Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read (2nd Edition) Review

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Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read (2nd Edition) ReviewI purchased this book with 2 other titles: a DVD, "How to Theme WordPress" by Aleks Monahan which I think is a very good and more advanced tutorial specifically on template design and theming WordPress (review already posted on that DVD's page) and "WordPress For Dummies" by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
This book is a good book for novices and I think it has the potential of becoming the de facto standard for novices instead of the bulkier "WordPress for Dummies" by Lisa Sabin-Wilson.
If you're new to WordPress, get this book. The page layout was very nice and the fonts were easy on the eye, I finished it in just 1 day. It will get you going with the basics very quickly (except in one instance, read below). It's written in a way that assumes no previous knowledge of WordPress. For example, on page 3, the author says: "WordPress can be extended by little bits of code called plug-ins." This smooth and flowing style of writing can be very helpful to you if you're a new WordPress blogger.
One section where this book fails truly miserably (and hence the 4-star review) is the section "Setting up the MySQL Database". I'm not new to WordPress. I've used it for blogging for more than 2 months now on the free wordpress.com site, and I'm now beginning to consider moving to my own domain website. I'm sad to say that the "Setting up the MySQL Database" section failed me there.
The author says "you need to create a MySQL database... the installation will fail if you don't set this database up beforehand." But then he says that setting up the database is "beyond the scope of this book" and gives some very brief pointers that do not compare to the level of detail most users in need of this information would find helpful. I was disappointed that I had to look elsewhere for this information e.g. it's covered in Sabin-Wilson's "WordPress for Dummies" in more than 2 pages and on Aleks Monahan's "How to Theme WordPress" DVD. I wished McNulty covered it too. It would have made the book a "complete" guide for new bloggers.
Most other sections were very useful. The author discusses some very interesting features like how to set up your blog to accept posts by email and how to automate the process even more. The section explaining uploads and how to configure them is very helpful if you're like me interested in moving to your own WordPress site under your own private domain. I found the book also strong on how to handle media and images and enjoyed those sections.
I found Scott McNulty's information on templates in the themes section very shallow in comparison to the DVD tutorial on theming by Aleks Monahan. This is not necessarily a negative. The book is intended for beginners after all and the author admits that what he's presenting is small tweaks to existing themes. For templates and theming, I highly recommend you purchase the DVD by Aleks Monahan. It's very good, an eye opener and nice to watch regardless of whether you want to create your template or not. I'm not ready to create my template yet, but found the DVD very informative and now that I've watched it, I might get to the stage of creating a template of my own sooner. You can use the templates chapter by McNulty as a primer.
The book also discusses plug-ins and how to open a plug-in to edit it if you want. The author also touches very slightly on how to start setting up a plug-in but the information again is very shallow in this section. Some code showing how to build a sample plug-in would have been great. 1 full example would be enough. The section "Plug-ins no blog should be without" is also very good and he mentions the WP Security Scan plug-in which I'm getting for sure, very useful, and other useful plug-ins too.
If you're new to WordPress, buy this book, it's a light read, really easy on the eye (not to be underestimated) and it's well written and nicely formatted. But don't depend on it as the only source. It's a good way to get started. See the other resources mentioned.
Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read (2nd Edition) OverviewHaving your own blog isn't just for the nerdy anymore. Today, it seems everyone—from multinational corporations to a neighbor up the street—has a blog. They all have one, in part, because the folks at WordPress make it easy to have one. But to actually build a good blog—to create a blog people want to read—takes thought, planning, and some effort. From picking a theme and using tags to choosing widgets and building a community, creating your blog really starts after you've set it up.In Building a WordPress Blog People Want to Read by blogger extraordinaire Scott McNulty, you'll learn how to:
Install and get your WordPress site running.
Set up your site to ensure it can easily grow with you and your readers.
Be the master of user accounts.
Manage your site with the WordPress Dashboard and extend its capabilities with plug-ins.
Make the most of images.
Work with pages, templates, and links and—of course—publish your posts.
Use custom post types and taxonomies to bend WordPress to your will.
Deal with comments—if you even want readers commenting at all.
Find a theme and make it your own.


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This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (P.S.) Review

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This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (P.S.) Review"This Book Is Overdue" isn't going to be for everyone (and I still haven't figured out how it got saddled with that baffling subtitle), but Marilyn Johnson has done a great job of putting human faces on a profession that is often either beloved or ridiculed. The stereotype of the prim, shushing matron notwithstanding, Johnson's almost obsessive exploration of the roles, subcultures and future of librarians and librarianship in an era of shrinking budgets, digital media, cyberculture and declining readership turns out to be pretty compelling, enshrining a number of librarians who have changed their field, and in some ways, even our world.
Frequently depicting librarians as a breed apart who are nonetheless indispensable to mere mortals in search of information, no matter how arcane, she has written a book that celebrates the eccentricity and sheer diversity within their profession--a profession that in some ways is changing at breakneck speed and in others is securely rooted in tradition. Her topics veer from the librarians who sued the government, post-"Patriot" Act, to keep their patrons' records out of the hands of government spies, to avid blogger librarians, to the librarian avatars of Second Life, to the changing face of the New York Public Library, to name just a few, carrying readers along for a decidedly unconventional but fascinating ride.

I found the chapters on Radical Reference--activist librarians who take to the streets, using smart phones to dispense information--and the Second Life librarians to be particularly interesting, mainly because they represent such a departure from the traditional roles we're all familiar with. But as a writer who has relied on archivists' expertise to help me research four books, I have a special appreciation for the skills of that subdiscipline and especially enjoyed the chapter about the challenges they face as well.
If you really (REALLY) like books, if you remember the libraries of your youth with fondness (I kept "smelling" the old libraries from my childhood as I read the sections about bricks and mortar libraries), if you're an information junkie of any kind, you'll probably want to add this book to your reading list. There's a lot more going on within those hallowed walls than you may realize, and it may give you a whole new perspective. If knowledge is indeed power, then librarians may well be the unsung power brokers of our civilization.
Four stars for this unexpected pleasure.This Book Is Overdue: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (P.S.) Overview

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