10.05.09

WordPress 2.7 Complete Review

Posted by Stacy in Books, Design, Digital Publishing, Web Design

WordPress 2.7 Complete by April Hodge Silver and Hasin Hayder is a great resource for bloggers and web designers to get a good handle on how the WordPress system works, where its strengths and weaknesses lie, and how to customize it to suit your needs. The book covers both interface training and code development with equal facility. If you merely want to learn how to install the application, add themes and plug-ins, and get blogging, there is plenty of information here for you. If you want to dive into PHP to create your own themes, plug-ins, widgets, and so on, the book offers step-by-step instructions for this as well. It also covers how you can use WordPress as a complete CMS, which is helpful since WordPress has long had the reputation of being merely a blogging tool.

A detailed breakdown of WordPress themes and plug-ins makes this a great resource for demystifying how the system works. The authors guide you step-by-step through the process of converting standard HTML and CSS layouts into usable templates that the system can work with, showing you in detail the specifics of how to create widget-ready sidebars, header and footer files, and so on. The books also covers how to set up pages, posts, categories, tags, pings and trackbacks in detail and gives you plenty of information on managing comment spam, privileges, and other administrative features. Detailed instructions on feeds, syndication and podcasting are included as well.

Packt Publishing offers an eBook version on their site, which I didn’t know about when I purchased my copy. The electronic copy might help make the book’s many code samples easier to work with and manipulate via copy/paste.

As of this writing, there are 6,784 plug-ins that can be used to extend WordPress functionality. My only criticism of this book (and it is a minor one) is that it didn’t include more information on making sense of many plug-ins used for managing common tasks like SEO, sitemaps, data sharing, statistics and analytics, and so on. Obviously, covering all 6,784 options wouldn’t be practical, but perhaps a list of a couple dozen of the most common plug-ins might be helpful. But like I said, it’s a very minor consideration. Overall, the book is easy to understand, well indexed, and written in a personal style that enhances its content. Definitely recommended.

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