Rockstar WordPress Designer VS Digging Into WordPress

WordPress is a tool worth getting acquainted with, whether its following online tutorials or investing into knowledge, i.e. purchasing an eBook. Rockstar WordPress Designer VS Digging Into WordPress is a review on two well known eBooks by two groups of authors, Collis Ta’eed & Harley Alexander and Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr.  They both offer breakdowns on the WordPress CMS, taking the beginner by hand and showing them some practical lessons in the hope that they will get better and be motivated to improve their WordPress coding skills. The reason why I titled this as a ‘versus’ match is because I wanted to compare what the authors were offering and which one would be best, in my opinion, to have on your virtual bookshelf.

ROCKSTAR WORDPRESS DESIGNER (Collis Ta’eed & Harley Alexander)

So first up we have Rockstar WordPress Designer(fullname ‘How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer’) by Collis Ta’eed & Harley Alexander.  The 2010 Revised Edition eBook aims to help you “learn step by step how to take a straight HTML website and power it with WordPress”. This extract below from the website sums up what you are going to get from this eBook:

During the course of the book you’ll build THREE WordPress themes, a blog, a portfolio site and a general site with menus and submenus. Each theme demonstrates different aspects of WordPress theming and all three are packaged in with the book so you’ll have Photoshop, HTML, CSS and WordPress PHP files to refer to.

All they ask is that you have a solid understanding of HTML/CSS, and not necessarily PHP. How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer is split into 9 chapters with just over 310 pages of content.  The early chapters will help you understand the general terms and concepts in WordPress, such as posts, categories, tags, permalinks etc… and the later chapters deal with building three themes and provides resources to Innovative Ways to Using WordPress to build Membership Directories, E-Commerce Store, Social Media Feed Aggregators, Musician/Band Website, Design Gallery, Review Sites and more.

To buy or not to buy?

It’s very true when they say people don’t buy products but people, because Collis Ta’eed is a well-known Web Guru and co-founder of the Envato Network.  Harley Alexander is also a young WordPress developer who co-authored this eBook.  Although Collis Ta’eed has a vast knowledge of the WordPress CMS Platform, I am quite disappointed in that the knowledge in this book is very limited in terms of actually learning WordPress.   I stumbled upon a previous copy aimed at the WordPress 2.7 version, but from looking at the FREE PDF Sample, seems not much has changed since the 2010 Revised Edition was released.

The information in the book seems to reflect a mashup of tutorials found on Nettuts and Psdtuts. In fact I could have sworn that the Photoshop tutorial in the eBook dealing with building the PSD files has been featured on Nettuts before already and its just a matter of finding this on their website.  There are even screencasts on Nettuts and CSS-Tricks and all over the web that will show you how to build and convert sites flowing in this fashion: PSD > HTML > WordPress.

It is very much for the beginner who has no knowledge whatsoever, for I don’t really see any experienced users benefitting from this, in my opinion.  The coding tutorials in this eBook are pretty much copy and paste snippets with little or no explanation -  just paste this in that file and that in this.  I don’t see a beginner turning into a ‘Rockstar WordPress Designer’ straight away with this, to be honest with you.

Aside from the negatives, you do get some pretty decent PSD/HTML/WordPress Theme files that will spice up your creativity in building web layouts as you explore these. The 2010 Revised Edition features a section on WordPress’ new navigation menu.  It works for the user who does not want to get down and dirty with hardcore coding. Can anyone confirm if the 2010 Revised Edition has any sections on enabling current WordPress features, like Post-Thumbnails, Custom Post Types, Multi-site? Only get this if you want specifically the themes they’re offering or if you want to build a WordPress Website as quickly as possible, without knowing fully what you’re doing.  You will be getting free updates so hopefully there will be notable improvements at the same rate as WordPress is.

DIGGING INTO WORDPRESS (Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr)

On the opposite shelf we have Digging into WordPress by Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr. The WordPress Version 3.0 Launch gives a comprehensive knowledge into the core WordPress System, with useful tips and tricks like “Keeping sites secure and optimized” and “Best practices for maintaining a healthy site”.  This summary explains what you learn in this eBook:

We go into depth about the anatomy of a WordPress theme. How they work, and how to write the code you need to do the things you want. This means real code that you can sink your teeth into, as well as copy and paste. Beyond theme building, we introduce many tricks your functions.php file can pull off and show you ways to increase performance and security through HTAccess.

I have not grabbed a copy yet of their eBook, although I have read their free PDF Sample, and must say that I was straightaway impressed with the content they were giving, compared to Rockstar WordPress Designer, for the eBook is really a no-brainer!  The purchase comes with 12 huge, colour-coded Chapters, split into roughly 71 sections with over 420 pages of content.

Digging into WordPress is perfect for WordPress users in the beginner to intermediate range, but contains plenty of great information for the advanced user as well. If you have any level of experience working with web design or WordPress, this book is written to help you take WordPress to the next level.

To buy or not to buy?

This fully-fledged eBook with a Spiral Bound printed alternative, gives guaranteed knowledge with tips and tricks on improving the WordPress system.  Definitely worth purchasing because I think this does a better job at explaining the whats and hows within the WordPress Platform and the knowledge offered is long-term.  The website also boldly states that you will be getting free lifetime PDF updates so you don’t have to worry about purchasing an information product that will be outdated, assuring you that you are investing towards a timeless product. A brief overview of what you will learn are:

How to get things set up right
Building Themes and how they work
The right way to create multiple loops
Keeping Sites secure and optimized
Using WordPress as a CMS
Integrate things like Twitter and Delicious
Customizing and Optimizing the WordPress Comments Area
Best practices for maintaining a healthy site
Making the most out of WordPress
Plus tons more!

Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr are also giving three free themes with the purchase: All Ajax, Lines & Boxes and Plastique.  I must say that the themes look too plain and almost boring although emphasis has been placed on the functionality.  The themes do come across as highly accessible and easily customisable.

SUMMARY

Although both eBooks are well known and have sold lots of copies, Digging Into WordPress by Chris Coyier & Jeff Starr offer more meat for a cheaper price. How to be a Rockstar WordPress Designer offers better themes and helps you build three pretty website themes in little time.  I think some of the techniques in Rockstar WordPress Designer may be outdated for the recent releases and the title of the eBook is quite misleading.  The last sections of the Rockstar WordPress Designer eBook is filled with links to plugins that will improve your WordPress install, information I think you can discover yourself through Google.

Both books do come with their benefits and flaws, so you can find out more at the bottom of this article.