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Web Designer's Guide To Wordpress
Legions of web designers and developers are choosing WordPress for building sites. That's because it's powerful, reliable, flexible, scalable—and more. This book is your complete guide to mastering WordPress theme development, covering everything from installation to leveraging the community and resources to improve your WordPress skills for years to come. You'll learn how to:
With detailed explanations, real-life examples, and step-by-step tutorials, you'll find everything you need to build and deploy WordPress-powered websites with no prior server-side or WordPress development experience.
With detailed explanations, real-life examples, and step-by-step tutorials, you'll find everything you need to build and deploy WordPress-powered websites with no prior server-side or WordPress development experience.
- GenresWebsite Design
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 3, 2012
7 people are currently reading
60 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 4, 2013
I was largely disappointed in this book. I used it for a course of mine on web design. The book sells itself as a beginner's book, but uses terminology and code far beyond the beginner. I regret that I chose this book based on reviews and not having read the book first (I was in a rush to order a book for a course I had not yet taught).
On the flip side, for the developer who knows PHP, HTML, and CSS, the book is far too basic. I'm really unclear who the author is trying to reach with this book. To make it worse, the interior font is a light gray color, incredibly frustrating to read.
On the flip side, for the developer who knows PHP, HTML, and CSS, the book is far too basic. I'm really unclear who the author is trying to reach with this book. To make it worse, the interior font is a light gray color, incredibly frustrating to read.
February 3, 2013
The book is somewhere between three and four stars, but closer to four, so I rated it that way.
It gives a good overview of creating your own theme. However, I would have liked to see more code in the book and for the author to have gone into more depth.
There are a lot of links in the book back to a webpage for more details and explanations. However, I was reading it when I was not on-line, so I will have to go back and review the on-line details when I have time. My personal preference would have been to include the "additional details" in the book itself.
Another area that would have been good to include is child themes. There is a mention of them, but no details. Child themes are a good place to start in learning and building a theme. This book is designed for those wanting to create something completely from scratch.
The examples and code in the book are good and it was worth the read.
It gives a good overview of creating your own theme. However, I would have liked to see more code in the book and for the author to have gone into more depth.
There are a lot of links in the book back to a webpage for more details and explanations. However, I was reading it when I was not on-line, so I will have to go back and review the on-line details when I have time. My personal preference would have been to include the "additional details" in the book itself.
Another area that would have been good to include is child themes. There is a mention of them, but no details. Child themes are a good place to start in learning and building a theme. This book is designed for those wanting to create something completely from scratch.
The examples and code in the book are good and it was worth the read.
August 26, 2017
Referenced site is not accessible
Images in book point to the site - http://wdgwp.com. Site is not active or redirecting to other site. Content is good.
Images in book point to the site - http://wdgwp.com. Site is not active or redirecting to other site. Content is good.
December 5, 2019
I'm getting a lot out of it by pairing it with an Udemy course on Wordpress. Neither alone would be powerful but together they are dynamite; they make a synergy.
The author has an authoritative background but he translates everything well for a beginner. He has been giving major conference talks for years and so that helps him boil things down into concise and clear paragraphs. The book gets into wireframes and site architecture pretty early, which is exactly what I wanted.
My version was from 2013, but by pairing it with the current Udemy course, everything really clicked. I'm using it to build my first two freelance sites ever. (Found the clients on Craigslist and my local university job board.)
The author has an authoritative background but he translates everything well for a beginner. He has been giving major conference talks for years and so that helps him boil things down into concise and clear paragraphs. The book gets into wireframes and site architecture pretty early, which is exactly what I wanted.
My version was from 2013, but by pairing it with the current Udemy course, everything really clicked. I'm using it to build my first two freelance sites ever. (Found the clients on Craigslist and my local university job board.)
July 5, 2018
Woefully outdated, the links in the book are all 404 with no forwarding.
September 30, 2012
By: Jesse Friedman. Grade: A+
Legions of web designers and developers are choosing WordPress for building sites. That’s because it’s powerful, reliable, flexible, scalable–and more. This book is your complete guide to mastering WordPress theme development, covering everything from installation to leveraging the community resources to improve your WordPress skills for years to come. With detailed explanations, real-life examples, and step-by-step tutorials, you’ll find everything you need to build and deploy WordPress-powered websites with no prior server-side or WordPress development experience.
This book is a great manual on using WordPress and what it can do for you. If I could use the word powerful to descibe a web design book I would. This book takes you from installation all the way up to advanced techniques. Making this the perfect book for beginners and those who have picked up WordPress on the fly without reading a lot of documentation.
Web Designers Guide to WordPress is very easy to read. Friedman speaks in plain English as he explains WordPress to you but he also takes it step by step, so you hardly ever get lost. He also provides a lot of follow-up links for more in-depth explanations about specific functions, usages and more on the book’s website. As well as an online WordPress theme that you can download and then follow along with his instructions in the book. Learning how to add WordPress functionality to a theme all by yourself! This book is totally geared to giving you a hands on experience, if you want it.
