Book review: Teach Yourself Visually WordPress

Teach Yourself Visually WordPress by Janet Majure

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

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This book is for absolute beginners looking for the most basic essentials of WordPress. If you've graduated from beginner to amateur or above, there's not much for you here. I also wasn't a fan of the cartoony robot pictures infesting the book.

There are some brief conceptual discussions, but it's mostly step-by-step instructions for both WordPress.com and WordPress.org. The steps are nicely illustrated with full-color screenshots. Every other page has a frequently asked question and answer.

Notes
Images
Under Media Settings, uncheck Crop thumbnail to exact dimensions.
Before uploading images, resize them to the largest you want them to appear.
Try to keep images under 150 kB.
Add alt text to images for screenreaders, text-to-speech programs, and SEO.
Upload favicon.ico to the root of your site and the theme directory.

Plugins
ShareThis or Sociable
WB-DB-Backup
WordPress Backup
WP Super Cache
All in One SEO Pack
Google Analyticator
Ajax Edit Comments: lets users edit their own comments

SEO
Use a permalink scheme containing the date.
Use keywords in post titles, category names, and image alt text.

In Discussion Settings, check Enable threaded (nested) comments.
To prevent pingbacks from your own posts, enter the hyperlink to your post as only the part of the URL behind your domain name.
Test CSS with the the Web Developer extension for Firefox.

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