Book Review + Giveaway Of Digging into WordPress (2 copies)
Saad BassiThis article is the first post of our new “Book Review Series” in which we will try to review and giveaway a book each week here on 1stWD for our awesome readers. If you are a WordPress lover like me then I am sure you have also read some books regarding WordPress. There are a plenty of books available in WordPress niche but one of the most comprehensive book I have ever seen is Digging into WordPress by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr. Both of them are renowned authors and famous developers of WordPress Community. Today we will review the book and yes as said in title, we have 2 copies of Digging into WordPress to giveaway for our beloved 1stWD readers.
About the Authors
The book is co-authored by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks and Jeff Starr of Perishable Press. Both of them are famous in WordPress Community because of their out of the box solutions for developing websites using WordPress.
I will suggest you to check their blogs to guess the quality of content in book. The blogs mentioned before are filled completely with awesomeness.
What’s so Special in Book??
So you want to know what’s so special in this book. The authors of book wrote it in just two lines and we think that it is 100% Correct.
There is much to learn about the World’s most popular publishing platform. From your first steps of learning about WordPress all the way through maintaining a site throughout the years, this book is packed with truly practical information.
In short, the book will teach you how to create a WordPress theme from scratch. Starting from how to install WordPress securely, you will end the book learning clever tips and tricks for advanced WordPress theme development.
Why we liked the book?
There is no doubt that the whole book is filled with great content but the best thing we liked in the book is written below.
The PDF version of the book is awesome because we will be able to update and expand it indefinitely. As WordPress changes, the book will evolve with new information, techniques, and code. This is why we call the DiW PDF a “living, breathing document” – it will grow with WordPress, and will be updated and improved periodically well into the future.
Yes, you have got it right. The plan is to update this book as often as WordPress changes with new versions. When we first heard about this feature, we thought that It will be a little bit difficult as WordPress releases 3 Major versions in a single year. It’s not easy to update the book thrice a year, but the guys behind Digging into WordPress proved their selves by providing the version two just after 3 months of releasing the book to public. This means that the book will get an update after WordPress 3.0 so you will never feel that your techniques are old.
Two new chapters in DiW V2
It’s here, THE GIVEAWAY
We have 2 copies of DiW book for giveaway. We are thankful to the guys behind DIW for supporting this giveaway. Read on how to take part in giveaway.
How to enter in the giveaway?
Pretty simple, you have to leave a comment on the post and tell us what you want to see on 1stwebdesigner, or how we can make the website better. The comments should be constructive and powerful so that you can increase the chance of your win. We will select the best opinions and winners will be announced. The giveaway is open till 11:59pm GMT+5, May 11th 2010.
Grab the book right now
If you don’t like waiting for the result of giveaway, you can buy the book here directly. What we can assure you that this book is definitely worth your money.
Feel free to let me know if you want us to review some specific book via comments section. Good Luck!
For Further Reading:
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Ranjith
Posted 746 days ago 25This masterpiece from Chris coyier is a must read for those WP aspirants … and i am one of them !
Talking about 1WD, there are a lot of things that can be improved (the contents are just awesome and there are a lot of scope for improvement).
Some of them are:
1. The never liked the LOGO of 1WD, give it a makeover and i bet, the site will win 10 bonus points right away
2. The contents are already rocking, but there needs to be a thorough curation, not to give a feeling that most of the articles, are round ups.
3. With the kind of readerbase and traffic, 1WD deserves a complete makeup and usability wise, there needs to lots of tweaking, with the help of the plugins that are available now.
These are a few of the points that comes to my mind, and would love, these to be implemented sooner.
Cheers,
mysticpixels
dfobbs
Posted 746 days ago 24I really enjoy using this site for learning but a major improvrnent I think would be to re-organise your tabs. It is abit messy with things like CSS & Design not being under the same topic.
Besides that keep the articles coming.
regards,
dfobbs
Balazs Bohonyi
Posted 746 days ago 23I want this book :)
It would be interesting to see some articles about other CMSs like Silverstripe for example (how to create themes for Silverstripe for example).