This book is about WordPress, yes. But I feel it is also a good introduction to PHP. Since WordPress is based on PHP it makes sense that when you make changes to it, as a web developer, you are going to be working with PHP. But a lot of us have never worked with PHP before, and that can scare some of us before we even try. When it comes to WordPress, though, you can feel like a pro in no time because, PHP is easy to understand. And in WordPress you don’t have to memorize the PHP dictionary to add a bit of functionality to your site here and there.
If Friedman was trying to sell me on WordPress with this book, he totally did it. Thankfully WordPress has been my CMS of choice since forever. This probably wouldn’t be a book to gloss over and see if WordPress was right for you. But if you’ve tried WordPress before and it just didn’t work, I would pick up this book to get a better understanding of the CMS platform.
The only real issue I had with this book was that sometimes it was hard to picture what was being described inside the user interface. I have been working with WordPress for years and knew what most of the areas looked like and how they worked. But I did get confused when he described other areas that weren’t so familliar to me. And that’s important in a book like this. To be able to clearly understand what is going on and make all the connections in your head. But being able to see without looking at the screen isn’t a complete drawback, it just means you might need to be navigating WordPress as you are reading. Making it more hands-on, which really helps when it comes to WordPress. And that’s also how the book is set up anyway.
As a web developer, when I finished this book it felt just like the ending of a great novel. And it made me realize I should pick up great web design books more often! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WordPress. Whether you’re a beginner or know your way around quite well. Seriously, if you never really read up on WordPress then this is a book for you. But even if you have read up on WordPress before, this book has just been released. It is still hot off the presses! And therefore you are getting some great information based on the latest WordPress releases.
Originally reviewed at www.vaultofbooks.com
Legions of web designers and developers are choosing WordPress for building sites. That’s because it’s powerful, reliable, flexible, scalable–and more. This book is your complete guide to mastering WordPress theme development, covering everything from installation to leveraging the community resources to improve your WordPress skills for years to come. With detailed explanations, real-life examples, and step-by-step tutorials, you’ll find everything you need to build and deploy WordPress-powered websites with no prior server-side or WordPress development experience.
This book is a great manual on using WordPress and what it can do for you. If I could use the word powerful to descibe a web design book I would. This book takes you from installation all the way up to advanced techniques. Making this the perfect book for beginners and those who have picked up WordPress on the fly without reading a lot of documentation.
Web Designers Guide to WordPress is very easy to read. Friedman speaks in plain English as he explains WordPress to you but he also takes it step by step, so you hardly ever get lost. He also provides a lot of follow-up links for more in-depth explanations about specific functions, usages and more on the book’s website. As well as an online WordPress theme that you can download and then follow along with his instructions in the book. Learning how to add WordPress functionality to a theme all by yourself! This book is totally geared to giving you a hands on experience, if you want it.
This book is about WordPress, yes. But I feel it is also a good introduction to PHP. Since WordPress is based on PHP it makes sense that when you make changes to it, as a web developer, you are going to be working with PHP. But a lot of us have never worked with PHP before, and that can scare some of us before we even try. When it comes to WordPress, though, you can feel like a pro in no time because, PHP is easy to understand. And in WordPress you don’t have to memorize the PHP dictionary to add a bit of functionality to your site here and there.
If Friedman was trying to sell me on WordPress with this book, he totally did it. Thankfully WordPress has been my CMS of choice since forever. This probably wouldn’t be a book to gloss over and see if WordPress was right for you. But if you’ve tried WordPress before and it just didn’t work, I would pick up this book to get a better understanding of the CMS platform.
The only real issue I had with this book was that sometimes it was hard to picture what was being described inside the user interface. I have been working with WordPress for years and knew what most of the areas looked like and how they worked. But I did get confused when he described other areas that weren’t so familliar to me. And that’s important in a book like this. To be able to clearly understand what is going on and make all the connections in your head. But being able to see without looking at the screen isn’t a complete drawback, it just means you might need to be navigating WordPress as you are reading. Making it more hands-on, which really helps when it comes to WordPress. And that’s also how the book is set up anyway.
As a web developer, when I finished this book it felt just like the ending of a great novel. And it made me realize I should pick up great web design books more often! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WordPress. Whether you’re a beginner or know your way around quite well. Seriously, if you never really read up on WordPress then this is a book for you. But even if you have read up on WordPress before, this book has just been released. It is still hot off the presses! And therefore you are getting some great information based on the latest WordPress releases.
Originally reviewed at www.vaultofbooks.com
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March 28, 2014Exactly what you'd expect from the title. A great introduction to Wordpress for designers. It covers all the basics and then some of theme development. You really don't even need to know php to understand it. Highly recommended for a designer wanting to jump into WordPress.
Read
July 19, 2013Ok
September 26, 2014
Had a decent amount of useful information. I may refer to this one again in the future.
Read
October 21, 2016A good basic technical grounding in developing WordPress themes for the WordPress community.
Read
January 12, 2017From beginner to Professional Wordpress Developer
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews