WordPress Design and Development books are a great source of knowledge. When it comes to learning Books are still our best friends. Available in both hard and soft copies, reading books has become convenient over time. Kindle editions are a sort of revolution in the way books have been seen. In this instalment of our book series, I am including the books which will help you understand and polish your WordPress Design and Development skills.
Before you start to design and develop in WordPress, experts want you to use the following software and tools:
Text Editor to create and edit web pages
A universal web browser
Chrome Development Tools
FTP Client
Table of Contents
WordPress Design and Development books
WordPress Genesis Explained: Your Step-by-Step Guide to Genesis by Nick Croft
The book is not for Beginners and requires the fundamentals of PHP, HTML and CSS.
The book is based on Genisis, a powerful theme framework, and allows you to learn in the framework of normal English and codes. Genesis brings security and optimization to your website. So if you don’t want to struggle with huge instruction manual and focus more on building sites, this a great book to start with. The book includes simple yet powerful examples. Advice from the author guides you often, as he himself has a design background. This being one of the best WordPress Design and Development books, you will get vast explanations of classes, filters and functions in the Genesis Framework.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Getting started with Genesis
Explanation of Genesis Framework
Genesis Framework Action, Filters, Formatting and General Functions,
Genesis Image, Markup and Options Functions
Widgets and Layout
Breadcrumbs and Meta Boxes Classes
Sanitization and Script Loader Classes
Customizer Class
Actions and Filters in Classes
Admin Overview
Admin Boxes, Forms and Basis Classes
Apart from these topics, you get lessons on:
Recovery of a Crashed site
Creating Page Templates
Versioning of Genesis Style Sheet
Widget Area
Changing Content Limit
Loading new section of pages
Building a Genesis Plugin
Building WordPress Admin Page with Genesis
Changing Gallery Post Format and custom fields
WordPress Development for Noobs: Beginner WordPress Development Course by Tim Brown
The book discusses the technical aspect of installing, running and developing own themes. You will be guided to develop websites which are really flexible. You get to develop parts of the websites which can be easily customized by your clients and desired ways. The book basically guides you through the experience of developing websites, themes for your clients and provide ease of use to them. This definitely finds its place in the WordPress Design and Development books.
WordPress: A Step-by-Step Beginners’ Guide to Build Your Own WordPress Website from Scratch by Jhon Slavio
Blogging a decade ago was a huge task. Coding the blog and then hosting it was not for new users. But now we have a different scene. Install a platform and write your blog. But to set your platform, in our case WordPress can be confusing for new users. To ease that, this book will provide you with a beginner’s guide to kickstart setting the platform. Making changes and styling existing blogs, optimizing contents, adding plugins and explore their functions will make you used to WordPress. The book also discusses details of WooCommerce and its effective use.
So before you go for full-fledged WordPress Design and Development books, this book will introduce you to WordPress and help you understand its basics from a user or a clients perspective.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Why WordPress?
Hosting
Getting Started with WordPress
Installing WordPress
WordPress Dashboard
Admin Bar
WordPress Settings
WordPress Themes
Installing Themes
WordPress Plugins
Installing Plugins
WordPress Widgets and Menu
Creating Content
Creating Links
Adding Media
Creating Content Page
WordPress Theme Development – Beginner’s Guide by Tessa Blakeley and Rachel McCollin
This book is a WordPress Theme development guide. It requires the basic competency in HTML and CSS. The book will help you build WordPress theme from scratch using HTML and CSS. The Book has illustrated examples. There are thousands of WordPress theme, but in case you want to make one for yourself or for any client you need to develop your own theme. The book will guide you through the development of your first WordPress theme. The book explains the writing of the code in HTML and CSS and converting them into PHP to be used in WordPress. Worked examples make the process easy.
