Posted on August 31, 2011 - by CDS, 6 Comments

Digging into Wordpress, the Book

Digging into Wordpress is both a tutorial blog and recently released book, both by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. I’ve been the occasional fan of the site, and decided to give the book a try. I suppose it was mostly the sleek and beautiful design of the book itself that drew my attention, with its aqueous pages and spiral spine. This is definitely not your average reference book, and right away it’s obvious that a lot of time and thought went into the functionality and usability of this book.

The design and organization of the book makes it an easy-to-use reference that actually stays open on your desk (a nice touch). The chapters are well organized, and the color coding makes it super simple to find what you’re looking for. Another design bonus is the lovely typography.

I won’t give a whole synopsis of the book, as that can be found on the website (Digging into Wordpress). But I will give my brief opinion. I would say the book is definitely for web professionals wanting to dig deeper into the inner workings of Wordpress, and those who are interested in developing advanced Wordpress themes. Although the book starts off a little on the elementary side, describing what hosting and domain names are, it makes a sharp turn into the technical that would leave a novice developer clueless. I found that a little uneven, but was grateful for the shift. As a seasoned developer, I certainly don’t need a $75 brush up on the most fundamental aspects of websites. I understand including this basic information for completeness, but honestly I think it could do without it if the book were intended specifically for web professionals.

Aside from the somewhat slow start, the book speeds up and offers a ton of valuable information, from secure installation practices to creating Wordpress CMS applications. If you’ve ever looked at a Wordpress site and said to yourself, “I want to know how they did that”, it can probably be found in this book.

Overall, I highly recommend this book for anyone and everyone designing and developing with Wordpress. I am glad I shelled out the $75. Oh, and you can purchase the PDF version instead for just $27.

More info/purchase: Digging into Wordpress Book