WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech)) by Lisa Sabin-Wilson Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $13.57 You Save: $11.42 (46%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))
Book Review: Truth in Advertising
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm an amateur trying to use Wordpress to get my family weblog looking and behaving in accordance with my vision for it. I've taught myself a little html/css/php/etc but was hitting a wall with the wp codex and I hoped this book would get me over. Well, I didn't learn much besides what is easily picked up in scanning the codex howto. This book was a bit too superficial for my needs. What I would really like is someone to step through the code line by line, explaining what calls are being made and why and how they can be manipulated. This is too difficult for me to follow just looking at the wp files themselves. And that is not the audience for this book. So, my fault for buying this book, erroneously thinking that it would not in fact live up to its title.Book Review: Practical how-to manual
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Book Review: Oddly, this book seems to skim the basics
Summary: 2 Stars
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.
Book Review: A Useful Book
Summary: 5 Stars
This book helped me get a professional quality WordPress blog up and running without any pain. I probably could have figured out most of what I would have needed to know myself. However, this book gave me some basic information and concepts so that I had the confidence to jump in and to do it easily. I set my blog up on my own hosted server. The book gave step-by-step instructions for uploading WordPress software and configuring it so that it worked immediately. I was able to find a free theme and customize it to my specific needs with a minimal knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP. (Not a deficiency of the book, but WordPress is not yet an ideal environment to create a non-blog web site. This is my next task and I'd love to find a product as easy to use as WordPress, which would allow me to do it.) I am glad that I purchased this book; it was worth the money.Book Review: Get this book! (even if you're not a
Summary: 5 Stars
I waited so long for WordPress For Dummies, by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and it was well worth the wait. I had been wanting to learn Wordpress and had been a fan of Lisa's blog so it was just what I needed as a motivator.
It's a "Dummies" book so it's got that easy to use format. And it's a reference book so most of it is not meant to be read linearly. If you've always wanted to set up a blog or switch to WordPress this is the way to go. It explains it from the basics up to the advanced. It's step by step and it'll get you running on your own host or at [...] with ease.
It covers Migrating to WP, 10 Great Free Themes, Ten Great Plugins, Using WP as a Content Management System, Understanding Templates and Plug-ins. It covers pretty much everything you need to know but those are the chapters I've read the most and use for reference. If you don't know anything about PHP you'll painlessly learn the bits that you do need to know for modifying templates (this is optional) and you'll have picked up enough for when you want to use PHP for other "web stuff".
As I'm writing this post, I'm flipping through the book seeing if there is anything I've missed mentioning. There are so many areas of WP that I haven't explored yet, I've read about them in the book and I can't wait to try out some of the other features!
Just about everything I've needed to know was in there, the only thing that I couldn't find was detailed info on custom-fields which was (probably) considered too advanced for a Dummies book.
There are 3 different flavors of WordPress (they host, you host, and multi-user) and they all share multiple features so just pay attention to which flavor she's talking about and you'll be fine.
It's an awesome book! If you want to set up your own blog, self-hosted or not, WordPress is easy to use and WordPress For Dummies is the book to use. And since WP just significantly increased the amount of free-space for the "they host" option free just got better!