WordPress Web Design for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is one of the best on WordPress I’ve read, because it covers the work I do with WordPress: administration, tweaking themes, and finding and using plugins. It shows how to create several types of sites with WordPress, and explains the HTML, CSS, and PHP needed to tweak themes or build them from scratch. It features colorful code snippets and screenshots. I really liked the many excellent plugin recommendations. The book is best for the intermediate to advanced WordPress designer, developer, or administrator.

I liked Chapter 11: Dissecting Themes and Templates, and Chapter 12: Displaying Content with Widgets and Template Tags. So far I’ve only tweaked themes, but these chapters made me eager to dive deeper into theme development. This book convinced me that I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible with WordPress.

Because of what I do with WordPress, this book was more relevant than the other WordPress For Dummies books: WordPress for Dummies (read my review) and WordPress All-in-One For Dummies (read my review).

Notes

Optimize images with the Dynamic Drive Image Optimizer or Web Resizer.
Create a portfolio page by creating a category called Portfolio, filling it with posts with featured images, then calling them with query_posts().

Hosts that support WordPress

• Blogs About Hosting
• HostGator
• Bluehost
• DreamHost

Free font resources

• UrbanFonts.com
• 1001 Free Fonts
• daFont.com
• FontFreak.com
• ActionFonts.com

Premium font resources

• Fonts.com
• MyFonts.com

Premium WordPress themes

• iThemes
• ThemeGarden.com
• Organic Themes

Plugin recommendations

E-commerce plugins

• Cart66 (premium) doesn’t require much theme tweaking
• WP e-Commerce (free) requires theme tweaking
• MarketPress (free) doesn’t require much theme tweaking, and is good for WordPress Network (Multisite) and BuddyPress
• Shopp (premium) requires theme tweaking

Gallery plugins

• NextGEN Gallery creates sortable photo galleries
• Organizer allows you to organize, rename, resize, and manage uploaded images
• Random Image Widget displays a random image from the image-upload folder
• Mini-Slides lets you create inline slideshows

Social network plugins

• Twitter Tools for Twitter integration
• WordBooker for Facebook integration

Miscellaneous plugins

• Advanced Text Widget allows you to execute raw PHP code and specify on which pages it should be displayed
• Custom Post Type UI provides an easy to use interface to create and administer custom post types and taxonomies
• WP Featured Content Slider makes a slideshow of recent posts with images
• Collision Testimonials Shortcode puts client testimonials on the front page, and creates a full testimonials page
• All in One SEO Pack for SEO
• PluginBuddy Mobile (premium) creates a mobile-ready version of your website.
• Subscribe to Comments to let visitors subscribe to individual posts
• ShareThis for adding social sharing icons
• WP Super Cache for caching
• WP Security Scan for improving security
• BackupBuddy (premium) for creating backups and migrating sites
• WPMU Premium (premium) is a collection of plugins including membership, classified ads, chat, domain mapping, and anti-spam
• WP Nivo Slider creates a slideshow that prominently displays content (good for front pages)
• Simple:Press creates a support forum

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