Slashdot Mirror
Wordpress Complete
Ravi writes "In recent times, blogs have empowered numerous individuals and groups by allowing them a platform to air their thoughts. This has been made possible because of the development of numerous blogging tools. One which has gained mass appeal in the blogging community is Wordpress. What is exciting about this tool or blog engine is that even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time."
Wordpress Complete
author
Hasin Hayder
pages
290
publisher
Packt Publishing
rating
8
reviewer
Ravi
ISBN
1904811892
summary
A very good book to learn to use Wordpress to ones advantage
Wordpress Complete authored by Hasin Hayder and published by Packt Publishing is a book ideal for any beginning blogger who intends to set up his/her own Wordpress blog. The book is divided into 10 distinct chapters with each chapter describing a particular feature of the Wordpress blog.
I found the book unique in that instead of jumping right into installing and configuring Wordpress, the author takes time to explain the concept of a blog and the different ways in which you can blog. All the blogs irrespective of the blogging engine being used share some common terminology. This is explained in the very first chapter. In the same chapter, the readers are given a bird's eye view of the different blogging engines — both the free ones and those which cost money. The readers are made aware of the pros and cons of each of them.
Installing Wordpress is easy. It is a two step install process. However when you intend to host a Wordpress blog on a remote host, a few factors come into play depending upon what is offered by your web hosting provider. There is more than one way of installing a Wordpress blog on a remote host. This is dealt with clearly in the second chapter.
The third chapter covers choosing and installing themes, the different types of themes and their file composition.
The fourth chapter titled "Blogging your heart out", embarks on an extensive trip explaining the concept of posts and different ways of adding posts in Wordpress such as posting via email. Apart from that, this chapter contains an exhaustive introduction to the rich text editing interface which is the default editor. One also gets to know more about the features common to all blogs such as trackbacks, pinging as well as some Wordpress specific features.
You might wonder why you should buy a Wordpress book when the bulk of the documentation is freely available online. You will find this book to be a very good asset for beginner Wordpress bloggers because the author introduces a wealth of information which will require a lot of digging online to find. For example, the author explains how to put together an image gallery in Wordpress which I was not aware of before I read the book.
Chapter 6 deals with the all important topic of Feeds and Podcasts. There are four different feed formats and Wordpress supports all of them. Feeds are an easy way for the visitors of a site to keep track of the most recent changes in the content of a website.
While the first 6 chapters are targeted at Wordpress users, the remaining 4 chapters are more useful for Wordpress developers. On that note, developing themes form the basis of the 7th chapter. Here the author demonstrates how to build a theme by starting from scratch. Wordpress is essentially an amalgamation of PHP code, CSS and standards compliant HTML and this chapter has a fair sprinkling of code snippets with explanation. After going through the chapter, I was able to get a very good idea of the different files and their content which form the heart of Wordpress.
The next chapter titled "Community Blogging" provides a brief outline of a parallel project of Wordpress which is the Multi-user Wordpress and goes by the name Wordpress MU.
Chapter 9 titled "Developing plug-ins and widgets" is a very interesting chapter with the author explaining the process of creating widgets which are small bits of code incorporating third party functionality.
There is also an exclusive chapter which acts as an administrative reference where a number of problems that Wordpress administrators might face and their possible solutions are listed.
The book takes a reader from the installation to the configuration of every aspect of Wordpress to eventually give some troubleshooting tips. There is no dearth of relevant screenshots. The language used is clear and to the point. The author also provides Web references in many places. In short, I found this book to be an ideal resource for bloggers who wish to host their blog on Wordpress.
Ravi Kumar likes to share his thoughts on all things related to GNU/Linux, Open Source and Free Software on his blog linuxhelp.blogspot.com.
You can purchase Wordpress Complete from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Wordpress Complete authored by Hasin Hayder and published by Packt Publishing is a book ideal for any beginning blogger who intends to set up his/her own Wordpress blog. The book is divided into 10 distinct chapters with each chapter describing a particular feature of the Wordpress blog.
I found the book unique in that instead of jumping right into installing and configuring Wordpress, the author takes time to explain the concept of a blog and the different ways in which you can blog. All the blogs irrespective of the blogging engine being used share some common terminology. This is explained in the very first chapter. In the same chapter, the readers are given a bird's eye view of the different blogging engines — both the free ones and those which cost money. The readers are made aware of the pros and cons of each of them.