Rilwis
Posted 746 days ago 22I’ve heard a lot about this ebook and really want to have a copy of it. Jeff Starr and Chris Coyier are very famous, I often visit their blogs to see article about WordPress. Have this ebook is my great pleasure.
About 1stwebdesigner, I know you’re using Hybrid WordPress Theme Framework. Maybe you’re the most famous blog that using this framework. So, as a developer, I really want to read high quality, in-depth of using Hybrid or how to customize it as you did. I think many people are interested in this, too.
Thank you very much for this giveaway. Best wishes for you.
.-= Rilwis´s last blog ..Howto Install SyntaxHighligher In Blogger =-.
tcertain
Posted 746 days ago 21I have used WordPress to set up a blog, but don’t understand the working parts well enough to design with it. So I think it would be perfect for that.
Your site is very informative and I keep it on an rss feed that runs all day long. Would like to see more on LLC as the video reinforced what I had already investigated. But I would like to see more on individual LLC. Also more on SEO and how it is changing. More freebies would be nice. How to get clients without cold calling. More on pricing models.
Peter Z.
Posted 747 days ago 20I would like to read more on current and upcoming webdesign trends. It would be really nice to get to know about the newest technologies first :) here.
tomcat
Posted 747 days ago 19Very interesting book, thank you for the opportunity to win it :)
It would be great if you’d post more articles about wordpress, css, jQuery, fewer lists.
and maybe a revamped site :D
Matto
Posted 747 days ago 18Amazing book!
I’d love to see video tutorials on how to use jQuery with WordPress, more PS stuff and of course HTML5.
Rolando
Posted 747 days ago 17I would love to win a copy of the book, I’ve seen good reviews about it.
Back to the question, I would like to see an article about all the most important web conferences for the year so we can be aware and plan ahead of time trying to make it to some of them.
Thanks for this great opportunity.
Elena
Posted 747 days ago 16I’d like to see more PSD to HTML tutorials and learning how to put up a WordPress site for beginners. Thanks for the great contest.
Murlu
Posted 747 days ago 15I’ve been reading 1stWeb for quite some time now, the content is always superb but there is one thing I’ve love for it to cover.
I’d love to see more business oriented posts.
Not just freelance list posts but in depth articles such as setting up an LLC, working with taxes, hiring and outsourcing. Real world scenarios, not just upfront design.
I think it would be great for all of us to really get to know what it takes to successfully run an online business (wither it’s for design, coding or other).
.-= Murlu´s last blog ..Make Money Online By Uploading Files =-.
Dainis Graveris
Posted 746 days ago 32I am planning to write actually about what’s happening and how it’s all organized here @1stwd site, it would be real world scenario from my side :)
but great idea – definitely agreed we could cover those topics and make them design, blogging, business related :)
Saad Bassi
Posted 746 days ago 37I am here with Murlu.:)
kelly
Posted 747 days ago 14Thanks for the giveaway. Like to see more SEO articles and more how-to video tutorials also.
Karen
Posted 747 days ago 13Please always give a visual example of what you are describing. Recently another site was posting on custom fields. They gave no such example. I requested one, and they gave some breezy answer – but they didn’t go the extra step to show what the heck they were trying to describe. those of us who come from design backgrounds and don’t come from programming backgrounds, really need to see a visual example. so there’s my request & i would LOVE a copy of Digging into WordPress – because i hear it’s full of visual examples! Yay!
Dainis Graveris
Posted 746 days ago 33oh I am repeating this to all of our guest writers – more visual reference everywhere! I think we are doing this in good way already, but will try to improve even more!
Thanks for comment and good luck into winning this book! :)
Dodie
Posted 747 days ago 12Beginner’s guides (and absolute beginner’s guides) to anything design :D
Pablo Lara H
Posted 747 days ago 11I would like to see more articles about HTML5 and CSS. And maybe some of illustration.
Ronaldo
Posted 747 days ago 10Hello,
The only changes I would do to this site would be to the footer: improving content and that long list of authors (maybe pagination, top authors, dunno).
As for content I really would like to see more about prototyping/wireframing, web projects management/planning, information architecture and in-depth website analysis/case-studies, usability and UX.
For the rest i’m happy with it. Congrats
Abdelhadi Touil
Posted 747 days ago 9Thanks for this great giveaway.
