How to be a Rockstar Wordpress Designer Review
Will Envato ever stop? Recently, co-founder Collis & Nettuts regular Harley released a 303 page ebook, dedicated to the wonderful platform that is Wordpress. More specifically, a book to help you get to grips with Wordpress, showing you how to create theme’s & customize the system to your needs. Being a massive Envato fan, I immediately rushed out (proverbially of course!) to get my mits on this book.
So what do you get for your money?
After downloading this book (going through a very simple & easy checkout process) I was pleasantly surprised to find just how much detail had been put into this package. Not only do you get the ebook, which is obviously the meat of this package, but you’ll also be provided with support files, themes and photoshop source files of examples used in the book. The book has been refreshed to include Wordpress 2.7 features and includes a section on threaded comments which makes for interesting reading.
Here’s a full list of included items:
- The PDF ebook
- Read Me file
- 3 complete Wordpress themes (of the 3 sites you build in the book). A Blog theme, A portfolio theme, and a general ’site’ theme.
- HTML versions of the above Wordpress themes
- The PSD source files for the designs
- XML files & images used in the sites, so you can recompile them as content.
Whats in the book?
Within the ebook you’ll find a complete guide to working with Wordpress. Collis & Harley have even taken the trouble to show you basically how to install Wordpress. They then include a very easy to understand description of Wordpress concepts, such as page’s, post’s, trackback’s, user’s and more. This is a brilliant way to introduce the audience to the wonder that is Wordpress, and its great to have them explained in such a well thought out and clear manner.
Because you do need to know some HTML & CSS to create Wordpress theme’s, its recommended that you further your understanding first (by reading online tutorials e.t.c). If you know a little html and css, I think you could get by, as Collis & Harley included a pretty decent walk-through of how they coded the themes. I think the book’s site puts it best:
“The book is aimed at anyone with a solid understanding of HTML/CSS. You don’t need to know PHP, you don’t need to have ever even touched WordPress before. The examples begin from scratch and build on each other, while basic PHP principles that are used are explained in an easy to understand manner.”
Additionally, they also talk you through designing them in Photoshop, which just shows how far they have gone in building upon your own knowledge and getting you designing like the best of them.
I love how there’s a whole chapter on Blog Design, discussing trends & features of successful blogs. Within this chapter, there’s even tips on creating a blog that encourages subscriptions, commenting and browsing deeper into the site. And how to make your blog user-friendly and advert friendly. I really enjoyed the “Preparing Wordpress for use” Checklist. On this list, you’ll find guidelines and suggestions of plug-ins to add & settings to alter to create yourself a very solid foundation from which to build your blog. As a relative Wordpress newcomer, it was great to pick up some tips here, considering both authors experience with blogging.
Everything involved in creating a Wordpress theme is in this book. From Conditional tags, to covering “the Loop”. From the Wordpress codex to file hierarchy’s this book is a very detailed, easy to understand introduction to developing themes for Wordpress. With a chapter on innovative way’s to use the platform such as using it to build a social networking site, or as a design gallery - I’m confident that even after you become a Wordpress rockstar, you’ll still use it as a reference. Its just that good!
To finish, I’m massively impressed with this book. This book has helped me seriously develop my Wordpress skills. I’d recommend it to anyone who wishes to make that jump into Wordpress, and wish to do so in a simple and fun way. These 2 make Wordpress easy to work with. I mean really easy. All information is delivered in a simple & understandable format, with content been developed logically and in good detail. A great resource, truly worth its megabytes in gold!