Installing Wordpress is easy. It is a two step install process. However when you intend to host a Wordpress blog on a remote host, a few factors come into play depending upon what is offered by your web hosting provider. There is more than one way of installing a Wordpress blog on a remote host. This is dealt with clearly in the second chapter.
The third chapter covers choosing and installing themes, the different types of themes and their file composition.
The fourth chapter titled "Blogging your heart out", embarks on an extensive trip explaining the concept of posts and different ways of adding posts in Wordpress such as posting via email. Apart from that, this chapter contains an exhaustive introduction to the rich text editing interface which is the default editor. One also gets to know more about the features common to all blogs such as trackbacks, pinging as well as some Wordpress specific features.
You might wonder why you should buy a Wordpress book when the bulk of the documentation is freely available online. You will find this book to be a very good asset for beginner Wordpress bloggers because the author introduces a wealth of information which will require a lot of digging online to find. For example, the author explains how to put together an image gallery in Wordpress which I was not aware of before I read the book.
Chapter 6 deals with the all important topic of Feeds and Podcasts. There are four different feed formats and Wordpress supports all of them. Feeds are an easy way for the visitors of a site to keep track of the most recent changes in the content of a website.
While the first 6 chapters are targeted at Wordpress users, the remaining 4 chapters are more useful for Wordpress developers. On that note, developing themes form the basis of the 7th chapter. Here the author demonstrates how to build a theme by starting from scratch. Wordpress is essentially an amalgamation of PHP code, CSS and standards compliant HTML and this chapter has a fair sprinkling of code snippets with explanation. After going through the chapter, I was able to get a very good idea of the different files and their content which form the heart of Wordpress.
The next chapter titled "Community Blogging" provides a brief outline of a parallel project of Wordpress which is the Multi-user Wordpress and goes by the name Wordpress MU.
Chapter 9 titled "Developing plug-ins and widgets" is a very interesting chapter with the author explaining the process of creating widgets which are small bits of code incorporating third party functionality.
There is also an exclusive chapter which acts as an administrative reference where a number of problems that Wordpress administrators might face and their possible solutions are listed.
The book takes a reader from the installation to the configuration of every aspect of Wordpress to eventually give some troubleshooting tips. There is no dearth of relevant screenshots. The language used is clear and to the point. The author also provides Web references in many places. In short, I found this book to be an ideal resource for bloggers who wish to host their blog on Wordpress.
Ravi Kumar likes to share his thoughts on all things related to GNU/Linux, Open Source and Free Software on his blog linuxhelp.blogspot.com.
You can purchase Wordpress Complete from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Make it easier for someone to make a blog. They should make them harder. Maybe you should have to pass a test or be licensed or something.
I'm waiting for the bloggerati to blog throughout the blogosphere for this latest develblogment in blogging. Is there a wikipedia blog article about this yet? Blog.
Does Slashdot get financial compensation everytime they fanwank about another website?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
...but the way that Wordpress mashes together PHP and HTML is horrendous. Every time I have to help someone out with their Wordpress installation because they tried to change a subtle detail in their template and ended up breaking the whole thing, I'm wishing I could find and strangle its designers. Why they didn't make it a tag-replacement system like Movable Type or Textpattern is beyond me.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
While it's on the topic, can anybody recommend any "slimmed-down" blog software? I wouldn't mind a tool that lets me post quickly and easily, but without all the frigging cruft like trackbacks, pingbacks, Flickr plugin, and goat shaver. Or at least some blog software that gives you way more fine-grained control. Wordpress is nice, but not everybody who blogs necessarily wants to be hooked in like a deer tick to the rest of the internet. Also, not having to deal with metric tons worth of php would be nice too.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Wordpress Complete
That's great news! This should free up a lot of developers to work on other projects.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What is [disheartening] about this tool or blog engine is that even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time.
illegitimii non ingravare
It still doesn't mean that people will cease to infuriate me with their improper use of "it's" and "its." The next big step is correcting that error. It's like their freakin' INTERCHANGEABLE now. Sheesh.
Sometimes I think that I am the only one left on earth that doesn't have a blog. I often think about starting one but then I realized that all I do in a day is go to work then come home, smoke up, and read shit on the internet so I don't think many people would want to read about that. On the other hand, most blogs I've seen aren't much more exciting so...
I wonder about the point of a book that discusses something that changes more or less monthly or weekly, with things coming and going on regular basis. How long will it be current or useful?
And I wonder how well the book does in discussing plugins, of which there are many for Wordpress, and the many themes that expand on Wordpress.
