As of January 2021, there were 1,197,982,359 websites globally and they continue to grow every day. That huge number indicates that there are many opportunities on the web and anyone can have a slice of this pie. Whether you are contemplating moving your enterprise or beginning one on the web, this is one of the best times in history to execute that idea. We are more inter-connected than ever before and this means an ocean of opportunities.
One of the ways you can begin online presence is by constructing a website maybe a social media account here or a blog there. For a website or blog, there are various avenues you can use to have one up and running. You can hire a web developer or you can decide to put up something for yourself using tools such as WordPress and other content management systems such as Drupal.
WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system is a software tool that makes it super easy to manage features of your website – like written content and pages – without having any programming skills.
As you think about starting something and you need an online presence, WordPress can be one tool you can use or leverage to install and manage your own business website, e-Commerce site, Blog, Portfolio or Forum. Due to that, this article provides some books that will teach you the internals of WordPress so that what you are creating can be one of the more than one billion websites aforementioned. We know you are excited about learning WordPress which powers forty percent (40%) of total websites globally.
1. WordPress for Beginners 2023
Dr Andy Williams, the author, notes that building a beautiful, professional-looking WordPress website (or a blog) is no longer in the domain of computer geeks alone. He brings out the best in his expertise herein to teach everyone how they can build an online presence in the form of a blog or webpage using the simplicity and flexibility of WordPress.
Andy wrote this resource with the primary goal of taking anyone, even an absolute beginner, from zero to WordPress “guru” in a few short hours. He uses a step-by-step visual approach ( with over 330 screenshots) to cover the latest version of WordPress just for your benefit.
Some of the things you will find inside:
- How to set up web hosting and domain registrar the correct way.
- Installing WordPress.
- A Dashboard Overview.
- Cleaning out the stuff that is installed by default.
- Finding and installing WordPress themes to change the look and feel of your website instantly.
- Plugins. What they are and how they can add fabulous features to your site.
- How to update WordPress, themes, and plugins.
- Understand every single setting. You can use our suggested defaults.
- How to find and use the RSS feeds to help search engines find your content.
- Importance of user profiles and assigning an image (Gravatar) to your email address.
- Creating great navigation systems on your site, with custom menus, internal linking, and related posts.
- Enabling and dealing with visitor comments.
Just as the title of the book depicts, this is a book that anyone can approach and feel welcome due to the simplicity that the author has employed. Whether you want to build a business site, an affiliate site, a hobby site, or a blog, WordPress is a great choice, and this accessible book shows you how. Click below to get started and save what you would have spent elsewhere.
2. WordPress All-in-One For Dummies
Author Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a popular conference speaker who co-owns WebDevStudios, a development company specializing in custom WordPress plugins, themes, and deployments. She has a deep understanding of WordPress and is here to help anyone with an interest to learn this tool that changed how websites and blogs can be set up.
From the basics of setting up your account to choosing a host and theme to manage content with editor Gutenberg to keeping your site secure, the 8 expert books packed in this resource will help you take the WordPress community by storm.
While you read, you will learn how to:
- Build your site foundation
- Install WordPress
- Choose a server
- Become a site admin examining SEO
- Utilize Plugins
- Customize Your Site
- Publish Your Site
- Manage content using Gutenberg
- Among others
Lisa Sabin-Wilson does enterprise-level applications, design & development for WordPress for her clients and she not only has sound technical expertise but offers more to her readers in this fully packed and easy-to-read book. Start your online presence today by leveraging WordPress which Lisa teaches adequately. Click below to order this copy from Amazon.
3. WordPress 5 Cookbook
Author Rakhitha Nimesh Ratnayake is a freelance web developer, writer, and open-source enthusiast. He has over 9 years of experience in developing WordPress applications and plugins. He develops premium WordPress plugins for individual clients and the CodeCanyon marketplace. As a subject matter expert, Rakhitha decided to bless his readers with this book to help them learn what he has managed to do with WordPress for the many years he has been actively developing.
This text for intermediate users starts with simple recipes for configuring WordPress and managing basic platform features. It then moves on to explore how to install and customize WordPress plugins, widgets, and themes. The next few chapters cover recipes for content and user-management-related topics such as customizing the content display, working with content types, using the new Gutenberg editor, and customizing editorial workflow for building advanced blogs.
