These are my favorite audio podcasts about web design and development, both the technical and business sides. They also feature topics such as marketing and freelancing. I have a separate list of my favorite WordPress podcasts. My last post on the best web design podcasts was from June 2012, so it was time to update [...]
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress by Susan Gunelius My rating: 3 of 5 stars An easily understood, very basic WordPress guide for beginning users. It’s focused on blogging rather than building traditional websites. The first half covers WordPress.com, and the rest covers WordPress.org. The Attracting an Audience section has valuable chapters on SEO, feeds, [...]
HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites by Jon Duckett My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the most visually pleasing web design book I’ve ever read. It’s logically organized and explains concepts well, using simple terms, code examples, and beautiful illustrations. I wish I had had it when I was first learning HTML [...]
I’ve been changing the permalink structure for WordPress sites to simply postname, and you can do the same! I’ll show you how to generate the redirects you need. In the past, I’ve configured WordPress to use the permalink structure Day and Name, which formats the URLs for posts as /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. Although I knew that a [...]
Sams Teach Yourself HTML and CSS in 24 Hours by Julie C. Meloni My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is a decent introduction to HTML and CSS. Its main advantages over other books of this type are the full color examples and syntax-highlighted code snippets. The explanations and examples are simple and easily understood. [...]
WordPress All-in-One For Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson, Cory Miller, Kevin Palmer, Andrea Rennick, Michael Torbert My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is the broadest, most comprehensive WordPress book I’ve read so far. It covers more than WordPress for Dummies (read my review), because it deals with everything from administration to design to development. I [...]
WordPress Bible by Aaron Brazell My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a comprehensive WordPress book; topics include getting started, plugin development, theme development, content management, and maintenance. I’m a web designer who creates WordPress sites for small businesses, so I focused on SEO, plugin recommendations, and theme development, and skimmed plugin development. My [...]
Head First WordPress by Jeff Siarto My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book is short and very high-level, dedicating only 1 or 2 pages to most topics. It’s best for beginners or intermediate WordPress users. It covers styling a theme, managing users, managing categories and tags, embedding video, podcasting, security, and performance. I liked [...]
Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is one of the most popular web design books, and for good reason. Zeldman has been around the Web for a long time, and his experience shows. This book teaches the concepts, history, and technologies behind web design for beginning and [...]
WordPress In Depth by Bud E. Smith My rating: 3 of 5 stars Based on the title, I expected to be overwhelmed by the “in depth”, technical details of WordPress. Instead, I was bored by the first 3 parts, which are mainly aimed at novice WordPress.com bloggers, and explain posts, graphics, links, and content creation. [...]