5 Must-read Books If You Want to Become a WordPress Professional
A collection of knowledge
There’s no doubt that sharpening your skills and nurturing your WordPress knowledge every day is always in your to-do list. But don’t forget that there are actually some great WordPress books that can be the compass to guide you and help you master WordPress in an effective way.
I know that nowadays, it seems to many of us that it’s much easier for us to surf the Internet using our phone or laptop than getting our hands on a book. And you know what? I read this funny quote somewhere: “Face your book, not Facebook”.
Yes, because reading a concise reference WordPress book gives you a better vision of a more efficient workflow than just reading articles online; and because your time is limited, I’m going to introduce you to only the best WordPress books that I think are most useful and of good enough quality to save your learning time. These books are recommended by and listed on WordPress.
Here we go.
Professional WordPress: Design and Development
Author: Brad Williams, David Damstra, Hal Stern
Image credit: Amazon
If you want to get serious about WordPress development, then this book is for you. This book is reviewed as being quite comprehensive in covering WordPress theme development, plugins, multisite, user experience, and much more. It gives you an in-depth look into WordPress by delving into the heart of the WordPress system. The part that many readers love from this book is its cover of loops, database manipulations, custom taxonomies, custom post types, and metadata, etc.
Of course you can’t fit everything into one book, so if you are looking for detailed explanation on theme development, then this may not be the best fit for you.
Professional WordPress Plugin Development
Author: Brad Williams, Ozh Richard, Justin Tadlock
Image credit: noeltock.com
The book’s title says it all: this is purely a book to help you create better WordPress plugins. The book walks you through how WordPress plugins work, reviews APIs and WordPress tools, and shows you how to do more with WordPress functionality.
You’ll love how the book helps you understand valuable information like WordPress plugin security, settings, WordPress cron, debugging and optimizing, … with a direct-to-the-point writing style, and no extra big words. It’s a book written by developers for developers after all. The trio really did write a great and helpful book for the community.
Is there any improvement needed for the book? Noel Tock pointed out in his review that he would like to know how to use the mysql2date() function for internationalization for his theme development. Also he thinks that color printing is also a should-have because different syntax could be color-coded and therefore easier to see.
Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress
Author: Jesse Friedman
Image credit: Amazon
You’re an excellent designer looking for recipes to become an excellent WordPress developer? This is the book to fulfill your dream.
The Web Designer’s Guide to WordPress is just like a bridge for web designers to understand how to create a full-blown and works-like-a-charm WordPress theme.
As introduced on Amazon, Jesse Friedman is the great veteran WordPress developer. That explains why he makes it so easy for designers to learn, no matter whether it is about building template pages, replacing dynamic content with dynamic WordPress calls, or writing functions, etc.
People have said some of his links mentioned in the book are broken, but you can contact the author to report these, and he’ll fix them right away. Really, a great author behind a great book.
WordPress For Dummies
Author: Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Image credit: Amazon
You might laugh and tell me: “I’m not a dummy to have to read this book”. No, don’t let the word “dummies” injure your pride and make you skip this great book. Even WordPress experts need to stay updated with fundamental changes in WordPress (I bet you don’t know them all). And experts need to sometimes refresh their knowledge of WordPress basics too.
This is a book for both novice and savvy WordPress learners. The book covers all the core aspects of WordPress, such as how to create and maintain a WordPress blog, how to use new features and updates to WordPress, how to customize a blog with themes and plugins, etc.
If you don’t like it for its name or for anything else, you can read Digging into WordPress to get a complete insight into WordPress basics.
Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog
Author: Thord Daniel Hedengren
Image credit: Amazon
This Smashing Magazine book might come in handy for your WordPress professional development. The book content is divided wisely in 4 parts. First part is about WordPress installation — if you are a pro, at least scan this part for the databases import and export function… because there may be something you’ve never dealt with.
The second part talks about WordPress themes and child themes. The third part is about WordPress plugins and multisite knowledge. The last part is for additional features and functionality in WordPress.
The must-improve parts of the book might be the API settings which aren’t covered much in it. And sadly some pieces were not really well written.
Which Book Are You Reading Right Now?
These are my top WordPress books that should be on every designer and developer’s shelf, besides thoseWordPress tutorials you read through on the internet. How about you? Which book have you read for your WordPress training?
Share with us your favorite books, and don’t forget to share with your friends the good books you’ve found here.
