

Installing WordPress and mastering it is only one part of the process. Knowing your web server can help you big time as well. These 5 web server books for WordPress (and other websites) can help:

Nginx HTTP Server: Nginx is a web server that we are currently using for many of our WordPress websites. It is one of the best solutions for sites that get a lot of load (we are oversimplifying it but Nginx is especially good for VPS hosted sites). This book teaches you how optimize your web server and get the most out of it.

Lighttpd: another light-weight web server that can reduce your site’s load and saves you money and resources in the long run. In a perfect world, going from Apache to this server would be super easy. That’s not the case, which is why you need to review this book if you are interested in it.

Apache Cookbook: I am not a big fan of Apache, but that does not mean it’s not a decent web server. A ton of websites are run using this web server, and there is a good reason for that. If you love you htaccess and all the goodies that you get with Apache, you want to take a look at this book to pick up some good tips.

Run Your Own Web Server Using Linux & Apache: sometimes, you just want to get off those virtual web hosts and run your own web server. Maybe you just want to learn how it’s done. This book shows you how.

Even Faster Websites: doesn’t solely focus on web servers, but it has plenty of tips to help you improve the performance of your website. We all know Google is going to count site speed as a ranking in its algorithm. If you have a slow website, you want to check this book out.

Knowing how your web server works and ways you can optimize it can help you reduce your hosting costs, speed up your website, and avoid any unnecessary down times. The above books can help you do those.

Do you have any book suggestions?

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.

WordPress In Depth: a solution oriented book for WordPress that provides you with answers to your most burning questions on WordPress.

BuddyPress for Dummies: if your love WordPress, you are going to love BuddyPress a whole lot more. A great way to bring a whole new life to your WordPress community. If you are new to BuddyPress, this book has you covered.

Please feel free to add your WordPress book recommendations below.

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.

Here is a summary of what’s covered in this book:

• Blog Design: the basics of things you need to remember before developing your own theme. You certainly want your website to be usable and intuitive to your visitors. Why go through the trouble of designing a theme that your visitors are going to hate?
• Theme Design: this book covers the very basics of designing a theme from ground up. Those small questions that you have always wanted an answer to are addressed in the book as well. Of course, the book addresses more advanced topics and walks you through example code to make things easier on you.
• Advanced Theming: you are going to learn how to work with custom fields and develop solutions that are intuitive and make it easier for your readers to use your themes. You are walked through the process of writing a theme from scratch, which should give you plenty of information on how to develop your very own themes.
• WordPress Ideas: this was by far my favorite part of the book. Knowing how to develop themes for WordPress is only one part of equation. It’s always nice to have a few ideas on how others have re-purposed WordPress and developed brand new solutions with it. Plenty of ideas are discussed in this book.

All in all, if you are looking for a simple to follow book that teaches you what other WordPress books don’t, How To Be a WordPress Rockstar is a must read. It’s definitely not another one of those WordPress for newbies books.

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.

Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets: not only shows you how to get started with Twitter and manage your business and personal Twitter accounts, but it also shows you how to use 3rd party apps to gain more followers and reach out to more people on Twitter.

Twitter API – Up and Running: this is a book for advanced tweeters. It helps you get a handle on Twitter API and write your own Twitter programs. If you are looking to get more out of Twitter, this is a book you should read.

There you have it. 4 cool books that help you not only master the art of tweeting but also get started with Twitter programming. No blogger can afford not to be a part of Twitter.

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.

The on page optimization chapters are a must read for anyone running a WordPress website. You are going to realize how to optimize your server settings and improve your code to get ranked higher on Google. You will also learn what you need to know about CSS, Javascript, and HTML to get more traffic to your website. Finally, Bruce discusses what on page elements you should improve upon to rank higher on major search engines.

I personally loved the international SEO chapter. If you have a global website, it always pays to know what it takes to get more traffic from other countries than the U.S. Whether you want to build your brand or just get more global traffic, the international SEO chapter has you covered.

Overall, Search Engine Optimization All in One for Dummies is a killer SEO book that goes beyond WordPress and shows you how to optimize any site for search engines. Whether you are interested in doing your SEO work yourself or know enough to be dangerous about this topic, this book is a must read. It’s easy to read and follow and helps you get the job done.

