Trollyshop

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 to customize it), so this book it not truly for beginners. If you are a beginner you will be able to work through it, but it may be frustrating if you aren't comfortable with basic coding as described above. br / br /The author is conversational and light in style and the book is a very quick read. I was able to easily convert my .psd to a wordpress template using this book in only a few days. I did still need to go to the codex to look up some thing in more detail, but this book was invaluable in helping me get grounded on the concepts needed to start developing wordpress themes.

A Must Have Book For WordPress Designers and Developers
If you are looking for a Content Publishing System that is fast, simple, and flexible then you'll want to consider using WordPress. Some of the advantages of WordPress are that it's easy to expand and it can accommodate just about any kind of site design with minimal programming skills. br / br /Speaking of site design, if you're planning on creating a unique look and feel for your WordPress driving site then you'll need this book, WordPress Theme Design by Tessa Blakeley Silver. Tessa does an excellent job of explaining in detail how to create a WordPress theme from start to finish -- the author even walks you through an example theme design "step-by-step." br / br /Not only will this book teach you the basics of the famous "WordPress loop" but how its framework is arranged and how it's used by the application. Furthermore, you'll understanding how themes are integrated into this framework and how to create them or modify existing ones to take advantage of WordPress' full capabilities. Then, if that wasn't enough, Tessa continues to expand your theme development knowledge by sharing with you how to troubleshooting it, validate it, integrate common template tags, add some interactive AJAX or Flash, and is wrapped up by sharing with you some great design tips. br / br /What I enjoyed most about this book was that it was thorough in every way. It becomes obvious that Tessa takes into consideration the entire process of building a web site. The book covers the list of required skills and tools, cross-browser compatibility, accessibility, web standards, a good walkthrough of CSS, tricks and fixes, packaging, core functions, plug-ins, widgets, and the integration of additional features like Flash and AJAX. No matter what level you are in using WordPress I highly recommend this book because it enables you to have full control over your site's look and feel.

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. br /The author also has an "innovative" way of designing between Photoshop and the text editor, she calls "rapid design comping" which I believe is a really stupid idea. I hope no "newbie" adopts it. br /I never write any negative review but this book is just terrible.

Know the downsides before you buy this.
I became interested in WordPress theming by coincidence; I bought a couple of general WordPress books and at the same time purchased a DVD on theming (by Aleks Monahan) that caught my attention. The DVD got me really interested in the subject and I bought this book later hoping that it would be one level "up" from the DVD. br / br /Well, I was mistaken. This book hasn't advanced my knowledge and the amount of chatter and fluff in it is very careless. It makes it hard to keep on it and finish it. This book starts from the same starting point as the DVD I had already watched, just takes a lot longer to get to the same points. br / br /This book is 240 pages, so it's a small book to begin with and images take up a huge part of it. But when you take into account all the filler and nonsense used to fill up this book, you realize this isn't more than an average tutorial that they desperately wanted to turn into a book by adding lots of waffle... but it's at the expense of my time being wasted. Do you know how irritating it is to read through a book that just keeps going on and on adding fluff without getting to the main points and without adding a reasonable amount to your skill level? Just buy this book and you'll find out! It's an exercise in reading! br / br /I might have liked this book better if I hadn't already watched How to Theme WordPress by Aleks Monahan. Before reading this book, my problem with the Monahan DVD was that it covered so much in so little time. There were no pauses whatsoever and no fluff (and yes, that can be overwhelming. It's a 2-hour DVD that covers 6 hours worth of info, so you have to pay attention constantly. There's no fluff, just info, info, info. So that was a problem for me). But now that I've seen both, I'd rather watch a DVD like that 3 times more than read a book like this that bores me to tears and forces me to put it down. br / br /I read the reviews by Mike (3 stars for the raw info, minus 2 stars for the style and structure) and James Sterling (All the information with too much chat) so I was kind of aware of this problem but bought it anyway. I wouldn't have minded paying the same price and giving this book 5 stars if they had trimmed down all the fat and respected my time by giving me something to really get to grips with. br / br /Please edit the second edition of this book and remove all this fluff. You are not helping your readers learn this way! br /

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 hours(DVD). Both work great hand in hand. I haven't had any problems.