July 31st in Wordpress Plugins by Wordpress Jedi .
Those of you who have blogging for a while probably have enough content to put together an e-book. Why do all the work from scratch when you can repurpose your existing content and expand on what you have already covered to publish a killer e-book? Converting your blog to an e-book is not a process you can complete in a day or two. But these tools do help you convert your WordPress blog to an e-book faster:
Zinepal: a simple WordPress to e-book conversion tool. Just provide it with your site’s feed, select your stories, and you are set. The tool supports ePub, PDF, and Kindle formats. [click to continue…]
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May 25th in Wordpress Books by Wordpress Jedi .
WordPress is the most popular blogging platform around. It is open source and has a strong community behind it which helps. Starting a blog with WordPress does not really take much. But sometimes you want to go beyond a basic blog and work towards building a business with the help of your site. These 5 WordPress books can help you achieve that:
How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer: teaches you how to build a blog, a portfolio site and a general portal for WordPress. It has a pragmatic approach to it and has something for everyone. [click to continue…]
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November 20th in Wordpress Books by Wordpress Jedi .
Many WordPress webmasters install WP on their servers and go about running their website without taking time to make themselves familiar with the server they are running their software on. That may not be a big problem when you have only 2 people visiting your website. But if you get any kind of attention on the Internet, you will have to take time to optimize your web server to get the most out of WordPress. You may even have to switch to a different server to keep your load under control (check our Nginx article for more information).
Installing WordPress and mastering it is only one part of the process. Knowing your web server can help you big time as well. These 5 web server books for WordPress (and other websites) can help:
Nginx HTTP Server: Nginx is a web server that we are currently using for many of our WordPress websites. It is one of the best solutions for sites that get a lot of load (we are oversimplifying it but Nginx is especially good for VPS hosted sites). This book teaches you how optimize your web server and get the most out of it.
Lighttpd: another light-weight web server that can reduce your site’s load and saves you money and resources in the long run. In a perfect world, going from Apache to this server would be super easy. That’s not the case, which is why you need to review this book if you are interested in it.
Apache Cookbook: I am not a big fan of Apache, but that does not mean it’s not a decent web server. A ton of websites are run using this web server, and there is a good reason for that. If you love you htaccess and all the goodies that you get with Apache, you want to take a look at this book to pick up some good tips. [click to continue…]
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April 14th in Wordpress Books by Wordpress Jedi .
Whether you are a regular to WP Jedi or this is the first time you visit this website, there is a good chance you have some affection for WordPress. The good thing about WordPress is that there is always something new to learn and new techniques to master. Just before you have time to blink, a new version of WordPress is released with all kinds of new goodies. But that’s what makes WordPress fun. It’s tough for authors to take a snapshot of WordPress when it’s changing and evolving so fast, but if you are looking to learn new things, here are 5 recent WordPress books that you should read:
WordPress 2.8 E-Commerce: a WordPress book for advanced professionals and anyone who want to learn more about the art of WP e-commerce programming (expect a full review of this book shortly).
Professional WordPress: if you have mastered the basics of WordPress and are ready to tackle more advanced topics (plugins, database management, and more) this book is a good place to start. [click to continue…]
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April 3rd in Wordpress Books by Wordpress Jedi .
We at WPJedi are a bunch of WordPress junkies that live and breathe WordPress. Considering that WordPress is one of the best open source content management systems on the market, we have a good excuse for what we do. Mastering WordPress is not as easy as it sounds. The code is expanding and getting better each day. Besides, there are plenty of additional platforms you can take advantage of to create highly sophisticated solutions for WordPress. So you definitely have to pay your dues before calling yourself a WordPress guru. One way to do that is by making sure you know what it takes to develop solutions (e.g. themes for WordPress platform). That’s where How To Be a WordPress Rockstar comes in handy. It’s a powerful WordPress book that is written to help anyone interested in the art of designing WordPress themes get a fast start in this field. WordPress provides you with amazing opportunities to develop highly innovative solutions. As long as you are familiar with those advanced concepts, there is no reason you can’t go on to develop highly innovative solutions for WordPress.
How To Be a WordPress Rockstar is not your average WordPress book. There are plenty of them around that show you how to install WordPress and add some plugins to it. Haven’t we seen enough of those books? If you are anything like me, you want a book that digs deeper and shows you how to do cool things with WordPress. This books takes a good shot at that. While it starts with the basics, it runs you through what you need to know to develop powerful themes for WordPress. It even covers a few theme ideas to get you started in your journey in the theme development world.
The book starts with the very basics of WordPress. But before you know it, you are learning about the loop, dealing with your sidebar, and changing your footer. You also learn how to build a basic plugin and how to deal with advanced fields. You are also provided with a ton of examples to help you get it. [click to continue…]
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August 30th in Wordpress Books, Wordpress Training by Wordpress Jedi .
Twitter has quickly become “THE” community to be a part of. Not only it’s a great community to network with others and build relationships, but it can help drive lots of traffic to your blog as well. So if you have a WordPress blog, you can’t afford not to be involved on Twitter. But Twitter is more than just talking about what you are doing every minute or what you plan to eat for lunch. It’s about connecting with others and providing them with content that makes them want to come back for more. Perhaps the best way to get a handle on Twitter is learn from the masters. Thankfully, many top Twitter experts have written books or created courses on this very topic. So as long as you are willing to spend some time to get through them, you should have no trouble becoming a tweetmaster.
If you are looking for a killer resource to take your Twitter game to the next level, here are 4 cool resources (and books) you should consider reviewing:
The Twitter Book: a book by the legendary Tim O’reilly. It’s one of the best Twitter books around. The book shows you how to get started with Twitter and how to effectively push your business and brand on Twitter.
Twitter Power: Joel Comm needs no introduction. His Adsense books dominated the best sellers charts for long. Twitter Power shows you exactly what you need to do to dominate the world of Twitter. [click to continue…]
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August 20th in Wordpress Books by Wordpress Jedi .
A lot of bloggers assume that once they switch from Blogger or other platforms to WordPress, their site is going to show up higher on Google’s search engine result pages. There was a time when some experts actually gave WordPress a big edge over its competitors as far as SEO was concerned. But these days, if you want to show up at the top of the search engines, you’ve got to work at it. Choosing the right keyword and writing magnetic content goes a long way towards helping you get better rankings on Google and other search engines but having a long-term SEO strategy always pay in the long run.
Search Engine Optimization for Dummies is a wonderful book by Bruce Clay, a SEO legend, that shows you how to optimize any website for search engines. The books starts from zero and shows you how to take your website to the next level by optimizing all aspects that are deemed to be important by search engines. The book starts with an overview of how search engines work, and what they deem to be important when ranking a website. So you won’t have to follow instructions that others give you without understanding why they are important.
The keyword research section is rich and a must read for everyone. A lot of people tend to go overboard with their keyword research and target too many keywords per page. Bruce discusses what you need to look out for when conducting your keyword research. The author doesn’t just show you how to research keywords. He also discusses how you can develop a real keyword strategy for your website. Your keyword research process never stops. You always have to be on the top of things and find new ways to get ranked high on Google. But having a long-term strategy, you can keep targeting popular terms and grab more traffic share in your niche.
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