Book Review: WordPress Theme Design by Tessa Blakeley Silver
If you are looking for a Content Publishing System that is fast, simple, and flexible then you’ll want to consider using WordPress. Some of the advantages of WordPress are that it’s easy to expand and it can accommodate just about any kind of site design with minimal programming skills.
Speaking of site design, if you’re planning on creating a unique look and feel for your WordPress driving site then you’ll need this book, WordPress Theme Design by Tessa Blakeley Silver. Tessa does an excellent job of explaining in detail how to create a WordPress theme from start to finish — the author even walks you through an example theme design “step-by-step.”
Not only will this book teach you the basics of the famous “WordPress loop” but how its framework is arranged and how it’s used by the application. Furthermore, you’ll understanding how themes are integrated into this framework and how to create them or modify existing ones to take advantage of WordPress’ full capabilities. Then, if that wasn’t enough, Tessa continues to expand your theme development knowledge by sharing with you how to troubleshooting it, validate it, integrate common template tags, add some interactive AJAX or Flash, and is wrapped up by sharing with you some great design tips.
What I enjoyed most about this book was that it was thorough in every way. It becomes obvious that Tessa takes into consideration the entire process of building a web site. The book covers the list of required skills and tools, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, web standards, a good walkthrough of CSS, tricks and fixes, packaging, core functions, plug-ins, widgets, and the integration of additional features like Flash and AJAX. No matter what level you are in using WordPress I highly recommend this book because it enables you to have full control over your site’s look and feel.
