WordPress To Go: How To Build A WordPress Website On Your Own Domain, From Scratch, Even If You Are A Complete Beginner Paperback – May 7, 2013

I had never worked with WordPress before, so when I was told I had to setup a website of my own for blogging and posting my writing projects, I knew I needed help to get started. There are many books available, but I chose this one because it said it was specifically for the complete beginner. I may well need more detailed information in future, but to start out, I wanted the very basic information, presented in a logical order. I did get my website setup and online using this book.Starting with getting your domain and installing WordPress, the instructions are clear and easy to follow. Note that I decided to setup a hosted website on GoDaddy. Different website hosting providers require different steps to install WordPress, but I was able to get through the installation, and it worked the first time, using the instructions in this book. The chapters cover all the basic tasks in great detail, which is what I needed. I learned how to login to my website to perform administrative chores and basic issues when designing a website. Because I had never used WordPress, I didn't know how to create a page for my website or create a blog post, and these tasks were covered, in detail.I needed to upload images for my blog posts and I was able to do this without problems. I didn't know what a static page was, but I learned how to set it up so that my website always shows the same home page. At the time, I was using one of the free WordPress themes just to setup my site, but I was looking for help to choose a theme. The chapter on how to choose and install a theme helped me decide what I was after as I looked at the many themes available. Once I had settled on a theme, I was able to switch my website to use the new theme.Learning to use WordPress requires learning about many things, and I was lost when it came to plugins. I followed the recommendations as to what plugins to install and it all worked for me on the first go. At this point I had my website online and I was adding blog posts and images. The last chapters provided an introduction to search engine optimization, how HTML works and how to expand your WordPress skills further.This book covers the basics of setting up a new WordPress website and assumes no prior experience. It was exactly what I needed at the time. Reading this book got my site online quickly with very little drama. Given that I didn't have any previous experience with WordPress, and how quickly I was able to get my new site online, this book provided exactly what it promised. You can see the results at brianhitchcock.net and brianrhitchcock.com.

I am a pretty effective SEO specialist but not an expert to actually build a website from scratch - something that some of my clients would be interested in. So I looked into different programs (Dreamweaver being one of them) and found that Wordpress is the ideal platform. However, there are almost no good courses on WP out there, and just a few decent books, most of them either convoluted, unnecessarily technical, and / or very expensive. But then I was lucky to find "Wordpress to Go" - and was hooked.It's no exaggeration but I can say with total conviction (and no, I'm not getting any rewards for this) that Sarah's book is the best tutorial I have ever read - probably on any subject, and certainly on a technical one, bar none. The main upside of this book is the totally practical approach the author takes (I guess only women can be that practical!): clear, very easy to understand, and virtually holding the reader's hand as she goes through all the important WP modules and menus step by step, and extremely clearly. Sarah is a programmer and as such a professional but she has a very readable and personal style, almost as she was sitting across the table. Oh, and BTW, all the info is up-to-date, not some rehashed, obsolete stuff.Hosting (Sarah maybe receives a commission from Hostgator but so what? Hostgator is really the best), Setup, Installation, all are explained very well. The entire WP structure, and all its critical functions, are totally easy to read and understand - and to apply, too, because practical examples and useful screenshots are there to help. WP has a lot of widgets and plugins, and the author gives all pros and cons, and gives plenty of good advice. It's fair to say that unless a user is severely untalented, he / she will be able to apply Sarah's book to build decent WP websites within a few days, often even faster.This is a relatively short e-book (only 80 pages or so), and Kindle pages are not big, so something had to give, such as extensive MySQL and php guidance which is lacking, along with a few other, though non-critical pieces. But the author is practical (a woman, remember?), and has managed to superbly balance vital knowledge with bottom line applicability, and pack into this great book almost as much information as books 10 times the length, one tenth of clarity, and 20 times the price.Bottom line: this book is worth a lot; and at under $ 5 this is the steal of the year.

The book is great, I studied it carefully before leaving on a extensive trip of Turkey, intending to send posts back using an ipad. So this gripe is more about the wordpress app rather than the book.Regrettably I think an ipad is not the appropriate tool to be using to post wordpress blogs (or to use whilst travelling and taking pictures) The Wordpress app does not have the functionality of the real version. It is an amateurish attempt to adapt to ipad. I am really disappointed because I really like wordpress and was looking forward to putting it through its paces.The 'wusiwug' feature does not exist, nor do most other features. You have to enter text in as HTML. SO YOU MUST HAVE SOME UNDERSTANDING OF HTML.It is virtually impossible to reference the picture you might be talking about. (constant return to iphoto is required)It is impossible to order your pictures once loaded.Pictures are very difficult to select as the thumbs presented are so small that detail is not visible and it is easy to select the wrong picture. The name/number of the jpg is changed when loading, adding to the difficulty.Inserting photos is laborious and time consuming because the method is not streamlined, you need to do about half a dozen inputs to load each picture. You need to navigate the whole event, which could be 200-300 picture (if you have had a good snapping day), for each insert.Picture order will be changed if reloading is required as a result of incomplete loading when selected.When 'bolding' in a 'page', require to manually add the HTHL tag to both ends of the highlighted text. In a post need to put it in between.