Review by Karen Franklin:

I bought this book because it was the only comprehensive beginner’s guide to WordPress that I could find, and it was also up to date (important in this rapidly changing field). This was my first “Dummies” purchase; I’ve always hated that title and the implicit putdown it conveys.

I was pleasantly surprised. Lisa Sabin-Wilson knows her stuff, she writes well, and the advice is practical and easy to follow. The book uses a logical progression, teaching us step-by-step what WordPress is, what it can do, and where you can go to find further resources. Sections address important topics such as plugins, self-hosting, theme selection and development, migrating your blog from another site, and much more.

I was mostly looking for a guide on using WordPress as a website content management system (CMS), and although one chapter does address this, I wish the book had covered this in more depth. Also, I would have liked to read more about design and style issues. However, no one book can do it all, and at almost 400 pages this book was long enough. (Although it’s a very quick read; it took me only one morning to get through it, and not all chapters will be relevant to every reader.)

I recommend it to anyone wanting to gain basic familiarity with WordPress (and related technical jargon), see whether it’s the thing for you and, if so, get started using it.

Review by Apprentice:

Prior to WordPress for Dummies being published, the other WordPress books out there were very limited or not extensively covered. For those of you who have tried to use WordPress before, I know the WordPress Codex or documentation may seem overwhelming due to its extensive coverage. This book does a great job of really giving you the ins and outs of WordPress. The author tries to cover the most important features of WordPress without trying to overwhelm the readers and does a very good job of it. I really liked the part about the author covering the MU feature of WordPress as well as covering the common used template tags in addition making the templates, ‘the loop’ and template files easy to understand for beginners. If you are already proficient with CSS/XHTML and want to take your blog/sites to the next level, this book is for you. However, this book does NOT teach you CSS/XHTML (does provide other resources in the book) so I would suggest you pick up another book for that. If you want to know about WP and blogging in general, this book is for you.

Review by M. Erb:

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.

Review by Bill R. Sevier:

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 .

Review by Mark Luetke:

I am fairly new to web design and wordpress theme development and have been searching for ways to go beyond the typical wordpress theme. This book gives you exactly what it says it will. It really does go beyond the blog. This is by far the most thorough wordpress themeing book I have found. The content within this book is dense and every bit of it is useful.

I would not recommend this book to the absolute beginner unless you really like jumping headfirst into the very deep end. You really need to have at least a moderate understanding of html css and php to get through this book. The author is able able to cover as much as he does in large part by assuming you can keep up.

The biggest problem with this book and the only reason I am not giving it 5 stars is the layout. I have heard this complaint regarding other books from smashing magazine and unfortunately it is very true. The guys at smashing mag are brilliant web designers but would do well to hire some equally brilliant print designers to layout their books. The biggest problem is the inner margins of the book. They have been designed as though this book were to be read on a vertical blog with identical margins on both pages instead of reflected margins resulting in having to force the book open to read the left page. Sorry to go on about this but it really is a big problem and I hope they will fix this in future versions (or at least in future publications).

Pros:

1. Spectacular content not found in any other single book

2. Covers up and coming wordpress features such as child themes

3. Tutorials for designing functioning job boards, faq knowledge bases, e-commerce sites, portfolio sites and more

4. 2 chapters on functions.php and plugin development

5. Too many great things content wise to list!

Cons:

1. Not recommended for the beginner

2. Layout of the book is quite poor and makes reading difficult

Overall:

If you are serious about creating your own wordpress themes and have experience with css html and php then this is absolutely the book you want.

Review by D. Day:

Let me preface this review by saying this is NOT a beginner WordPress book. That said, the folks who leave a mediocre review for this book due to this being over their head are ridiculous. If your looking for a book that teaches you “how to get started” with wordpress this is not your book. You will NOT find sections on how to create a post, add tags, install plugins, etcetera. This book is to teach you how to do advanced secure installs, understand the wordpress framework, template tags (the code snippets that make things work), how to create themes and plugins, and start working with some examples.

