Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog
Product Description
Smashing WordPress shows you how to utilize the power of the WordPress platform, and provides a creative spark to help you build WordPress-powered sites that go beyond the obvious. You will learn the core concepts used to build just about anything in WordPress, resulting in fast deployments and greater design flexibility.
Inside, WordPress expert Thord Daniel Hedengren takes you beyond the blog and shows you how WordPress can serve as a CMS, a photo gallery, an e-commerce site, and more.
YOU WILL LEARN:
- THE ANATOMY OF A WP INSTALL AND HOW WORDPRESS ACTUALLY WORKS
- HOW TO BUILD BEAUTIFUL WORDPRESS THEMES – INCLUDING CHILD THEMES
- HOW TO CREATE CUSTOM LOGIN FORMS AND ADMIN THEMES
- HOW TO USE THE LOOP TO CONTROL CONTENT, AND EVEN USE ALTERNATIVES TO THE LOOP
- HOW TO INTEGRATE THEME OPTIONS
- HOW TO BUILD PLUGINS – INCLUDING WIDGET FUNCTIONALITY
- HOW TO BUILD YOUR WORDPRESS PROJECTS FOR SEO
- INTEGRATE WORDPRESS WITH THE SOCIAL WEB
- HOW TO CREATE AMAZING NAVIGATION
- HOW TO USE CONDITIONAL CONTROL ELEMENTS
This book is for more advanced WordPress users – those who already have a sound understanding of PHP, CSS and WordPress itself and if your knowledge in these areas is limited it may not be the book for you.
However, for those well versed in code and the inner workings of the WordPress platform it is a book that can take you to the next level.
Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog
If you are new to WordPress and worried about the technical aspect of setting up your first hosted WordPress site Page.ly can get you up and running in two minutes. The best WordPress total management system for beginners.
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- Free WP themes for Different Purpose | denbagus blog
I don’t want to bash the smash, but this book was WAY over my head. I would only recommend this book if you are mid-to advanced level PHP coder. I purchased it before there were any reviews, which was my own darn fault, but being a web designer for 10 years I thought I would be ready for an intermediate level book. I am new to wordpress and I have been hearing from other designers that the WP backbone can be used to create killer CMS, so I bought this book as an introduction. Oops. I got about 4 pages into it before I realized that I should have started with an entry level book. I am going to put this book on the shelf and save it until I have a better working knowledge of WP and PHP. It appears to be very well written and conversational, and the layout and colors are quite nice (I agree with the other reviewer that the margins are too tight and crowd the pages). If you ARE a curent WP user and PHP advanced user, this might be the perfect book for you.
Rating: 3 / 5
You really need to know your stuff if you want to easily get anything out of this book. The main problems I had were (1) As mentioned in prior reviews, the book’s formatting is horrible. Was the publisher trying to save money by cramming so much on one page? A little white space and margins PLEASE!!!
(2) No CD or online resource to download the code. THAT’S A LOT OF CODE! C’mon!! And even though Amazon’s price is $25+, the suggested retail price in the US is something like $44. That is a lot of money to shell out without this important resource. Couple that with the problem mentioned in #1 and you’ll seriously be cross-eyed before its all over. I returned it.
Rating: 2 / 5
I have to agree with everyone that this isn’t a beginner WordPress book. For you to utilize this book you have to be past the beginner stages. If you don’t know how to post, install plugins, add tags and understand categories walk away from this book.
For me this book is great; I have a solid understanding of HTML and CSS, this book has taken me to another level of understanding WordPress.
There is an excellent section on the Gallery and has given me some great ideas
As many others have said; if you’re a mid – senior level user this book will be great for you.
Rating: 5 / 5
I consider myself to have a slightly better than a beginning understanding of PHP language. Even then, I found the book somewhat difficult to understand. The author uses his own blog theme (Notes Core) as the foundation for the exercises he uses in this book. I did like his coverage on theming WordPress, template tags, hooks, and plugin’s. I just wished the author would have clarified a little bit more in his examples. I feel I may have to read this book again just to ‘get it’ about customizing WordPress. At any rate, I will be sure to rely on it as a referemce before I delve into the WordPress Codex.
One thing the book does illustrate very effectively, is using WordPress as a Content Management System. There are several examples on how to create static pages, how to customize pages based on category tags, custom programming involving multiple WordPress Loops and hooks, and much more. I needed to know this information, as I’d like to use WordPress as a starting foundation for my web designs, be they blogs or webpages.
One nitpick; the book has full color throughout? Why couldn’t the code examples be syntax highlighted by color? I’m trying to parse the PHP code examples, but after looking at PHP code in my IDE, I just find it difficult to follow such code in any other way. Line numbers would be great, so that the content can refer to them in explaining the code. This way, this book could be a little bit more accessible to PHP programmers who have not had much experience. (Like me, for instance!)
Rating: 3 / 5
This is a good intro into customizing wordpress if you have a mid-to-high-level PHP background. The author doesn’t waste any time introducing html, css, or php, which is good. A lot of good insight into template design and how to use it to do much more than a blog approach. There are specific examples (WordPress as CMS, as a Gallery, using e-commerce, and so forth). After the author introduces basic WordPress concepts and inner workings, the next largest section is on template design. Then a small section on plugins, and the rest of the book about going beyond a blog format with the examples mentioned earlier.
There is nothing here about ajax, which is a disappointment to me, so one star off. It is more and more prevalent and I was hoping to see at least a few examples of ajax queries occurring inside of the WP framework. I expected this topic to be covered but it is not even mentioned. Also, there is no coverage of using custom database tables for plugins that use more data than you’d be comfortable with in the WP Options table, so another star taken off. It does give decent coverage to using the WP Options table for data storage however. I would think that something intent on “smashing” wordpress would have taken it just that little bit farther. All in all however I am glad of the purchase because there is a ton of good stuff that I will definitely reference in customizing wordpress sites.
Rating: 3 / 5