First sorry for my bad English. I’d like to see here more tips about how to use jQuery and Wordress, more stuff about wordpress secrets, and more tutorials in Coding layouts from PSD to xhtml/css and html5/css3, so this can helps us very much.
For 1stWebDesigner I think it’ll be better if you add a page in the top menu to authors, because I didn’t like it so much in the footer, in wich you can add more nicer stuff.
These are my ideas, and thanks for listening to my bad English again :)
Good luck.
Charles Weber
Posted 747 days ago 8Picture this, your viewers come to the site and see what look like buttons at the top of your screen. They click on one and are taken to a different page because the buttons actually belong to a banner ad and not your site. They get frustrated and never come back. This kind of thing is all too common, plus banner ads are so ’90s. Check out a book called “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. This book is in my opinion, the bible on usability standards.
On a side note I would also like to see more options for sharing posts via an array of social networks.
Thanks for the promotion, I hope I win a copy of that book.
-Charles
Saad Bassi
Posted 746 days ago 36Ah. Charles ads are necessary to pay the bills. If there will be no ads, there will be no articles too.:( We will try to introduce some new ad spots so that we can remove that leader board.:)
Gonzo the Great
Posted 747 days ago 7Hi Saad,
Great give-away! Why I would like to win one copy of DiW?
As a blogger and freelance designer I’m constantly working on my blog or making corporate blogging sites in WP (besides making hand-coded HTML-websites). Every piece of (good) information is crucial in this process to achieve the best result.
I heard a lot of good things about this book (not only in your post), so I hope to win one! You’re never to old to learn, Cheers & Ciao …
.-= Gonzo the Great´s last blog ..Links for 2010-05-04 [Digg] =-.
el
Posted 747 days ago 6Fewer lists; more practical, useful information.
Of the 10 articles on your front page, 7 are lists. While grouping things you find interesting and “inspiring” is convenient for you, it’s less useful to me than something like your excellent jQuery validation article.
Most days I need less inspiration and more information. I needed some jQuery validation help a few weeks ago: Now that I have some working code, I can make my app better because you showed me how easily it could be done.
And even if you’re explaining techniques I don’t need now, they serve as inspiration in themselves by showing me possible applications. Help me be a better designer/illustrator/coder by showing me HOW to achieve my dreams rather than drowning me in inspiration I can’t realize.
Saad Bassi
Posted 746 days ago 35Well, really don’t know how you count the article. When this article went live there were 3 tuts, 3 text articles and 4 lists. Looks like you made a mistake.
Definitely, tuts like the one Michal Kozak wrote are awesome but its a fact that they take a lot of time to code and write. We will surely try to increase the number of tuts. Stay Tuned.:)
I am very thankful for your detailed input. Best of luck for the giveaway.:)
Matt
Posted 747 days ago 5I would like to see more book reviews! I was just recently looking for an intermediate to advance wordpress book and decided to buy the “How to be a Rockstar WordPress developer”. Had I seen this post previous I may have bought this instead!
Yigit Ozdamar
Posted 747 days ago 4I think you guys can incrase the speed of page. Other things are really cool! Thanks for the giveaway!
Jim Glading
Posted 747 days ago 3Just starting a WordPress blog for my ESL colleagues and am looking for suggestions, how-tos, tricks and traps. Found your website on Twitter. It looks like a good place to start. How to make it better? Make the Giveaway conditions clearer from the start.
Jay Carlson
Posted 747 days ago 2I’d like to see less “lists” of things and more articles written on best practices and processes. it’s easy to see a list of “beautiful websites” and go copy those styles/layouts/textures/typography in photoshop (I’ve done it myself, so I’m not dogging on anyone), but that’s not how it should work. we need more info on creating from scratch, being creative, how to really think, how to concentrate, and how to innovate. I feel that it’s hard to do those things when we’re bombarded by the same lists over and over…
(not saying that 1st Web Designer does a lot of lists, but it’s just a trend I see a lot of lately that bugs me…)
Hugobel
Posted 747 days ago 1Hello, I am moving my website to wordpress and this could be really helpful :)
Thanks for this promo!