This book was an amazing for me because of where I am at in my wordpress development. Before reading this book I knew how to install wordpress, set up permalinks, work with .htaccess files, create posts, add plugins, and even do some minor tweaking. I did not however understand the core code concepts of wordpress that make it work, thus I could not advance beyond an “advanced beginner.” When I would go to read advanced wordpress books they were all written in techie speak and I always ended up feeling lost.

Enter Smashing WordPress:

From the moment I started reading this book it was right at the level I needed. I had finished my knowledge of the beginner to mid level stages of wordpress and Smashing WordPress took me to a solid level of advanced wordpress techniques and theme/plugin building. It is written in PLAIN ENGLISH and not techie speak like most advanced technology books (please remember you must have a solid beginner level understanding or this book will seem complicated).

If your looking to start understanding all that code that makes themes and plugins work and you have a solid understanding of the basics of wordpress this book is for you.

From the very first chapter this book I stated to absorb the wordpress code concepts and advanced techniques I was craving to learn. I am half way through this book and I am quickly becoming the advanced wordpress theme creator that I have been wanting to be. (This book will also give you a solid ability to modify even the most advanced themes)

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED TO WORDPRESS USERS READY TO UNDERSTAND AND BUILD OR MODIFY WORDPRESS THEME AND PLUGINS.

Review by S. Basgaard:

I’ve been looking for a WordPress book that was more advanced than the existing books out there. Professional WordPress is exactly what I needed. This book is a must-have for those looking to take plugin and theme development to the next level.

Professional WordPress provides clear and easy to follow code examples. Most importantly the code is up to date and written correctly. I’m looking forward to using Professional WordPress as one of my main WordPress resources.

Great job Hal Stern, David Damstra and Brad Williams!

-Scott

Review by Michael S. Ball:

I just got the book this morning, and I’m halfway through it. It’s exactly what I needed, a guided tour that cuts through the mass of undigested information that is [...]. This is the Baedeker’s guide for the blog maintainer. I like WordPress, really I do, but how do I find the proper plugin to solve my problem? There are almost nine thousand of them! Knowing the vocabulary and how the system works makes it much easier to sort through them. After reading this, I can probably even use the WordPress Codex without spending a week sorting out what goes where.

What I like best is that it’s written for a programmer, without all the gushing about how great a system it is. The facts, with just enough evaluation to say what’s important.

Way to go, guys!

Review by B. Com:

I was somewhat hesitant to buy a tutorial book that had not been reviewed yet (this book is copyright 2010 and came out Dec. 09), but I have to say I have been pleasantly surprised. This book offers from-the-ground-up instruction with all the basics from how to install WordPress to customizing a template.

The author, George Plumley, has a pleasant style that is neither condescending to the newbie or goofy like I have found some of the “yellow books” to be. I haven’t found any fluff here, just solid step-by-step advice and lessons.

I really was just following along and not thinking about whether the book is “good” or “bad”, just going through it. Then, in Lesson 7: Working with the Text Editor, I found myself recognizing one of the many gems in this book. As someone who has struggled with more than one text editor until I found out that if you copy/paste from someplace else you need to get rid of the formatting first, I know that this author had the non-geek in mind when he wrote this. His advice is to open a text program such as Notepad and paste the text in there, then copy/paste from Notepad into the editor in WordPress and the excess coding will be stripped away. Now, this is basic information for a lot of people, but remember the first time you tried to figure out why that Word formatting kept showing up in your WordPress text editor? Yes, this author had that person in mind and gently drops in a paragraph with a couple of sentences in it addressing the problem and suggesting a solution.

I have hired a designer to do websites in WordPress for a couple of clients and I wanted to learn to do it myself. I am confident that I’ll be able to do it myself next time, thanks to the information provided in this book. The author spends some time going over some of the basics of site planning and organization, basic design, SEO, and backups. If you are a budding website builder, you’ll get a lot of time-tested information here. Yes, many books go deeper into each of these subjects, but for the person wanting to put their first site together or get a refresher on the basics, why buy another book if you don’t have to? There’s plenty of meat to digest here.

