Professional WordPress Plugin Development

I have had released one plugin when I bought this book and have several more in various stages of development. That’s probably the right stage to buy this book. It would be OK for somebody starting out, but only if they are a quick learner. There are two things you must know though: PHP and WordPress. This book (rightly) assumes that you have a good knowledge of both of those. It’s not necessary to have put the two together before, but it is probably helpful if you have. At the other end, it maybe doesn’t go into the technical depth that very experienced developers might want – although as WP keeps evolving it might be hard to do so.

That’s not a criticism: it is a fantastic book for somebody who has good foundations and wishes to use them to develop WordPress themes.

It has been written by multiple authors and it shows and that is the main downside because the standard and depth of their explanations is not uniform. Some sections can be handled with good explanations but, for instance, the section on the Settings API is quite poorly explained and relies more on code examples. It is a very good book; but I suspect version two (in a couple of years time?) could be excellent if the consistency is improved. That shouldn’t deter anybody from buying it. It is a very good book, and quite possible the best there is at present.

Professional WordPress Plugin Development