by Scott on November 29, 2009
Recently I was given the opportunity to review WordPress MU 2.8: Beginner’s Guide by Lesley A. Harrison . I just recently received the book, but the publisher was kind enough to allow me to post a sample chapter from the book that details how to create your first WordPress plugin. I expect to work my way through the book in the next few weeks at which time I will provide my own personal thoughts.
In the mean time here is some information from the publisher, followed by a link to download a sample chapter from the book.
“WordPress MU enables you to build a complete, professional blog network. Each user gets their own blog, and can choose their favorite templates and plug-ins, and develop their own content. WordPress MU powers some of the largest blog networks in the world, including the mighty WordPress.com – home to thousands of bloggers.
This book will take you through the setup of a WordPress MU-powered blogging network, using a real, working blog network as an example, so that you can follow the creation process step-by-step. Your blogging network will be complete with professional features such as friends lists, status feeds, groups, forums, photo galleries, and more, to build your own WordPress.com – a place where users can quickly come and create a blog for themselves.
The book starts with a clean install of WordPress MU, and as you work through the book, you will build the blog network, and add on more and more features, all seamlessly integrated to achieve a professional, custom-built look.”
Please download the sample chapter below and let me know what you think:
by Scott on March 14, 2009
Recently I was given the opportunity to review WordPress Plugin Development by Vladimir Prelovac. I just received the book this past week, but the publisher and author were kind enough to allow me to post an excerpt from the book that details how to create your first WordPress plugin. You can expect a full review from me within a couple weeks.
Chapter 2, Social Bookmarking with WordPress Plugin
In this article by Vladimir Prelovac, we will learn to create our first functional WordPress plugin and learn how to interact with the WordPress API (this is the WordPress interface to PHP) on the way. The knowledge you will gain in this article alone will allow you to write a lot of similar plugins. This article is extracted from the “WordPress Plugin Development” book.
Let’s get moving! In this article, you will learn:
- Creating a new plugin and having it displayed in the plugins admin panel
- Checking the WordPress version and control activation of the plugin
- Accessing API features—for example the title and permalink URL of each post
- Using WordPress hooks to execute your plugin code when it’s needed
- Using conditional tags to control the flow of your plugins
You will learn these by creating a Social Bookmarking type of plugin that adds a Digg button to each post on your blog
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by Scott on February 22, 2009
Recently I was given the opportunity to 
review the book Blog Blazers, by Stephane Grenier.
Stephane Grenier is a successful blogger as well as the founder of LandlordMax property management software.
The purpose of the book is to share the secrets behind the creation of a successful blog. The contents of the book were gathered by interviewing 40 bloggers. The bloggers were each asked the same group of questions. Here are a few sample questions found in the book:
- What are your main avenues for marketing your blog?
- What’s the most common mistake new bloggers can make?
- What’s the best way to make money from your blog?
- Which five blogs do you regularly read?
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