WordPress is the most powerful and extensive content management system around! So finding the best book to learn its development is as important as taking out time to read them!
As we know WordPress is one of the most popular CMS used by many businesses including small, mid-size and large organizations. It powers around 30% sites all over the internet. Maybe you can develop a website on WordPress (as it offers a quite user-friendly interface), but without detailed understanding, you may not be able to build a fully customized website.
This is precisely why more and more people are now opting for WordPress development learning. One of the biggest reasons why people are interested in learning its development is because it is open source software and allows developers to build a range of themes, plugins, and widgets. It is easy and free to install. It can be deployed as well as upgraded easily.
Some of the branded blogs developed on WordPress include Nokia Conversations, Target Pulse, and LinkedIn Blog. Also famous news magazines like Vogue and Bloomberg. There are hundreds of templates and plugins that power a flexible and straightforward interface and reduces both the development time and development cost.
Top wordpress book for learning
There are several million-dollar SaaS businesses which are built on WordPress plugins, and there is a vast marketplace that sells WP themes. This great platform is not just used for personal blogs anymore. But it is now used for building brands, growing small businesses and launching products.
Today, we will look at the top and best WordPress development learning books that help both beginners and masters to excel in their WordPress understanding.
Even though there are several blog articles and video tutorials out there, many people still prefer to read books. This is because books are ad-free, organized, consistent, and portable for several situations. Moreover, some individuals like to learn things the old way. They prefer reading the writings of a professional author than searching online resources.
So without further ado, let’s dive into our top list of books that will help you know the hidden opportunities of WordPress!
1. Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress – Jesse Friedman
This book is not designed or written for the beginners of web development. It is an advanced book that is targeted at people who are familiar with WordPress development. So this means, if you plan to polish your WordPress development skills, using this guide, you need to possess the necessary skill set already.
The guide makes some assumptions about the individual’s skills such as he/she may already know CSS and HTML and need only a friendly hand to further point in the best and right direction with WP. This book provides an understanding of how to develop customized and responsive themes for your WordPress site/blog. So if you need a guide to convert your HTML site into WP themes or want to work on a development server, then Web Designer’s Guide is your best choice.
This is a complete guide that helps you master WP theme development. It covers everything from leveraging the resources and community to installation, to improve your WP skills. This book provides an understanding of concepts related to widgets, templates, themes and shortcode development.
2. WordPress for Dummies (8th Edition)– Lisa Sabin Wilson
This book is considered as the best edition from the ‘For Dummies‘ version. It is written by the co-founder of Web DevStudio – Lisa Sabin. This best selling WP guide offers knowledge on everything you need to start with WP and to make your dream site. It helps you build your WP site, right from scratch, by providing you information about web host and themes.
The book contains information about WordPress basics and what it can do for you, setting up the WP, understanding dashboard, SEO, managing multi-site, extending and flexing WordPress by using its great plugins and themes, and customizing WordPress by tweaking templates and themes. This famous book also guides you about the ten popular WP plugins along with some free themes. If you are a beginner, this book is an excellent source of information. It is comprehensive and may also act as a good reference for experienced developers.
The book is written by an experienced author that gives you a well-rounded view of WordPress including the tools which surround it.
3. The 5-Day WordPress School – Cyrus Jackson
As the name suggests, this book helps you become a WP website developer in just five days. It is one of the most authoritative guides you can be benefited from. Mainly, if you have a busy and strict routine but want to learn the basics of WP at the earliest, then this guide provide you the quickest information.
It helps you get familiar and understand everything that you need to start and run a WP based website or blog.
The information provided in this book covers the WordPress understanding from various aspects. It is an elaborate guide that starts with selecting a web host to secure the WP site from spammers, hackers, and various harmful malware.
Some of the most comprehensive information provided in the ‘The 5-Day WordPress School’ includes an introduction to WordPress, ways to establish a website on WordPress, understanding the WP dashboard, setting up the WP site, installation of various WP plugins, customization of widget data, protection of site from malware, hackers and spammers.The information provided in this book can use by both beginners and advanced users.
While beginners can build their basic understanding of the information contained in the book, advanced users can use this book as a reference source of information. Also, if you need some tremendous professional tips concerning themes, plugins or even selecting the right web host, then this quick guide is your best choice.
