| ActiveDen | Flash Marketplace |
| ThemeForest | Web & CMS Themes |
| GraphicRiver | Graphics, Vectors & Icons |
| VideoHive | Motion Graphics & Projects |
| AudioJungle | Loops & Effects |
| FreelanceSw | Freelance Jobs & Community |
| Rockable | Books & How-To |
| Creattica | Design Community |
| Mac.AppStorm | Mac Apps |
| Web.AppStorm | Web Apps |
| WorkAwesome | Be Awesome At Work |
| Envato | About Us |
| More Coming Soon! |
We're rolling out a new sub-category on Nettuts+: reviews. Sporadically, when a new book or piece of software is released, either myself or one of our writers will write a review detailing the pros and cons.
A couple weeks ago, Packt Publishing sent me a copy of the recently released "WordPress 2.7 Complete." Though the platform has already moved on to 2.8, I was still quite pleased with the final product.
Truthfully, reviewing a book like this for a web development site is difficult. As with any book, you have to keep the target reader in mind. So for Nettuts+, when deciding whether or not to recommend it, I came to the following conclusions about our little community.
WordPress 2.7 Complete teaches you from the very beginning, assuming that you have little to no knowledge of WordPress. This is fantastic for someone like your parent, who has minimal experience with web development; however, for those like myself or the huge majority of you, the first five chapters will be of absolutely no use. Unless you need instructions on how to create pages, leave a comment, assign categories, and other relatively mindless tasks, you'll be a bit surprised when you find yourself skipping to the middle of the book within the first few moments.
With all of that said, I'd still recommend this book to any of our readers who are hoping to learn more about theme design with WordPress. While you'll most likely, as I mentioned, skip the first five chapters, the remaining ones will keep your attention.
My best guess is that any of our readers who might be interested in picking up a WordPress book are hoping to learn how to convert their HTML/CSS designs into working WordPress templates; beyond that, perhaps some lessons on plugin development. If that's your hope, these remaining chapters (particularly #6) will do the trick!
If, on the other hand, you're a skilled WordPresser hoping to further refine your chops, this probably isn't the proper choice, as it's obviously intended for newcomers.
This book is super helpful because it takes you through the process of building a complete WordPress'ified website, complete with custom pages, RSS feed, search functionality, widgets, and more. Once you've completed the coding (the design portion is not covered), you'll then begin learning how to develop custom plugins and widgets for your site, starting in Chapter 8.
Take me for example: I've worked with WordPress for quite some time, and still enjoyed the entire read (well, at least the second half) - and managed to pick up a bunch of helpful tips! For about $39, the knowledge gained is more than worth the purchase.
If interested, the book can be purchased at your local bookstore, or through Packt's website.
Check out some more great tutorials and articles that you might like
Source Files, Bonus Tutorials and
More for $9 a month for all TUTS+
sites in one subscription.
We pay $150 for user submitted tutorials and articles that we publish. Anyone can send in a contribution
Community Link Feed
One name? One name? Who are you Seal?
The effects and techniques demonstrated in tutorials on the Tuts+ network can be used in whatever manner you wish without attribution.
The text, images and tutorials themselves are copyright their respective owners.
You cannot copy whole tutorials, either in English or translated to another language.
Writing a tutorial or article for the site is not only a great way to get exposure and give back to the community, but we'll also give you $150 cash to boot!
This is YOUR site, so if you have suggestions or feedback on how we can improve it for you, please let us know! We do our best to keep up!
User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Connor Crosby October 18th
Thanks for the review!
( )EGY99 October 18th
Based in your review I will buy the book. I’m 100% WP newbie, so this is targeted for me
Thanks JW!
( )Philo October 18th
Love the new category, and nice review!
( )Ethan October 18th
Pretty sweet. I want this book now…
It’s a tad out of date, though. Wordpress is on 2.8.4 now (not that you can blame them–a lot happens in the time it takes to publish a book).
( )Joe Deteranto October 18th
sorry, boring. shameless plug’s to sponsors / friends are bad.
( )Jeffrey Way October 19th
Not a plugin – a review.
( )Matthew Booth October 20th
If it was shameless Jeffrey would have said “Everybody buy it!!” Instead he was open and honest about the target audience which is probably not a lot of the people leaving comments.
I like the fact that Net Tuts will review a book. I rely almost entirely on search engine results for learning new information on WordPress and if a reputable site like Net Tuts was to review a book that fit my technical level I would seriously consider purchasing it.
I’m sure there are still a lot of NetTuts readers who aren’t very familiar with WordPress. I work with programmers who spend most of their time working with proprietary code and don’t fully understand what goes on behind the scenes of WordPress.
( )Louf Hawkner October 26th
Don’t be a tool Joe. Reviews are a legitimate type of content.
( )Mukarram October 18th
Thanks for the review,
( )i was searching for this kind of book.
wrerm October 18th
This is a really good book. Was using WP on and off and this book helped me to understand a lot more about WO.
( )Marcio Toledo October 18th
Like the shape of this review, very direct!
( )reza October 18th
why buy a book about wordpress version that vurnerable to hacking?
( )Matthew Booth October 20th
because a lot of the information is still applicable to 2.8+. Someone could buy the book and still apply a lot of it to 2.8. By the time they were comfortable with the topics in the book I’m sure a 2.8 book will be out.
Books are also usually written by better qualified authors than half the forum post I have to sift through on a daily basis to get any decent information.
( )Matthew Booth October 20th
By the way, nice site Reza, I’ll read more on it once I have some free time.
( )Stephen Webb October 19th
As someone who is completely new to Wordpress this looks like a great choice for myself. I am aware that it is a powerful tool that can be used in a number of ways, so am interested in getting to use it soon.
I was unaware until recently that Wordpress can be used as a content management system. Having previously only used software such as Adobe Contribute (which does the job well, but isn’t that customisable) I was interested to see what exactly Wordpress could do, and after reading the notes on here regarding features such as RSS and personalised widgets I’ll certainly be looking into this further.
It’s a great move to start having book/softare reviews like this on the site, so I’m much looking forward to seeing what will be reviewed next. Possibly a regular update of Creative Suite CS5 could be included too?
( )CMS Tuts October 19th
Nice book for who new in wordpress.
( )Giles Van Gruisen October 19th
Awesome article; great review, Jeff!
( )Your Name October 19th
I thought this book was lovely but most of the pages were rubbish!
( )Erik October 19th
so many books to buy arg!
( )thanks for the review
Ryan October 19th
Though I haven’t read it, I would assume much of chapter 8 “Developing Plugins and Widgets” would now be outdated as Wordpress 2.8 changed a lot of the widget structure.
( )Mark Dijkstra October 20th
I have the book and i can say it’s a good book!
( )akshat October 20th
worth it!!!
( )sophy October 22nd
Create Review! I like this book
( )Mark91 October 22nd
Fraud, therefore, is immediately being committed when the act of issuing pseudo-receipts takes place. ,
( )Sad68 October 23rd
I go through a day without having rape culture rear its ugly head. ,
( )Waasys October 31st
Wp is just great, and it’s improving!
( )mohit November 18th
this is great one
( )