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Odele says:

WordPress Theme Design is a short book, 204 pages and offers an experience very much like that given by the Peachpit Press’ Visual QuickProject Series. This is not a definitive guide to WordPress theming. Tessa Silver walks us through the creation of a WordPress theme intended for a monthly magazine site. As much CMS/beyond-the-blog flexibility of WordPress needs to be implemented by creative theming, this project offers an insight into how to customize WordPress for sites other than plain vanilla blogs. WordPress core features like “the loop,” are mentioned but we are referred to the WordPress Codex documentation for more information. That’s pretty much the way the book works, features or concepts, such as the loop or drop down menus are discussed, but for expanded explanations we are pointed to external web documentation.

The writing is clear and conversational and is targeted towards someone with a reasonable grounding in HTML and CSS, I’d say advanced novice to early intermediate. Those without an understanding of HTML will find it over their heads. A very basic understand of PHP syntax is also helpful. Except for WordPress specific code, experienced, standards aware coders will find much of the material pretty basic. Ms. Silver does create her design with modern web standards best practices, which she describes in a standards based context. The theme we create by following the tutorial is functional and illustrates some of WordPress’ advanced capabilities, which can be accessed only through clever theming. Basic SEO is mentioned, and some advanced WordPress plug-ins and capabilities are briefly covered.

Chapter 6 offers a short overview of WordPress functions and a nice template tag reference. In Chapter 2, Silver offers brief descriptions describing her design workflow process and some of the tools she uses. In chapters 3-5 we create the basic theme and are introduced to WordPress themeing conventions. Chapters 7-9 briefly discuss some advanced WordPress capabilities, mostly gained through the use of plug-ins and widgets.

Ives says:

Well written. Good tips. Too short. Not a reference book. Hardly a “complete” guide.

I found most of the book to be fairly basic, but I am experienced in designing standards-compliant sites using the tools and technologies Tessa uses (PHP, CSS, XHTML, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc..). I suspect that others with similar backgrounds would find this book not so helpful. For those just starting with CSS and XHTML, this book would be a good starting point though. It is filled with good advice (the best advice is to use standards-based approaches and to separate content from design) and lots of tips ranging from SEO to Photoshop techniques.

With Tessa’s conversational writing approach, you feel that she’s your tutor who genuinely wants you to create great, standards-compliant WordPress themes. She talks with you and not at you making the book easy to read and understand. Some key highlights include:

1. Rapid Design Comping – which is a design process coined by Tessa that takes you through ten steps of the design process from sketching to production.

2. Great section on font choices and why you might use one font over another.

3. A good discussion on validating pages through the W3C’s XHTML and CSS validation services.

4. A good introduction on WordPress’ template hierarchy. This is very important to understand when developing WP themes. I would have liked an entire chapter on this, though.

One thing I found totally absent (aside from a quick mention in a sidebar note) is a discussion and walkthrough of WordPress’ OOP design. Just as it is important as a WP theme developer to understand the template system, good CSS, and XHTML, it is equally important to understand WP’s object oriented design. An entire chapter, early on in the book, could have been written to discuss this. Tessa would have made it simple and easy to understand, I am sure.

I would have liked a better reference section. With a better reference section, I would be more apt to keep the book on my desk. As it is now, it will likely sit on the shelf never to be read again!

Tessa creates a single theme in the book (an Open Source Magazine), and although most of the techniques apply across many different types of themes, having a few counter examples would get you started more quickly.

One key point not stressed enough in her text is the notion of reusability. The WordPress architecture makes it highly reusable (not just flexible) so that you can call a single function under different circumstances to bring back data for different contexts. This is a powerful design feature (well known to those object-oriented developer types) that can save you time and effort, while delivering consistent and predictable results. As I have used WordPress now on several of my sites, I find this to be one of its strongest assets. When developing new themes, I feel that this point should be made crystal clear.

Additionally, I think that a better discussion on some of WP’s core functions, and perhaps how they can and should be implemented, should have been included.

All said, this is pretty good starter book. As an experienced developer (not a WP theme developer though), I didn’t get much out of it.

Denis says:

1.0 out of 5 stars
Not Too Impressed
I purchased this book hoping for detailed information and just didn’t find it. If you want to build a WordPress site very similar to what the author describes, this is a great…

Viveka says:

5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally a Step-by-Step
This book was a great resource in creating my custom wordpress theme. You will need to have some experience with xhtml/css/php in order to work with wordpress in general (at least…

Xarles says:

1.0 out of 5 stars
The worst book I have ever read on web design
This book is full of mistakes, typos, missing html code vs. the files you can download on line.
The author also has an “innovative” way of designing between Photoshop and…

Edison says:

4.0 out of 5 stars
very great book
I found this book to be very informative and easy to follow. I did follow the previous reviewers advice and coupled it with How to Theme WordPress-from Blank to Beautiful in 2…

Nehemiah says:

4.0 out of 5 stars
Well-written and informative
I liked the job that Ms Silver did in writing this book. She takes the reader through the steps necessary to create a WordPress theme.