WordPress Bible

by Aaron Brazell

A complete and thorough guide to the largest self-hosted blogging WordPress Has learning WordPress become a pressing issue for you? If so, then turn to WordPress Bible, a complete resource on everything you need to know to learn WordPress from beginning to end. You'll start with the basics of WordPress, such as the principles of blogging and social media interaction. Then the pace ramps up to more intermediate-to-advanced topics including plugins, WordPress Loop, themes and templates, custom fields, caching, security, and more. Written by a popular WordPress consultant, this comprehensive guide is timed to publish with the release of the latest version of WordPress, ensuring that you have the most up-to-date information available on the largest and most-used blogging tool in the world. You'll be hard-pressed to find another resource as thorough and comprehensive as WordPress Bible . CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Genres: Nonfiction, Programming, Website Design, Technology

673 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive WordPress book; topics include getting started, plugin development, theme development, content management, and maintenance. I focused on SEO, plugin recommendations, and theme development, and skimmed plugin development. My favorite parts were those about SEO for WordPress, CPTs (custom post types), the Loop and WP_Query, template files, hooks, template tags, and theme best practices.

This book is by far the largest, most technical WordPress book I’ve read so far. It’s the perfect desk reference for WordPress developers. Its 700+ pages contain explanations, PHP i snippets, and tables of hooks, tags, and parameters. The book was published in 2011 and covers WordPress 3.1. Author Aaron Brazell is a WordPress core contributor, and technical editor Mark Jaquith is one of the WordPress core developers.

The book focuses almost exclusively on PHP, and barely discusses HTML, CSS, JavaScript. The author recommends reading HTML XHTML and CSS Bible by Wiley to learn HTML and CSS.

Theme and plugin development
• register_sidebars creates multiple widgetized areas (sidebars). You can even skip arguments to use WordPress defaults.
• home.php displays the home page of the blog, not necessarily the homepage of the site. is_home() is true when on the blog home page.

The WordPress database
• The db object is assigned to the handler $wbdb. When you need to interact with the database, make the $wpdb object global with global $wpdb;.
• The posts table is a good place to store data, as an alternative to creating new tables. WordPress ignores post_types it doesn’t recognize.
• The options table should be used to store settings.
• Use insert() to insert data into MySQL. Data should be raw (unescaped) since WordPress handles sanitization.
• Use $wpdb->prepare() to sanitize SQL statements to protect against SQL injection.

Data sanitization
• esc_html() takes a string of text to be enid as a single argument, and returns a sanitized string of HTML to a variable.
• esc_attr() escapes HTML attributes. Its usage is identical to esc_html().
• esc_url() sanitizes URLs, and esc_url_raw() sanitizes URLs for non-HTML use.
• prepare() escapes data going into MySQL.

Plugin recommendations
• All in One SEO Pack for SEO
• Custom Post Type UI for custom post types and taxonomies
• WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache (more advanced) for caching
• Role Manager for managing roles and capabilities
• IntenseDebate Comments for comments
• Polldaddy Polls & Ratings for polls and surveys

Theme recommendations
• Free theme frameworks: Twenty Ten, Thematic
• Premium theme frameworks: Genesis by StudioPress, Builder by iThemes

Host recommendations
• WordPress-optimized hosts: Page.ly and WP Engine
• Shared hosts: DreamHost and BlueHost

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference for WordPress web developers on all levels. Topics covered include simple operational instructions and explanations all the way up to custom loops, queries and custom plugins. Complete reference of actions, hooks and template tags in the appendixes. Awesome book for when you want a quick answer instead of searching through the Codex.

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a lot more than I did. The rating is due to how useful the book was personally to me, not how useful it could be to someone else, especially if they code. It was easier for me to look in the Wordpress forum or google tutorials than to use the book. Still, it looks amazing if you're into tweaking the code or maybe creating a child theme yourself.

[Zig Baird · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've met Aaron personally and he's definitely an expert in this field. Easy to read and grasp and lots of code samples to explain different scenarios. I've always been a fan of the Bible tech series and this one doesn't disappoint. Recommended for any WordPress gurus and newbies alike.