WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Location: Home » vampire: masquerade » General AAS » WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Similar Items:

•	Blogging For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
•	ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income
•	Start Your Own Blogging Business (Startup)
•	WordPress Complete: A comprehensive, step-by-step guide on how to set up, customize, and market your blog using WordPress
•	WordPress Theme Design: A complete guide to creating professional WordPress themes

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Are you a wannabe blogger? A seasoned pro migrating your blog to WordPress? Looking to do more cool stuff with your existing WordPress blog? Then this fun guide is for you! WordPress for Dummies is a veritable smorgasbord of WordPress information, ideas, tools, resources, and instruction on everything you need to create and maintain your dream blog.

Unlike other blog hosts, WordPress gives you the ability to create a blog that is tailored to your own tastes and needs. Sure, the codes, tags, and terminology can seem a little intimidating at first, but WordPress for Dummies breaks it all down to show you just how intuitive, friendly, and extensible the software really is. This easy-to-follow guide shows you how to:

Sign up for a free WordPress account
Set up and use a hosted blog with WordPress.com
Install and set up the WordPress.Org and WordPress.MU software for single- and multi-user versions
Find great themes, plugins, and consultants that will help you achieve JUST the kind of blog you want
Use tags to work with WordPress templates
Combat challenges with comments, trackback spam, and “splogs”
Add special technologies to your blog, such as RSS feed, podcasting, vlogging, and photoblogging
Find online support, tips, and resources for WordPress software

Whether you want to keep family and friends updated on your latest adventures, post pictures of your new puppy, or communicate your passion with millions of readers worldwide, WordPress for Dummies is your passport to creating the kind of blog that will keep your visitors coming back for more!

Customer Reviews: Read 25 more reviews...

4 out of 5 stars

Practical how-to manual March 2, 2008
27 out of 28 found this review helpful

I bought this book because it was the only comprehensive beginner's guide to WordPress that I could find, and it was also up to date (important in this rapidly changing field). This was my first "Dummies" purchase; I've always hated that title and the implicit putdown it conveys.

I was pleasantly surprised. Lisa Sabin-Wilson knows her stuff, she writes well, and the advice is practical and easy to follow. The book uses a logical progression, teaching us step-by-step what WordPress is, what it can do, and where you can go to find further resources. Sections address important topics such as plugins, self-hosting, theme selection and development, migrating your blog from another site, and much more.

I was mostly looking for a guide on using WordPress as a website content management system (CMS), and although one chapter does address this, I wish the book had covered this in more depth. Also, I would have liked to read more about design and style issues. However, no one book can do it all, and at almost 400 pages this book was long enough. (Although it's a very quick read; it took me only one morning to get through it, and not all chapters will be relevant to every reader.)

I recommend it to anyone wanting to gain basic familiarity with WordPress (and related technical jargon), see whether it's the thing for you and, if so, get started using it.

4 out of 5 stars

Excellent for beginners and some tips for later December 19, 2007
25 out of 27 found this review helpful

This is actually the book I wish I had been there when I first started out with blogs and especially WordPress. A lot of time is spent addressing what blogs are and what they can do and then going through how to set up a WordPress.com account or how to install the WordPress.org software on your own site. Most of the book is really set up and functionality. While most of this information can be found on the web, having this book beside you would make the task so much easier. If you already have your blog all set up and in use, most of the book is of far less use to you. I find myself in that category since I run a number of person blogs, a couple of corporate WordPress sites, and have installed the software a number of times. The two parts then that I could really get my teeth into are the section on theme customization with an explanation of many of the variables, and the second detailing the author's top ten plug-ins. I found some items there that I had somehow overlooked before and are coming in quite handy.

So, why the 4 star rating? If you are just starting out, you really need this book. Pick it up before you start. And for you it will stay with you for a while and be a 5 star. If you have been doing this for a while, there will only be a couple of chapters of real value to you, so it will most likely be a 3 star. Average them together and what do you have? 4 stars!

5 out of 5 stars

Best Wordpress book thus far November 14, 2007
22 out of 23 found this review helpful

Prior to Wordpress for Dummies being published, the other Wordpress books out there were very limited or not extensively covered. For those of you who have tried to use Wordpress before, I know the Wordpress Codex or documentation may seem overwhelming due to its extensive coverage. This book does a great job of really giving you the ins and outs of Wordpress. The author tries to cover the most important features of Wordpress without trying to overwhelm the readers and does a very good job of it. I really liked the part about the author covering the MU feature of Wordpress as well as covering the common used template tags in addition making the templates, 'the loop' and template files easy to understand for beginners. If you are already proficient with CSS/XHTML and want to take your blog/sites to the next level, this book is for you. However, this book does NOT teach you CSS/XHTML (does provide other resources in the book) so I would suggest you pick up another book for that. If you want to know about WP and blogging in general, this book is for you.

3 out of 5 stars

Missing Plugin Development Information November 24, 2007
15 out of 22 found this review helpful

I'm not a newbie when it comes to blogging. For the most part, I've used Movabletype, ExpressionEngine, and Textpattern, but I haven't had much experience with Wordpress. With that said, installing and navigating the Wordpress Admin Panel is pretty self explanatory to me. Finding and installing themes and plugins is nothing for me as well. What I was hoping to get out of this book, more than anything else, was a better understanding of developing themes and plugins. While the book does briefly cover developing your own theme, it just about contains absolutely *no* information on developing plugins. Plugins, like themes, are such an intricate part of Wordpress, and one of the main reason it's so popular. How could something like this be left out? I know that detailed information is given on how to find and install plugins, but again, that's elementary to me. Even when I do install a plugin, what if I want to edit a few things in the source code? One would think that this information would be found in chapter 10 (Making the Most of WordPress Plugins) or in Part 5 (Flexing and Extending WordPress) - chapter 16 (Beyond Blogging: Wordpress as a Content Management System), but it's not.

I would say that this book would be great for blog newbies, and the non-technical minded (people who will mostly download and make tweak others work), but people who like to delve under the hood and really get their hands dirty may be somewhat disappointed.

2 out of 5 stars

Oddly, this book seems to skim the basics March 1, 2008
14 out of 16 found this review helpful

I thought this would be a good book for me, as I know some basic html, and have written my own simple web pages. But I'm no code jockey.

But for a 384 page book about a software program for blogging, there are precisely two pages about formatting the text and appearance of posts made in Wordpress. This seems to me to be the core of the blogging experience for most writers. I just want to create nice looking posts, with text and images. The program itself provides very few tools, and also strips out attempts to use code to do simple things like add paragraph breaks or tab indents, or change font sizes. It would be helpful if this book included the secret to making these simple formatting changes.

Most of the chapters seem to follow this theme, of giving just a superficial introduction to where to access a function in the program, with little additional info beyond what is right there on the computer screen.

But lots about Multi User Wordpress. I was hoping for something that would help me get started blogging right away, and make something that looks good.

A real dissappointment.

Powered by Associate-O-Matic

T-shirts, Posters

Pentagram T-shirts, bags, etc...

Gothic Posters