WordPress For Dummies

Most of this book is written for dummies.
And then the parts that I was really interested in and needed help in seemed to be written for computer experts.

Purchased used - unit was in exceptional condition - practically new - and half the price of new.
Why go anywhere else?

I bought this after having read positive reviews on Amazon.com for this book. My prior experiences with "Dummies" books have all been positive and I usually keep the books for quite a long time.

This one was a disappointment. I've worked in print media for 12 years, and I found the figures (illustrations) used to show various wordpress menus and screens far below the quality found in a small-town newspaper. The illustrations were either too dark & fuzzy or too light & fuzzy. The only way I could discern what was being explained was to go online to Wordpress itself.

It also became obvious that the author is enamored with the self-hosted version of Wordpress, namely Wordpress.org, unlike the free version at Wordpress.com. In fact, two-thirds of the book is devoted to this. Several chapters start with tempting tidbits that sound like fun to work with on a blog, then she happens to mention that such goodies are only available on the .org version.

The large portion of the book dedicated to self-hosting blogs could have been a separate edition. It would have been less frustrating to potential readers. In general, this book needs a major overhaul.

Info in the WP for Dummies book is straight-forward and easy to follow. Great tips for beginners like me.

I am an experienced developer and system administrator. I used this book early this summer to train my stafff and then to quickly set up a WordPress blog on our intranet. Now I am using it to train members of a committee of professionals. The committee is considering using WordPress to track committee discussions. It was one of five books that I bought on blogs, and this is the book I grab most frequently. Author Lisa Sabin-Wilson is an experienced blog designer and web designer and has a pleasant, professional writing style.

Really good book,

however it might be not for beginners,

helps really much if you already are in to webdesign and wants to learn wordpress.

This is a good book. This second version is better than the first, as the third will surpass this edition. This book is detailed, informative and cheap. Don't waste time, just buy it...

I actually used this to teach myself how to maintain my site since I had someone else building it, but Lisa helped me teach my web designer a thing or two that he didn't know :)

Nicely written, organized and communicated! I have a pretty complex WordPress community site...thanks for making me feel like I could handle things on my own when my developer turned my site over to me.

First, the content of the book itself is awesome. Fabulous, logical, clear explanations. Author addresses the questions any potential WordPress user would want to know in order to decide whether WordPress is what he/she should use and, if so, which level of WordPress (free, host-it-yourself, WordPress MU). Then she gives excellent step-by-step instructions about how to achieve your WordPress goals.

This Kindle version, however, is another story. It has at least two major problems:

(a) This book has some very important tables of text. Yet, the Kindle translation mangles them. It's not just that the text in rows wraps around in hard-to-decipher ways; more than that, it appears that often text at the end of the rows is simply dropped, unable to be found.

Amazon needs to do a better job in its translating textual tables into Kindle format.

(b) This Kindle version appears to be much older (November 9, 2007) than the current non-Kindle version (February 9, 2009). See WordPress For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Note that the non-Kindle version has a link that directed me to this older Kindle version, but never mentioned that the Kindle version is not the same edition as the non-Kindle version.

So... despite already having paid for the Kindle version, I'm going to order the non-Kindle version as well so that (a) I can read these important tables and (b) I won't have older, potentially obsolete information.

Overall, a good guide that is well structured and helpful. This does not mean, however, that some additional explanations defining all terms and their usage for the benefit of the truly technologically challenged readers would not be even more helpful. If the author included some before and after illustrations and how implementation of the topic at hand would look and work after it is finished, the work would gain even greater reviews and probably result in increased sales. Realizing that even the most basic of terms for people in the know are truly puzzling for those of us who are not into the enlightened lingo of geeks and techys would make this guide the essential reference that should be on everyone's work desk.

I picked this up after switching my blog from blogger to Wordpress using my own URL and hosting service (I am using the .org version of Wordpress). I quickly realized I was way over my head and that's where this book came in. It is incredibly comprehensive and detailed and addresses virtually everything you would need to know in setting up a blog with Wordpress (both .com and .org). My personal favorite was the section on coding & CSS since while I was able to figure a lot of other things out from reading message boards and visiting others' blogs this was the one area I found myself getting stuck. Wilson deals with this subject, among others, in a very conversational and approachable manner and even without any coding experience I was able to get up and running.

Overall, this is a great book. A lot of the contents you may be able to figure out on your own from playing around in the Wordpress interface and reading message boards but some it's valuable to have it all in one place so you can save the time you would have spent digging. Many websites that talk about establishing a Wordpress blog assume you have some coding and website knowledge so it was a relief just to find a book that broke it down to square one.

Highly recommended.

I've found the book worthwhile. Knew a little about WordPress, but had questions. This book answered them. I'm finding it a good resource.

I'm a new WP user. Someone else set up my web and blog on it. I have always been very good at word processing, but all the codes I need to know just to edit a simple page is ridiculous. This book did not cover how to edit/code the web pages. Blogs are simple. It's the pages in the website which are driving me crazy.

Transferring files from my computer to the hosting server through an ftp client was a nightmare. The section on this was too brief and without the necessary detail to "self-host". I got a basic blog up and running (after FINALLY installing WordPress onto GoDaddy) but was unable to do a simple thing like change the theme. This simple task was so overwhelming that there is NO WAY I would try to do anything else. I was on the Wordpress.org website in the forums, on the phone with my hosting service...I finally gave up. I never did get the theme changed.
If you aren't a techie, my advice is to go with a website like Blogger or Wordpress.com if you want something simple like a family blog. Otherwise, you might want to hire this one out. Trying to build a blog with Wordpress is a waste of time for the average Joe.

This book almost has it all for "newest" version of Word Press. My only complaints (are quite minor) were that I found the Index rather cumbersome and not particularly clear as to the intended reference and the stupid little illustrations on the side of the pages. It may be all "Dummies" books have them, but they took up a lot of what otherwise would have been productive space and were a little vague in describing what they were intended to convey. Other comment - not related to content - was that the quality of the paper used was really bad. Sort of like thick newspaper pages. Basically, however, it is a very good book for Word Press, whether a beginner or not. It cleared up a lot of things for me.

I have (slowly) been building a website for the purpose of advocating for more action worldwide to minimize fire-related deaths in dwellings. Having started with a CMS (content management) application installed by my webhosting company and ending up with much (newbie-caused, not blaming anyone else) frustration, I investigated WordPress and found that it is a Blogging-CMS package that can be a powerful tool for setting up a website. I bought two books from Amazon about WordPress. Both are excellent, the other being "Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read."
"WordPress for Dummies" is an excellent and thorough introduction to the power of WordPress. It covers the use of WordPress in several settings, including but not limited to: 1) the WordPress.com setup and 2) a situation like mine, where WordPress is provided by a webhosting site. In both cases, the book provides excellent coverage of the software's dashboard, organizing a blog, dealing with allowing for both comments and new articles from others (if you desire), adding third-party articles, etc.
The book covers much more than I have listed above, but for people like me who are new to setting up software for blog/website building, "WordPress for Dummies" (Second Edition) is simply an excellent tool which I strongly recommend.

I presume all of the written content is fine. At ;least I can read it easily with my Kindle 2My problem is with the tables, graphs, and charts. I can't see them well enough to read them. Some are just barely adequate, but most is useless. That really negates the benefits of having a Kindle version. I will request a refund today - unless someone can explain how I can make the graphics show up more clearly.

Larry J. Frieders, RPh
larry@thecompounder.com | [...]
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