Professional WordPress 1st Edition

I was expecting much more detail than a simple overview in the "Load Balancing" section.I initially downloaded the "sample" to the Kindle app on my iPhone and then perused the table of contents. "Chapter-11: Statistics, Scalability, Security, and Spam" had a section titled "Load Balancing Your WordPress Site". Since this was a "sample" it I was only able to see the name of the section in the table of contents - the actual content of the section was not available until I purchased the book. Since I am responsible for multiple WordPress environments at my job where each environment has at least two web front-ends (LAMP), I was very interested to see what the book had to say about this topic in particular; so, I paid for the full book.With the words "Professional, Design, and Development" in the book's title, I was expecting to see detailed information on the best way to implement a load-balanced WordPress environment. Instead, that section starts with "We are just going to briefly discuss some of the challenges you will encounter when attempting to load balance a dynamically generated site" and then proceeds to list some of the "challenges" that you will face when trying to do this. For anyone already trying to load-balance WordPress you will already know that you need to maintain file synchronization between the front-end web servers. I was expecting an in-depth explanation describing the best method for achieving this and how to actually implement it. Unfortunately, the book only provided a terse overview - no detail.For my WordPress environments I launch a Unison process, via CRON, every 5-minutes to keep the WordPress files synchronized. This works fine and does not present a single point of failure; I was hoping the book would discuss in detail other possible methods. Instead, the book suggests using a shared NFS/Samba volume; however, unless you are running a clustered NFS/Samba server, the shared volume is a single point of failure. The book also suggests using rsync; however, rsync does not work well because it cannot handle the situation where file changes are made on two (or more) servers: it does not keep track of what changes on each server independently in order to know how to resolve the changes so both servers stay up-to-date.In summary, I purchased the book solely for the expected details in the "Load Balancing" section and I was disappointed with the book's lack of detail.

If you want to be a Wordpress developer, buy it and read it. I believe all WP newbies and beginners like to install WP, try playing with it and modifying code without proper knowledge how to create proper WP theme, WP plugins and WP widgets.This book is perfect for every developer who wants to learn Wordpress architecture, how to organize theme code, plugin code, create shortcodes and use them. It's really one of the best beginner books I've ever read. In first chapters you will learn history of Wordpress and how to use it as end customer. Then you'll learn code architecture, how to use basic functions, how to search code, create themes, plugins, customize dashboard. Final chapters are about integrating Wordpress with RSS services, how to handle security, migrate your existing website to Wordpress.It's really fantastic to see how this book can help anyone - PHP beginners and PHP pros. It contains lot of useful information, tips and tricks, security info, plugin recommendations. Plugin demos and examples are really nice. There's some space to fill in but I assume that's why you have to buy Wordpress Plugin Development by Wrox. I have both books and I'm really happy for it.

I got this book to learn how to create themes for Wordpress from scratch. I can already take an existing theme and modify it. The book only has one chapter on this, and really only tells you to use a framework. So the book was a little disappointing for the main reason I purchased the book.However, the book contains very little filler, and covers the in-and-outs of Wordpress, and provided a lot of resources I didn't know about. The first couple chapters were kind of dumb, since most people buying this will already know how to install wordpress and make a basic post. I can see why the author might do this though. Ease people into the book so they get comfortable with it before dropping raw code on them. It also goes against his claim of showing how wordpress works from the core working out.Really minor complaints, just wanted to give a balanced review. With no good books on the market about making themes, this makes the perfect companion to one of those books. After reading it I doubled my knowledge of Wordpress, and I have been working with it for a couple years now. Solid 5 stars.

"Professional WordPress - Design and Development" is really good book on WordPress. It shows you how WP works (starting from the loop, to hooking etc... which makes it outlive the WP version it was written for (I thought 3.0). I guess this is very useful for everyone who wants to take his WP skills from just running WP to hacking it to his/her own wishes.Starting from a top-level view on WP, it then diggs down into the Loop, database, queries, taxonomies, plugin development, shortcodes, theming and, very important as WP grows: security. It also covers content building, navigation, search optimization, migration, ... more than you could wish for.I am just a small-time developer on WP (made some 30 sites to date) but this book has been a good reference for me in a lot of darker moments. It also led me to develop a working routine that now saves me a lot of time.Highly recommend for everyone serious about WordPress.

This is a nice beginners guide to WordPress and it's a good entry into that world.However, the subject matter the book tries to cover is huge as it is trying to explore every aspect of design and development for WordPress in only a few hundred pages. Because of this there is plenty of ground covered but nothing explored to any kind of in depth detail so it isn't much good for anyone looking to specialise in any one area. For example, I am a web designer/developer looking to get into WordPress theme creation and whilst there is enough here to get started there is not enough to really get me going.Overall this was an ambitious book from the outset and again, its a nice starting point. However, all you need to do is look at the sheer size of the WordPress codex to know that this book was always going to fall far short of what you need it to cover.

I recently bought this book and have really enjoyed the book. Though I have not finished the book, the little I have read has greatly assisted me to start using word press to design my site. The book is written in simple english and is easy to follow with clear examples. It is a very good book for beginners and will therefore not hesitate to recommend it to anyone that is interested in learning about wordpress should get a copy of this book.I did not regret and will not regret purchasing this book. Even though I'm still struggling with some aspect of wordpress, anyone interested can actually visit my site [...] to see the little work I have been able to achieve by reading this book.To the author, I say keep up the good work.

I found this book incredibly helpful to me. The first site I ever built was through SquareSpace, who run a fantastic service and make it very easy for newbies to build a very professional looking site. However for someone who couldn't code very well, there was not a lot of tweeking I could do, so I decided to give Wordpress ago. I had heard a lot of excellent things about Wordpress but when I actually started with it I found myself getting lost very quickly.So I had a look on Amazon for a Wordpress book and found this one, quite expensive, however if I got the results I was looking for it would be a small price to play. I read the book from front to back in about 3 days and when I came back to actually building my site everything was so much more clear. I obviously still referenced the book during certain periods of the building process and still now that the site is up and running and has been for the past 10 weeks, I still look at the book. So for me it turned out to be very well spent money. My site Techmedia Fusion has gone from strength to strength and I feel it has a lot to do with this book. I would certainly recommend buying the book.Harry

Really a very informative book that introduces you to the core princibles that underpin wordpress. If you have a firm grasp of HTML and basic php this book will have you flying on the Wordpress CMS in no time.

good for reference and brushing up on skills, wordpress is ever changing so have to keep up, well recommended