Once you do this, you can add more features like menu, widget, and featured image to your theme. Making your theme responsive, accessible and discoverable follows. By the end of the book, you will be good enough to build themes based on your own ideas. So when you look at the WordPress Design and Development books for theme development, this could a great pick.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Getting Started with WordPress Theme Designer
Preparing a design for Our WordPress Theme
Coding it Up
Advanced Theme Features
Debugging and Validation
Your Theme in Action
Tips and Tricks
Responsive Design with WordPress: How to make great responsive WordPress themes, and plugins (Voices That Matter) by Joe Casabona
Mobile devices have taken over the usage of the Internet. And if any website is not responsive to such devices, the business may suffer. So websites are now expected to be responsive to multiple screen resolutions. The book helps you build such responsive websites and lets you make the most out of WordPress. You will find out the best practices in automation of processes. In the later sections of the book, you witness the development of responsive themes and plugins. You also get to apply principles and best practices learnt in photo gallery, map page and different sections. You also learn about navigation techniques, select box, a framework with Bootstrap and Foundation.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What is Responsive Web Design?
Creating a WordPress Theme
Making your Theme Responsive: The Ground Floor, Core Functions and Blog Functions
Using Responsive Theme Framework
Techniques and Tutorials
Resources
Pro WordPress Theme Development (Expert’s Voice in Web Development) by Adam Onishi
One more in the theme development section. This is a complete guide for theme development in WordPress. If you are already into web designing and have a wholesome idea of PHP and WordPress environment, this book takes you to the next level.
Still, it starts from the basics and takes you to the ways of monetizing your themes in different ways. There are practical examples of real customization. The route to this goes through anatomy and hierarchy, loop and extensions. You can have this book to shorten your path to be a successful theme developer.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Getting Started
Theme Anatomy and Template Hierarchy
Content Options and Loop
Custom Post Type
Taxonomies and Fields
Hooks, shortcodes and Widgets
Theme Options and Theme Customizer
User Roles and Capabilities
Plugins
Security and Performance
Distributing your Theme
Extending your theme
Plugin Development
WordPress Multisite
WordPress Theme Development in 24 Hours, Sams Teach Yourself by Triss Hussey
We saw few development books, this one is especially for customization of your Website and blog with ease. You’ll find a beginner’s guide to build themes, and will be helpful for all expertise level. Skills you require for a better understanding of the concepts are HTML, PHP and CSS and can be applied in different platforms including Drupal, Joomla and Blogger.
It will require your 24 dedicated hours and you’ll be controlling the look, feel and behaviour of the website you develop. The book act as a stair and you will find the current topic built on the previous lesson. You’ll see practical examples on theme cases like magazine, portfolios and mobile environments and a lot of customizations in headers, backgrounds and creating templates.
the book also helps you enhance your developed themes on the addition of plugins and widgets, child theme. Further, you also get to learn to update themes, using CSS, taxonomies, custom post types, and marketing your skills. At the end of the book, you learn troubleshooting techniques.
WordPress: Pushing the Limits 1st Edition by Rachel McCollin
The book shares experience and advice from the author on dealing with clients, manage a project team, manage large projects. This will help the readers to push the limits and serve clients in having the type of they need and help it stay competitive enough to succeed in the marketplace.
The book discusses various challenges and helps you choose the best way for you and your client. The book also walks you through hosting and development environment with HTML, PHP, Javascript and CSS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WordPress as a Professional Web Development Tool
Kicking Off a WordPress Project
Content Organization and Relationships
Customizing the WordPress Admin
Development and Hosting Environment
Avoiding and Dealing with Disaster
Theme Building: Frameworks, Standalone Themes or Child Themes
Conditional Display: Functions, Template Files and Styling
Custom Functionality in Theme Functions and Plugins
Making Your Site Soar: HTML, JavaScript, and CSS
Device Compatibility: Responsive and Mobile Development
Releasing Your Code to the Public
Professional WordPress: Design and Development 3rd Edition by Brad Williams
The book is the third and revised edition and is for developers. The contents are of an advanced level and expect you have basic knowledge of programming scripts. The book has well-explained examples and provides you with additional exercises and tips to solve these exercises with the aid of newest tools and features on WordPress. Real projects ease the process of learning and give you a developers point of view towards WordPress. The book also gives access to a website where you can download codes from.
