Recommendations for an In-Depth WordPress Book?

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I’ve been plugging away with WordPress for some years now. In that time, I’ve never really taken time to fully understand the platform. It powers my site, and that’s been enough. But I feel I need to know more about the system to get the most use out of it.

Please suggest any books that cover WP in some depth. I don’t necessarily need WordPress 101, but I am particularly interested in making use of WP’s extensibility, as well as building themes.

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8 comments

  1. If you are like me you probably view most books as being much too simple to really learn anything useful from because publishers are always trying to dumb them down to reach a broader audience. If you are like me, these two are probably some of the better books on the market because I think they are among the more advanced:

    Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes


    (source: mikeschinkel.com)

    WordPress Plugin Development – Beginner’s Guide

    Cover of Vladimir Prelovac's WordPress Plugin Development – Beginner’s Guide
    (source: mikeschinkel.com)

    Of course the books recommended by the others have their merits so, unless the cost of these books is significant to you I’d recommend grabbing them all and seeing what you can learn! Of course be sure to come back here to ask question about anything that’s unclear or that that you have to take to a much great depth!

  2. I recently looked at Smashing WordPress and it had a lot of really good info on building themes and using WordPress as a CMS:

    http://www.amazon.com/Smashing-WordPress-Beyond-Blog-Magazine/dp/0470684151

    Another good one is Digging Into WordPress by Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr

    http://digwp.com/book/

    EDIT 9/2/10

    I wanted to add another option which is WordPress Bible by: Aaron Brazell with Mark Jaquith Technical Editor:

    alt text

    http://www.amazon.com/WordPress-Bible-Aaron-Brazell/dp/0470568135/

    I own this book and it is the closest thing to a complete WordPress reference thats available.

    Until now, there has never been a book that covers
    the topic holistically and exhaustively and for all levels of expertise.
    -Aaron Brazell

  3. I would recommend buying a copy of “Digging into WordPress” by Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr.

    This book goes pretty in depth, but with some nicely written copy and with good examples. These two guys knows their stuff, so I recommend this book to you, as I have recommended it to many others.

  8. I have been using Aaron Brazell’s “WordPress Bible” since it came out. I’ve known Aaron since before the book was released and he is the one person I could go to with any WP-related question…if he wasn’t busy working on other WP stuff 🙂