Head First WordPress

Head First Series

by Jeff Siarto

Whether you’re promoting your business or writing about your travel adventures, Head First WordPress will teach you not only how to make your blog look unique and attention-grabbing, but also how to dig into the more complex features of WordPress 3.0 to make your website work well, too. You’ll learn how to move beyond the standard WordPress look and feel by customizing your blog with your own URL, templates, plugin functionality, and more. As you learn, you’ll be working with real WordPress The book’s website provides pre-fab WordPress themes to download and work with as you follow along with the text.

Genres: Computer Science, Programming, Computers, Website Design, Nonfiction

364 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Spyce Media · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Kean Sargent · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanted to ask for advice. I want to read your book, but maybe I don't know WordPress well enough yet and it will be difficult for me? I work for a company as a junior developer. We received an order and now my main task is software development for startups. Yes, you understood correctly, our customer is a startup. I will wait for your advice here or, if appropriate, by mail at kean.sargent@gmail.com Thank you.

[Mathilde · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a great book. Instead, I can say that it's a bounty for all the bloggers out there. To widen, strengthen their views and scope on development, this book is really preferable.

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[Het · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great content. Good to go if you learn to WordPress.
For Software Development for Startup you can connect with us.

[Digisoft Solution · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Eira Rangel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nunca pensé que llegaría a necesitar de este libro.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is short and very high-level, dedicating only 1 or 2 pages to most topics. It's best for beginners or intermediate WordPress users. It covers styling a theme, managing users, managing categories and tags, embedding video, podcasting, security, and performance. I liked the security tips and the plugin recommendations. Much of the book can be applied to web design in general, and isn't specific to WordPress.

The book was published in 2010 and teaches WordPress 3.0. It shows how to edit some HTML and CSS, but if you’re going to follow along, you'll need to already be familiar with those or skip those parts. I had high hopes for this book after being impressed by the depth of Head First HTML with CSS XHTML, but this book skims lightly across several topics without much detail. I recommend WordPress for Dummies instead (read my review).

Miscellaneous notes
Use the menu, submenu, current-menu-item, and menu-item-object-page classes to style your menu with CSS.
Use just a few, broad categories relevant to your audience; think big picture. Tags should be specific terms describing your post’s content; think little details.

Securing WordPress
Don’t use admin for the administrator username.
Use strong passwords for WordPress, MySQL, and any hosting accounts.
Transfer files securely using SFTP or SSL-encrypted pages.
Password-protect the wp-admin directory.
Remove the meta generator tag to hide the fact that you’re using WordPress. Add the line below to your theme's function.php file. See the WordPress Codex article Hardening WordPress for more details.
<?php remove_action('wp_head', 'wp_generator'); ?>

Plugin recommendations
Podcasting Plugin by TSG for podcasting.
Automatic WordPress Backup for backing up to Amazon S3.
WP Super Cache for caching.
WP-Optimize to clean and optimize the MySQL database.
My CDN to use the CDN of your choice. The Coral CDN is a free option.
BuddyPress to turn your WordPress site into a social network.

SEO (search engine optimization) for WordPress
Use pretty permalinks that include meaning in the post and category titles.
Write good content.
Use semantic markup.
Make your pages load quickly. Evaluate performance with Google Webmaster Tools and YSlow.

[Janet Barclay · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I became familiar with WordPress a few years ago, I was eager to apply the things I’d already learned about web design, but found the extensive documentation on the WordPress site a little daunting. I searched for a good reference book, but was unable to find anything that explained what I wanted to learn in a way I could understand. Although I’ve managed to learn a thing or two since then, and WordPress has become more user-friendly as well, I was excited to learn that O’Reilly Media, who publish the Missing Manuals, had also published a book about WordPress.

As I began to read Head First WordPress, my first impression was that it was probably a good resource for beginners wanting to learn about installing WordPress, styling themes, and using categories and tags, but that I wasn’t going to find it very useful. However, by page 62 I’d already learned the answer to something I’d wondered about for some time, and once I’d passed the halfway point, I discovered a wealth of information about video and podcasting as well as the vital issues of security and performance, and was really glad I’d decided to continue reading.

Head First WordPress now holds an important spot in my reference library, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about this powerful content management system.

WordPress is easy to use, but the more you learn about it, the more you’ll get out of it, and the better your blog or website will be.

[Roberto Hernando · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bastante flojo. Quien no tenga conocimientos de html y css se va a limitar a copiar y pegar cosas sin saber lo que hace; quien tenga esos conocimientos no va a aprender nada.

Lo peor: unos cuantos capítulos destinados a los plugins más conocidos sin contar nada nuevo y destinados sólo a rellenar.

Lo mejor: el formato visual de la serie Head First

(rhernando.net)

[Katya Kean · Rating 3 out of 5]

4 year old book. At this point it might be better to just Google the subjects and look for more up-to-date information.
Things I wish I'd known: When installing the themes, use the hosting file manager to upload the zip file and then extract the contents.
I'm probably going to look for a more recently-published book. Also, the forum for this book on Head First's website is no longer maintained, so there's no more bug fixing or updates.

[Jason Kittredge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm doing some consulting work for a friend on a business web site, and we decided that we wanted to use a content management service to help him maintain the site. To this end, we selected Wordpress, and I needed to get up to speed on how this technology worked. As usual, the Head First press book was very informative, clear and concise.

[James Garland · Rating 4 out of 5]

See my blog postfor a full review.

[Ceanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a bad read, I found some of it really intersting, but too much information for someone who just wants a basic blog.

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Basic information which is ok for those who are not into technical.

[Rick Lott]

Keeping as a reference book.