The CD is a great bonus, too.

If you have dabbled with WordPress but knew you were only scratching the surface, do yourself a favor and invest in this book. Certainly, there are those that will say that all of this information is available for free on the web. Yeah, but not in step-by-step form and not in a format you can carry along with you when you’re waiting somewhere or need to find the information quickly.

I don’t know this author, but I do know that if he writes any other books about a subject that I’m interested in, I’m quite likely to buy it based on my experience with this book/CD combo. I buy and read a lot of techy type books and if I ever owned a book that deserves “6 stars”, this is it. This is the gold standard by which all tech-related books should be measured for common sense writing style.

Review by D. Rosenberg:

I am just amazed at how thorough this book is, yet how easy it is to use and understand. Everything is in layman’s terms and shown, as well as having written explanations.

I was initially bummed at the price of the book but now that I’m using it I realize what an absolute STEAL it is at this price. I am SO thankful I found this guide.

Review by Damodar Chetty:

I was looking for a very quick introduction to WordPress, and I was fortunate to chance upon this book.

The authors have done a stellar job in creating an extremely approachable guide to WordPress. This is one of those books with a very high Return On Investment for your time spent reading it. Plan on spending about a weekend, and make sure that you have a hosting service handy (ideally with cPanel and Fantastico) to try out the examples.

The book is targeted at WordPress 2.7 – and does a very decent job of describing all that you need to know about installing, configuring, and using WordPress. If you want to know how to manage your posts, pages, tags, categories, links, media, widgets, plugins, RSS feeds, and themes – this book covers it all.

The only downside that I might point out is that the book devotes a lot of space to the creation of custom themes – which could be considered a topic that is simply too complex for a visual style workbook. There’s a lot of ground to cover here in addition to just WordPress … PHP, HTML, CSS … and this is where the book tends to lose some of its simplicity and purity of focus. (Note that if you’re somewhat familiar with these technologies, you should have no problem following along.)

Notwithstanding that caveat, if you want to get a quick grasp of the lay of the land, this book works out just great. It was a highly enjoyable read for me – hence my 5-star rating.

Happy Blogging!

~Damodar

Review by Kirk P. Fryrear:

Having previous experience with WordPress but still struggling with some basic concepts, I found the book to be a good way to look over the parts of WordPress I had missed or needed work on. Contains simple step-by-step instructions, good for those less inclined towards complex instruction such as myself. I was rarely in the dark when going through the steps.

Worth your time.

Review by Mr. Shane Porter:

I seem to be reading quite a few WordPress books of late, and there are certainly a few to choose from. Packt Publishing’s WordPress 2.8 Theme Design’s tagline is ‘Create flexible, powerful, and professional themes for your WordPress blogs and websites’.

WordPress themes are of interest to me since they fuse a visual aspect with PHP code, and there’s no doubt that they appeal to many other people too.

Chapter Overview

1. Getting Started as a WordPress Theme Designer

2. Theme Design and Approach

3. Coding it Up

4. Debugging and Validation

5. Putting Your Theme into Action

6. WordPress Template Tag, Function, and CSS Reference

7. AJAX/Dynamic Content and Interactive Forms

8. Dynamic Menus and Interactive Elements

9. Design Tips for Working with WordPress

The book’s author Tessa Blakely Silver starts very gently with an introduction to WordPress themes and why downloading a theme that’s already been coded and designed may not always be the best solution. Subsequently, the book develops a theme from scratch and examines core technologies such as WordPress, CSS, XHTML and PHP.

The second chapter starts with a discussion of theme design in general, followed by the beginnings of the theme that’s developed throughout the book. There are further discussions on semantic markup, typography, fonts and layout.