Rating: 9/10

WordPress for Beginners

• WordPress Entrepreneur: learn how to setup, customize & use a WordPress website. Easy to read and makes you dangerous when it comes to WP.
• WordPress Foundations 2.7: Second Edition: a great book that shows you what you need to know to find your way around WordPress.
• WordPress for Dummies: the best book to get started with WordPress if you have no idea what you are doing.
• Easy Guide to Blogging (vol.1 ): a good video training course that teaches you how to get started with WordPress blogging. Excellent for beginners. Don’t want to read a book? Then, this is for you.

Theme & Plugin Development

• How to Theme WordPress: learn how to develop a theme for WordPress fast. Learn what you need to do to develop attractive themes. Great video course.
• WordPress Theme Design: a complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes fast. A smash hit by Packt Publishing.
• How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer: this guide shows you how to create your own themes and make money online from your art work.
• WordPress Plugin Development: another Packet Publishing book that covers WordPress plugin development. Lots of sample code and clear instructions on how to write killer plugins.
• WordPress On Crack: if you need someone to take your hand and show you how to write cool plugins from start to finish, this is the guide you should read. Comes with video training movies as well.
• Total Training Library: a great way to stay on the top of the latest developments and technologies in the world of design. Master everything Adobe with Total Training video training.

Advanced: Programming and API

WordPress Blogging

• Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read: you may get real good with WordPress but if you can’t write a blog the right away, then you are not going to get a whole lot of visitors. No one wants to know what you have had for your lunch. So instead of writing about that, read this book to find out what works.
• Blogging To the Bank: more advanced tactics to write killer blog posts and make a living online from blogging.
• WordPress for Business Bloggers: if you are working for a corporation and have been asked to take over their business blog, then this is the book you should read. It shows you what you should do and not to do with a business blog.
• ProBlogger: written by legendary blogger, Darren Rowse, this book walks you through everything you need to know to develop a community around your blog and make money online.

WordPress as a Business

• Start Your Own Blogging Business: if you plan to start a business around your blog, you need a guide to walk you through the steps you need to take to build and grow your business. This books shows you what you need to keep in mind when starting your business.
• How to be a Rockstar Freelancer: if you plan to start your own WP consulting business, you need to read this guide to learn what you need to do and avoid to make it big.

WordPress Hosting

• DreamHost: my current web host. They are pretty decent and the support is wonderful. The one click WordPress install is very useful ($50 off coupon: WPJEDI)
• Wpwebhost: tailored towards the needs of WordPress site owners. Supports WordPress MU as well.
• Blue Host: used by a whole lot of small businesses for blogging, pod-casting, and …
• HostGator: another top host for WordPress sites. Compatible with many third party services.
• Yahoo!: Yahoo! web hosting is a top hosting service for all types of websites. You can’t go wrong with Yahoo! (Coupon Code: WHMS35OFF).

WordPress Themes

• Business themes: 45 cool premium themes that get you started with your WordPress corporate site fast.
• Blogging Themes: 52 premium themes for anyone interested in blogging professionally.
• Vlogging Themes: 12 best WordPress themes for video bloggers. Allow you to post your videos to your vlog easily.

Social Media

• Twitter Power: a killer book by Joel Comm that shows you how to get the most out of Twitter.
• Twitter Hacks: learn everything there is about Twitter on this Twitter-exclusive Squidoo page.
• Twitter Tips, Tricks, and Tweets: another book on Twitter that teaches you how gain and grow your follower list fast.
  
• Facebook Marketing: learn how to take advantage of Facebook to push your WordPress blog.

Tools

• Bookmarking Demon: if you need free traffic for your blog, this is one killer tool to try. Let’s you submit your blog posts to social media sites fast.
• Social Maximizer: a service that will automatically submit your blog posts to social networking sites. It’s 19 cents per submission which is pretty cheap.
• Social Submitter: submit your sites to social bookmarking sites easily with Social Submitter.
• EzineArticles Marketing: learn how to use article marketing to drive traffic to your WordPress blog.

There you have it. Whether you are a complete beginner or fairly advanced with WP, you can still get a lot of value from the above resources. The good thing about being a WordPress user is that you will have to be on your toes all the time and never stop learning. It’s all fun though.

Your turn: please feel free to share your favorite WordPress tool/guide here.

1. WordPress Theme Design: for a long time I searched for a good book that talked about how to design my own WordPress theme. I guess the guys at Packt publishing heard me out. WordPress Theme Design is a sweet book that teaches you the ins and outs of a typical WordPress theme and how you can create your very own theme. You get sample code and all kinds of tips that you can take advantage of to get into the business of building WP themes.