4. Digging Into WordPress – Chris Coyier and Jeff Star
This is one of the handiest books in our list of top books. It comes in a spiral-bound format that makes it highly convenient to flip through. You can easily lay flat the book if you are trying to take code snippets from it. The entire guide is color coded that help you find your topic of interest instantly.
Anyone who is all severe and set to start learning WordPress development all by him/herself can easily take a step and master it. What else can you expect when a guide is written by a popular pro-Chris Coyier (CSS Tricks) and Jeff Star. Since WordPress gets updated on a daily basis, the latest version of the book contains all the latest updates that are important if you have no skill set of WordPress development.This book is written professionally and by giving absolute attention to details which bring a great experience to the reader. The PDF version of this book also provides hyperlinked URLs code.
These codes can easily be copied and pasted, and the text can be searched easily. With the purchase of this book’s print version you also get PDF that comes with different tricks and tips.
The ToC of the book includes an introduction to WordPress, setting up WP, the anatomy of a theme, design, and development of an idea, extending functionality, working with feeds and RSS feeds, SEO and maintaining a healthy website.
5. Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog – Thord Daniel Dedengren
Thord Daniel Dedengren is known as the WordPress guru who takes the reader beyond the blog to provide them with all the know-how and tools needed to create anything in WP. This guide helps you understand how to use WP as a CMS to fully-fledged power sites, forums, photo galleries, e-commerce sites, and others.
As the name of the book suggests, the guide goes beyond the blog and provide complete information for establishing any website using WordPress. This means that you can use this guide to create not only blogs but also websites.
With Smashing WordPress you can build a site right from scratch and even create a plugin to extend the functionality fully. Some of the particular topics include custom login forms, custom backgrounds and headers, white labeling, widgets, theme options, social media, SEO, navigation menus, theme development, responsive design, custom posts, and others.
This book can make your life easier by taking your WordPress skills to the next level. The best way is to start with your responsive theme, extend the functionality of it by adding widgets, integrate your site with the social web and use various conditional control elements to optimize your site while enjoying full control of it thoroughly.
6. WordPress Security Made Easy – Niko Guruli
Just like every other famous service or site on the internet, WP sites also get targeted by scammers or hackers. Even though WP is a CMS that already come with the necessary security tools that help you secure your website but its users are mainly responsible for protecting their personally developed website. This means they are liable to keep their site secured while keeping hackers at bay.
Thus WordPress Security Made Easy is the guide that is designed for both advanced and beginner users. It helps people having different skill sets to learn how to make their WordPress site more secure and how to keep it protected from cyber attacks.
If we talk about the author Niko Guruli, he has himself experienced the attack by a hacker on his WP site. So he wrote a guide/book that covers all the necessary steps that he took to learn thoroughly; how to create a blog that can never get hacked again. If you haven’t read the book, you might think that the secure installation of WP site requires experience and specialized knowledge, but after reading this guide, you will learn to do it in minutes.
So if you are contemplating to launch a site or start blogging for your business or if you are postponing it because any specter of hacker is haunting you, then you need to read this book. It is a guide with step-by-step instructions with 70 screenshots in Kindle and 40 screenshots in paperback. In short, regardless if you are an advanced or beginner user of WordPress, anyone can easily use WordPress Security Made Easy to maintain a well-secured WP site.
7. WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook – Yannick Lefebvre
WordPress is a powerful, accessible and open CMS. When you learn how to improve and extend its capabilities, it allows you to discover and understand its full potential.
Regardless if you are a developer having a great idea to enhance the platform for your community fully, an administration, searching for the right extension, or a website designer working to accomplish a client’s needs, WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook shows its readers ways to navigate the WP range of API functions.
This helps in creating high-quality plugins with administration interfaces that are easy to configure. With this guide, you learn ways to change as well as extend WP to carry out virtually any task. Mold WP as per the needs of your project or merely transform it to facilitate the entire community.
If you any other famous book that should also be listed here, don’t hesitate to share it in the comment section below.
The Final Words
All of them are the most famous and best-selling WordPress development guides. There are also more books available but before you select a book, make sure it is updated and have quality information.
We hope the guide will help you to improve your WordPress website designing capabilities!
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