The books help you exploit the platform in various ways. You’ll also get a guide on migrating a website to WordPress. You can consider this book an integral part of your WordPress Developer Training.
TABLE OF CONTENT
First Post
Code Overview
Local Host and WordPress
Core of WordPress
The Loop
Data Management
Custom Post, Taxonomies and Metadata
Plugin Development
Theme Development
Multisite
Migration to WordPress
User Experience
Security
Application Framework
WordPress in Real World
Developer Community
WordPress: WordPress Guide to Create a Website or Blog From Scratch By Matt Jones
The second book in section, which deals with the details of WordPress as a platform. This will give you all the know-how of this prominent Content Management System. The book mentions ways to master install and navigate between the tools of WordPress and its Development kit. Once you get a grip on the framework, you can build websites in WordPress within minutes.
The book discusses the CMS starting from the technical aspects of installing and starting its use. You get to understand the easier way of installing compared to what other books mentions. The book also explains the dashboard in details.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction to CMS
Starting From Scratch – Technicalities in Installations I
Starting From Scratch – Technicalities in Installations II
Easier Version of Installation
WordPress in Web Host
Database
WordPress Dashboard
Step-by-step to Built Your WordPress Blog or Website
Design Tips and tricks
Conclusion
WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook by Yannick Lefebvre
The book will take you through the ways you can use WordPress virtually. Plugin API is introduced with examples and explanations. Further, you learn to customize your projects according to demands.
Basically, the book discusses the capabilities of WordPress. It will let you explore its extension capabilities to the fullest. Any you now different business have different requirements, you’ll learn ways to extend WordPress using plugins to achieve a particular function. Navigation between API function is discussed in details, which makes it interesting. Different levels of complex plugins are also discussed in details.
In the later sections, you learn to design the Administrative Panel and editing tools. The table of content will give you a better understanding of all topics.
User and Administration Pages Creation and Their Uses
Power of custom post type
Customizing Post and Page Editors
Accepting User Content Submissions
Customizing User Data
Creating MySQL Database Table
Using JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX Scripts
Adding New Widget to WordPress Library
Enabling Plugin Internationalization
Distributing your WordPress on WordPress.org
Updating Plugins
WordPress Web Application Development by Rakhitha Nimesh Ratnayake
This book is one more powerful resource for the development of WordPress extensions. It deals with enhancing of features and uses RESTful API for an innovative interaction. So if you are into developing extensions and want to optimize the development, this book is for you.
The book will help you learn widely about WordPress development standards and norms. The book starts with the planning involved in development. It takes you through the core features followed by its extension with custom plugins. If you are looking for time-bound WordPress Design and Development books then get your hands on this book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
WordPress as a Web Application Framework
Implementing Membership Roles, Permissions and Features
Planning and Customizing the Core Database
Building Blocks of Web Applications
Implementing Application Content Restrictions
Developing Pluggable Modules
Customizing the Dashboard for Powerful Backends
Adjusting Themes for Amazing Frontends
Enhancing the Power of Open Source Libraries and Plugins
Listening to Third-Party Plugins
Integrating and Finalizing the Forum Management Applications
Supplementary Modules for Web Development
Configurations, Tools, and Resources
Additional WordPress Design and Development Books
If you are looking for more of WordPress Design and Development Books you can visit the Pragmatic Bookshelf.
Click on image for an Entire Bookshelf for Programmers
We hope that the list serves as the right resources and you are making the most out of them. If you have just started with WordPress you can refer these Handpicked Books to Kickstart WordPress. We are happy to announce our own set of e-Books on Tutorials in WordPress and WooCommerce. If you want us to list more of such resources let us know in the comment section.