It has thirteen chapters and goes deeper into WordPress where you will learn how to use WordPress as an application framework as well as a platform for building e-commerce sites.
What you will learn
- Install and customize WordPress themes and plugins for building websites
- Develop modern web designs without the need to write any code
- Explore the new Gutenberg content editor introduced in WordPress 5 (Bebo)
- Use the existing WordPress plugins to add custom features and monetize your website
- Improve user interaction and accessibility for your website with simple tricks
- Discover powerful techniques for maintaining and securing your websites
- Extend built-in WordPress features for advanced website management
As you finish this book, you will have the tools and skills required to build and maintain modern WordPress websites with the latest technologies and be able to find quick solutions to common WordPress problems. Isn’t that enough to get you excited? Jump into it as soon as you order this copy from Amazon below:
4. Building Web Apps with WordPress
To start with the portfolio of the authors, Brian has been working with WordPress at an expert level since 2008 building custom web and mobile solutions for clients such as TIME Magazine, NBC, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, Constant Contact, and Uber among others. His co-author Jason Coleman, has been pushing WordPress to its limits for years and has helped launch several startups using WordPress as an application framework. They are adept at WordPress and are here to help fellow developers to stake their skills to another new level.
Before proceeding, it is useful to note that this book will be most useful for WordPress developers looking to work on heavier applications, and PHP developers with some WordPress experience looking for a PHP-based application framework. Beginners will find it a little bit deep.
If you are a programmer with familiarity with PHP, HTML, SQL, jQuery/JavaScript, and CSS, this book will show you how to use WordPress as an application framework to build any web app, large or small.
Some of the things you will find inside:
- Managing user accounts and roles, and accessing user data
- Building asynchronous behaviours with jQuery
- Using WordPress to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Integrating PHP libraries, external APIs, and web service plugins
- Collecting payments through e-commerce and membership plugins
- Learning how to speed up and scale your WordPress app
- Extending the WordPress REST API and creating custom endpoints
- Learning about WordPress Gutenberg blocks development
Do not forget that in this updated second edition, Brian Messenlehner and Jason Coleman cover new features and functionality added to WordPress up to version 5.4. Click below to get it all in your collection from Amazon and get coding in WordPress.
5. WordPress The Missing Manual
Geared towards helping complete beginners to grasp the power of WordPress to build their websites and have control over it, the author does a good job in making it as easy as possible for anyone to follow along. Author Matthew MacDonald is a science and technology writer with well over a dozen books to his name. He is particularly known for his books about building websites.
In this jargon-free Missing Manual, Matthew shows you how to use WordPress’s themes, widgets, and plug-ins to build just about any kind of site. You will learn everything you need to create a new WordPress site, fill it with content, and make it look professional.
What you will know in the end:
- Setting up WordPress: Configure WordPress on your web host or get it running on your home computer.
- Creating your site: Get hands-on instructions for building all types of websites, from blogs to business sites with e-commerce features.
- Jazzing your site up: Add picture galleries, slideshows, video clips, music players, and podcasts.
- Adding features: Select from thousands of plug-ins to enhance your site’s capabilities, from contact forms to a basic shopping cart.
- Building a truly unique site: Customize a WordPress theme to create a site that looks exactly the way you want.
- Attracting an audience. Use SEO, site statistics, and social sharing to reach more people.
Staying safe: Use backup and staging tools to protect your content and avoid catastrophe.
This book is for anyone who wants to learn how to make websites with WordPress. As long as you know your way around a computer (and the internet), but haven’t yet dipped your toes into the world of WordPress, this is the manual that should not be missing in your library. Get it as soon as you can from Amazon by clicking on the link below.
6. WordPress Explained
Stephen Burge combines teaching and web design by running OSTraining.com which teaches people how to build websites. He has managed to work with clients including Apple, Pfizer and the U.S. Departments of Energy among others.
In this text, the author walks beginners through installing WordPress, planning sites that are easy to use and manage, adding content, and incorporating powerful site features without programming. In the end, you will learn how to run your site securely and efficiently, no matter how big or popular it becomes!
Comprised of eighteen chapters, you will master WordPress hands-on, through a complete case study, crystal-clear visuals, simple explanations, and on-target analogies, all extensively tested with real WordPress beginners.
