Comments on: WordPress: Visual QuickStart Guide

By: Dani Brown

Dani Brown — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 12:07:12 +0000

This book is written for a beginner! I was looking for more details on creating and modifying my own themes. Not information on how to install WordPress (which is a click of a button in the Cpanel). People that need this book should just use the free wordpress that doesn’t need an install.
Rating: 2 / 5

By: Kirk P. Fryrear

Kirk P. Fryrear — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:29:02 +0000

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.
Rating: 5 / 5

By: Daniel L. Wiese

Daniel L. Wiese — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 08:42:41 +0000

This is a great book for those of us that are “online reader” challenged, I like to make lots of notes on the pages and scribble all over with arrows and underlining! My daughter recommended this book since she knows someone that helped edit it. I highly recommend it. Check out [...] , it will evolve as I use this book.
Rating: 5 / 5

By: Damodar Chetty

Damodar Chetty — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:15:34 +0000

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 Rating: 5 / 5