2. WordPress Plugin Development: WordPress theme development is only one part of the equation. If you want to create your own WordPress factory, you’ve got to be able to write your own plugins too. Packt Publishing’s book on WordPress plugin development is going to teach you how to write WordPress plugins like a pro!

3. WordPress for Business Bloggers: You know how to write your own theme. You know how to write your plugin. Can you actually write for your own blog? WordPress for business bloggers is a solid how-to-blog book that shows you exactly how to write business blogs like a pro.

There you have it folks. Packt Publishing is one of the best technical publishers in the world. Their books on Open Source content management systems are often very solid. But they have hit a triple with their top 3 WordPress books. If you are looking to learn WordPress inside and out, you should consider picking up these books.

I still remember the very first day that I got started with WordPress. I had found the open source platform online and decided to get my feet wet with it. At the time, I wasn’t really aware of the true power of WordPress content management system. That’s just it. WordPress is not just a CMS but a community of people dedicated to making it better. Folks behind WordPress have given bloggers a platform to express their ideas easily, free of charge. But the community has pushed WordPress to newer heights by creating thousands plug-ins and themes for WordPress.

Learning how to use WordPress is not that difficult. There are many books out there that you can use to get started with WordPress. But learning how to write plug-ins for WordPress platform could be a tricky affair. First off, you need to be technical enough to code in PHP. You also need to know the base code behind the WordPress platform. If you are dedicated enough and have a lot of time on your hands, you can probably find resources online to teach yourself WordPress programming. But for the rest of us, I recommend WordPress Plug-in Development: The Beginner’s Guide.
Wordpress Plug-in Development guide is the newest WordPress book that targets folks who are technical enough to get started with plug-in development with WordPress. Developing free plug-ins is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your sites, and if you have the skills to pick it up quickly, you can gain a competitive advantage over most of your competitors. And let’s not foret that by creating plug-ins for WordPress, you help make the platform even better than before. WordPress Plug-in Development is hands on and shows you how to write 6 cool plug-ins for your WordPress blog:

• Digg-this: Adds a Digg This button to each post.
• Live Blogroll: Adds a recent posts popup for each blog in your blogroll.
• The Wall widget: Displays comments on the sidebar without reloading the page.
• Snazzy Archives: Presents your site archives in a unique visual way.
• Insights: Access your articles and Flickr images from within the WordPress edit page.
• Post Types: Provides pre-defined post templates to quickly add a photo or a link to your blog.

What I like about this book is the fact that the author doesn’t assume that you are an expert when it comes to WordPress code base. The plug-in architecture and the ins and outs of WordPress platform are all covered here. WordPress Plugin Development also covers different APIs that you can use to enhance the functionality of your WordPress site.

The book will be released on January 30th by Packt Publishing (who else?!). If you want to get your feet wet with plug-in programming for WordPress or you are just a programmer looking to pick up an in demand skill, you should definitely check this book out. But you probably want to read up on your PHP if you are rusty or fairly new to it.

Folks often ask me, “what can I do to learn WordPress fast and to a level that I can be dangerous?” In reality, there is a lot to learn by just installing or playing with a WordPress.com account. WordPress is an intuitive content management system that is designed to make it convenient for folks with minimal technical knowledge to run sophisticated blogs. In addition, there are tons of plug-ins out there that do almost anything you want to do to yor WordPress blog.

In addition, there are a lot of books out there that teach you the ins and outs of different flavors of WordPress (MU, .com, .org). I personally don’t believe you should go for those books. The book that I usually recommend for folks who are looking for a crash course is WordPress Entrepreneur.

WordPress Entrepreneur is designed with entrepreneurs in mind. When you start your own business, you can’t afford to waste too much time on matters that are not a part of your core competency. An Entrepreneur is not a programmer, and the goal is not to learn WordPress inside and out. You want to know enough to be dangerous. WP Entrepreneur is a book that teaches you how to install, run, and optimize your WordPress plug-ins without too much fuss. You can literally finish the book in less than a couple of hours and know enough about WordPress to be dangerous. This book shows you how to install themes, plug-ins, and also how to import and export posts with your WordPress site. At the end of the day, it does what it promises. It provides a crash course for folks who do not have the luxury of time. Should you get it? It really depends. If you are an entrepreneur, and you want to learn WordPress fast, then you should try this book, but if you want a write a thesis on WordPress, then you may want to look elsewhere.