The following chapter focuses on the code aspect of theme design, and suggests a workflow strategy as well as template tags, hooks, and the WordPress loop. Comments are then discussed in some detail, the topic including pagination and threaded comments.

Chapter four examines the process of debugging and validating. A thorough chapter includes references to the W3C validation services, Firefox’s JavaScript/Error console, Firebug and some of the issues that the budding theme developer will face when dealing with IE6.

Chapter five looks at the style.css file, which provides descriptive information about a theme, together with packaging the theme into a ZIP for distribution and running test installations of the theme package.

Chapter six adopts a more reference based approach, with an in depth examination of WordPress template tags, the WordPress template hierarchy, the loop and shortcodes.

The following chapter looks at AJAX and JavaScript, as well as preparing your theme for plugins and widgets.

Chapter eight builds on Chapter 7′s JavaScript discussion by developing a drop-down menu for the theme. There is also a discussion of Flash and how that can be used with WordPress themes.

Chapter nine rounds off the book with a number of design tips that apply not just to WordPress theme design, but web design in general.

The book’s about 250 pages in length, and is generally well written. I did, however, notice a few errors in code samples (mostly misplaced quotes), and a couple of examples in the prose itself. Another minor niggle was that the author talks about semantic markup, and then introduces ‘sidebarLT’ (sidebar left) and ‘sidebarRT’ (sidebar right) IDs into the markup.

The back of the book states: This book can be used by WordPress users or visual designers (with no server-side scripting or programming experience) who are used to working with the common industry-standard tools such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver or other popular graphic, HTML, and text editors. Regardless of your web development skill set or level, you’ll be walked through the clear, step-by-step instructions. But familiarity with a broad range of web development skills and WordPress know-how will allow you to gain maximum benefit from this book.

It seems as through Packt have tried to convince the potential reader that this is the book for them, regardless of whether they’re fairly inexperienced in some areas, or a a highly skilled developer. I’d say that the book covers a lot of ground, and that it does so at a pace that would be suitable for an inexperienced developer. Much of the content, however, would already be familiar to a skilled web developer, and so I feel that they’d think that the really useful content is a little thinly spread.

Overall, it’s encouraging to see more books about WordPress; although the internet is a fantastic resource, books still have a very important role in my opinion. The content of this one is great for beginner-medium level web developers, but more experienced readers will be left wanting more.

Review by CPAUG:

WordPress 2.8 Theme Design is the right book for those who currently understand the basics of WordPress setup and theme modifications. Many books on WordPress explain how to set up a self-hosted WordPress blog, customize a header graphic and basic WordPress blog management tasks and procedures. WordPress 2.8 Theme Design takes you beyond the setup and management basics and into the creation of your own unique WordPress theme from start to finish and is best for those who are comfortable with XHTML, CSS and Photoshop or GIMP. Silver begins with pros and cons of creating your own theme including WordPress design best practices.

Silver has what some would consider a unique way of creating rapid prototype composites. Rather than sketching and designing first is a design program (e.g. Photoshop), she starts out with a rough sketch then moves directly into developing the layout in HTML and CSS. Her reasoning for this is twofold: First, she knows that by creating and laying everything out in XHTML and CSS that the site actually works for the real environment it will be used on. Second, many changes from clients come in the form of text tweaks. Working this way is easier in her view then wading through many Photoshop layers. From there, she takes a screen-capture of the layout and finesses it in Photoshop to create a comp that is easy to update and has the benefit of being partly coded. From there she takes the reader through the steps to convert the HTML to XHTML & PHP for WordPress, widgetizing, testing your code and more.

There’s a lot to like about this book. Just the fact that the book is about Theme design and not just another “WordPress basics” book is worth noting. The instruction and reasoning behind each step and area of development is clear and concise. However, I tried and just couldn’t get into a good groove in using her HTML to composite process. I’m going to give it another shot in the future but even if you work from PSD composite to XHTML/CSS the book is still very good – you’ll just need to reverse some of her work flow ideas to suit yourself.

**Disclosure: I received this book at no cost from the book publisher.

Review by justtroy:

I purchased this book with 2 other titles: a DVD, “How to Theme WordPress” by Aleks Monahan which I think is a very good and more advanced tutorial specifically on template design and theming WordPress (review already posted on that DVD’s page) and “WordPress For Dummies” by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

This book is a good book for novices and I think it has the potential of becoming the de facto standard for novices instead of the bulkier “WordPress for Dummies” by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.

If you’re new to WordPress, get this book. The page layout was very nice and the fonts were easy on the eye, I finished it in just 1 day. It will get you going with the basics very quickly (except in one instance, read below). It’s written in a way that assumes no previous knowledge of WordPress. For example, on page 3, the author says: “WordPress can be extended by little bits of code called plug-ins.” This smooth and flowing style of writing can be very helpful to you if you’re a new WordPress blogger.

One section where this book fails truly miserably (and hence the 4-star review) is the section “Setting up the MySQL Database”. I’m not new to WordPress. I’ve used it for blogging for more than 2 months now on the free wordpress.com site, and I’m now beginning to consider moving to my own domain website. I’m sad to say that the “Setting up the MySQL Database” section failed me there.

The author says “you need to create a MySQL database… the installation will fail if you don’t set this database up beforehand.” But then he says that setting up the database is “beyond the scope of this book” and gives some very brief pointers that do not compare to the level of detail most users in need of this information would find helpful. I was disappointed that I had to look elsewhere for this information e.g. it’s covered in Sabin-Wilson’s “WordPress for Dummies” in more than 2 pages and on Aleks Monahan’s “How to Theme WordPress” DVD. I wished McNulty covered it too. It would have made the book a “complete” guide for new bloggers.

Most other sections were very useful. The author discusses some very interesting features like how to set up your blog to accept posts by email and how to automate the process even more. The section explaining uploads and how to configure them is very helpful if you’re like me interested in moving to your own WordPress site under your own private domain. I found the book also strong on how to handle media and images and enjoyed those sections.

I found Scott McNulty’s information on templates in the themes section very shallow in comparison to the DVD tutorial on theming by Aleks Monahan. This is not necessarily a negative. The book is intended for beginners after all and the author admits that what he’s presenting is small tweaks to existing themes. For templates and theming, I highly recommend you purchase the DVD by Aleks Monahan. It’s very good, an eye opener and nice to watch regardless of whether you want to create your template or not. I’m not ready to create my template yet, but found the DVD very informative and now that I’ve watched it, I might get to the stage of creating a template of my own sooner. You can use the templates chapter by McNulty as a primer.

The book also discusses plug-ins and how to open a plug-in to edit it if you want. The author also touches very slightly on how to start setting up a plug-in but the information again is very shallow in this section. Some code showing how to build a sample plug-in would have been great. 1 full example would be enough. The section “Plug-ins no blog should be without” is also very good and he mentions the WP Security Scan plug-in which I’m getting for sure, very useful, and other useful plug-ins too.

If you’re new to WordPress, buy this book, it’s a light read, really easy on the eye (not to be underestimated) and it’s well written and nicely formatted. But don’t depend on it as the only source. It’s a good way to get started. See the other resources mentioned.

Review by B. Lian:

I purchased this book and the WordPress for Dummies book together. After going through both, and having zero prior experience with WordPress, that I found this book somewhat haphazardly organized and often lacking in key functional details. In addition, the descriptions and interface he refers to do not appear to correspond with the most recent version of WordPress for Windows, despite the book’s 2009 copyright. Could be that he is not using a PC version, not sure. This aspect could be frustrating, particularly when layered on top of inadequate explanations. Again, I knew nothing about this program before purchasing these two books. I found the Dummies book a lot more thorough (although possibly more remedial) on nearly every topic. This book might be ok if you’re a little familiar with blogging and you’re good at mental gymnastics. Otherwise you’ll probably need another text to supplement.