As much as I dislike trolling user forums for answers and ideas, I think that for Wordpress it's probably still the best option.
This review didn't really give me an idea about the utility of this book, it just listed the table of contents.
Three Squirrels
Since I've moved out of state I setup a blog to keep my family/friends up to date on life and as a personal diary. This is a wonderful piece of software. I didnt want to go the route of using a service like Livejournal because I wanted complete control of the software and run it on my own server. With wordpress I had a nice blog up and running in about 30minutes. Another nice feature is that it's protocol is open, so as a Linux user I just apt-get install drivel, and voila posting to my blog via a nice local program without having to login to the site itself. A+ :)
When I used wordpress (a year and a half ago) I found the same problem. I was trying to get a consistent design across all my website (which included static pages, a wiki, and a wordpress installation). Hopefully they've improved upon the theming engine since, when I used wordpress there were few themes available. My major issue with such CMS is that all the sites look the same, it numbs the mind and you can't tell where you are.
Napthelene? You are such a razist. Imus say, your lack of turbulence is deshortening.
...promote insightful, comprehensible thoughts it would be perfect. There are so many tools out there for communication it is just a shame to see that the quality of the ideas communicated seems to be decreasing. How many times have we noticed with cell phones, and now blogs, that people are talking and communicating just to hear their own voice and don't contribute anything by their communication.
That aside, I am glad that it is finally complete. Yes, there are many worthless blogs posted but it makes it all worth it when you get that one gem.
If you feel the urge to blog, you should be kicked in the nuts or ovaries. If you are still standing afterwards, you get your blogger's license.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
And oh yes.. I am a Wordpress user.
"What is exciting about this tool or blog engine is that even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time"
Right.. so I guess this is why it needed a whole book about it? You can't claim both now, can you.
WordPress is one of those things that are easy to copy/paste and bang, you have a blog. But you better not want to customize or extend it, since like most open source PHP projects, it has no signs that it had any architecture to begin with. Just random individials slapped pieces of PHP and HTML randomly in the codebase until it seemed to do what they want.
Then you should see phpBB. They don't even have their plugins separated from the core code, which means that once you apply a fix, it's practically impossible to update. I was actually relieved when I first edited a WordPress theme and found that it was so much better than phpBB.
[sig]
What specifically are you talking about? The only use of its/it's in the original blurb ("What is exciting about this tool or blog engine is that even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time.") is quite correct.
Were you talking about something else, or are you as clueless as your use of "their" suggests?
If even a lay person can easily master its use and get his or her blog up and running in no time then why we need this book for?
The first thing an author learns is how little she has to say. For any writer, amateur or professional, the proverbial guidance is *less is more*. Blogging is the systematic violation of this truth of human communication.
I applaud the distribution efficiencies and the rise of an amateur press, but I sigh for the wasted electrons and the deterioration of the signal-to-noise ratio of our cultural life.
illegitimii non ingravare
So I need to buy a book to figure out how to use it?
Installing Wordpress is easy. It is a two step install process.
I call BS. I recently installed Wordpress and it was relatively easy for me to set up and get running and functional, but there is now way in hell it was a 'two step install process'. There is also no way a non-technical person could have done it. If you need to set up a blog it is as good as any of them, but don't believe the hype.
Breakfast served all day!
...eventually turned it into a business. Since I had to upgrade three blogs simultaneously all the time, while maintaining tons of enhancements, I started using Subversion for it. Not too long after that, I started to sell a bundle of plugins and themes for WordPress which was the same exact copy of what I used for my sites. It turned into a business: http://turbochargedcms.com/ powers several high-profile blogs today.
:-)
I guess I have shoulders of giants to thank
Rudd-O - http://rudd-o.com/
Hopefully they mention this in the book, but just in case:
Bad behavior: kills 99% of all spam on contact
Spam Karma: kills the other 1%
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
is another woman's pleasure, apparently. I find the indifferent substitution of he or she for usage number two to be perfectly satisfactory. My pet peeve is the scholiast's insistence that grammar and usage are not perfectly conventional systems susceptible of development. It's not political correctness makes me do; my desire is shakeup the hidebound English grammar.
I feel it is a stylistic matter; a piece with my habit of mashups with semi-colon or my resistance to certain aspects of preposition and pronoun usage. As a poet I feel competent to arrogate that prerogative for myself.
illegitimii non ingravare
Its great to Know that SlashDot Rank " Wordpress Complete" as 8/10....my heartiest congratulation for the author Hasin Hayder. wishes, samiha esha