Enter Aaron Brazell.

Mr. Brazell, while exceedingly thorough in his explanations of the popular blogging platform, presents his material in such as way as not to talk down to beginners, but still make it easy to grasp. I’ve been reading the text for several days now, and have learned more than I could have imagined when I thought to order the it (typically, when I attempt to read a technical manual like this one, I can see the words on the page, but they register as, “BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.”) Not so here.

Clear. Concise. Easy-to-follow. A stellar effort by Mr. Brazell that I would *highly* recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about WordPress — whether neophyte or expert.

Rating: 5 / 5

I already consider myself pretty good at hacking around in WP but really wanted to cement my skill set with some real developer skills, building plug-ins and other features.

The first thing I did after getting my box in the mail (after a celebratory Tweet) was crack it open to Chapter 5 “Extending WordPress with Plugins” and start reading.

Folks, it’s easy to understand, even if you’re not a programmer and at the same time will satisfy the most hard core programmer with tips on how WordPress’ inner set of hooks and code work together.

An awesome book.
Rating: 5 / 5

Often books that are this technical can be difficult to read and understand even for an experienced geek like myself, but the WordPress Bible is well written and easy to follow.

Even if you’re an experienced WordPress website developer or theme designer, you will benefit from having this excellent resource on your desk.
Rating: 5 / 5

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.
Rating: 5 / 5