The biggest motivation is that if you follow along, then by the end of the book, you will have a complete WordPress site and will be ready to build WordPress sites that make you proud. Your copy awaits on Amazon at the link below.
7. WordPress For Dummies
Author Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a popular conference speaker who co-owns WebDevStudios, a development company specializing in custom WordPress plugins, themes, and deployments. She has a deep understanding of WordPress and is here to help anyone with an interest to learn this tool that changed how websites and blogs can be set up.
Crafted for beginners and anyone with the desire to own their own blogs, e-commerce sites, or any kind of web application, this book drops you right into the fast lane to publishing your first website or blog by teaching you everything you need to know from the very beginning.
What you will get inside:
- Customizing a theme
- Creating your first post
- Using the content management system
- Working with multimedia formats
- Adding plugins to your site
- Building a publishing schedule
- Becoming proficient in using the Dashboard
- Hosting multiple sites
Armed with the knowledge in these text skills, you will be wielding the awesome power of WordPress―the web content-building tool used by individuals, organizations, and corporations worldwide to get their messaging out attractively and professionally. Waste no more time, click below to order your copy from Amazon.
8. The 5-Day WordPress School
This guide gives you the easiest and simpler way to set up, design and secure killer WordPress sites. This can be used by anyone even if you do not have any prior knowledge of coding or nerve-racking technical things.
We all know that WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms and Content Management Systems you can find in the world. Today it powers 52% of websites on the internet dues to its efficiency and amazing features.
To manage the WordPress site effectively, you need some guidance. For that reason, Cyrus Jackson who is a professional WordPress designer guides you on how to know and understand the WordPress platform effectively. In this guide, you will learn how to set up, design and secure your WordPress site with step-by-step illustrations, screenshots, graphics and guidelines to give you the needed road map.
By reading this guide, you will get:
- Deep explanation of the WordPress platform
- A general understanding of the WordPress dashboard
- How to set up a self-hosted WordPress Website
- All that is required for web hosting and domain registration
- The available web hosts that are reliable and affordable
- Factors to Consider when choosing a web host
- How to install the WordPress plugins and themes
- How to customize sharing buttons and widget area
- How to create and publish posts
- How to delete posts and plugins
Obtain a copy of this guide:
9. Professional WordPress Plugin Development
This is the updated version of the Professional WordPress Plugin Development guide that covers all the modern plugin development for WordPress. If you use WordPress to create and manage online content, then you should be interested in plugins. They are used to extend or enhance the CMS functionality.
This edition will teach you how to build advanced plugin development scenarios. It covers all the information for plugins, frameworks, coding standards, dashboards, settings, menus, and related APIs. More topics cover performance, security, data validation, and SQL statements. etc.
In this book, you will understand:
- The ability and importance of hooks in WordPress
- JavaScript and Ajax and how they work on your site
- The key technologies: Block Editor/Gutenberg, JS/React, PHP, and the REST API
- How to create and use custom post types and taxonomies.
- How to work with users and user data
- Using Cron to schedule tasks
You can find more information about this book using the following link.
10. WordPress for Beginners
Although WordPress is so easy to use, it needs some knowledge to unearth its full power and ability. This guide, provided by Kevin Lioy should make it so easy for you to manage a WordPress site without any prior knowledge.
Here, you will learn and understand several concepts that include:
- WordPress abilities and why it’s the best platform for your blog
- How to install WordPress, step by step
- How to improve the performance of your website using advanced techniques
- Why backups are required on a site.
- How to use the platform
- Analysing data and improving traffic
- How to publish posts
- How to deal with your community
- SEO-friendly way to use categories and tags
- The plugins can be used to create photo galleries, podcasts and any other content
This guidebook can be obtained by following the link below:
Final Comments
After learning WordPress, the limits that your imagination can take you will determine what you are about to showcase to the world. It has been made as easy as possible so that you can focus on what you would wish to share with the global citizens spread across this huge earth. Begin your venture today as we wait to drop our jaws at your creativity, your dream and your vision.
Away from that sweet sauce, we would wish to extend our gratitude for the support we continue to receive from you all. You keep us going. If you would like to read more learning material, some are shared below for your reading.
- Install WordPress with Nginx on Ubuntu / Debian
- Shared vs Managed WordPress Hosting: Which is Right for You?
- How to improve the security of your website visitors
- Best Books to learn Web Development – PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery
