iPentimento | Genealogy and History

I received my copy of WordPress for Dummies recently, and I sat right down to devour it. I wish I’d had it when I decided to take the plunge and begin the WordPress self-hosted blog that is now iPentimento, but this book is going to be my blogging bible from now on.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson has put together an excellent book that targets both the WordPress.com community as well as those of us in the WordPress.org category. The first page in the book is a very handy cheat sheet that includes the WordPress.org Administration panel, where to find Community Support for WP multi-users, the self-hosted users, multiple users implementing WordPress MU, and the WordPress repository for overall use of the program in the codex. This cheat sheet also includes where to find blog designers, free themes and plugins.

Just a quick glance at the contents will show the following:

• An introduction to WordPress – What it can do for you

• Using the WordPress Hosted Service – Getting started, writing and managing your blog, as well as enhancing your blog with Themes, Widgets and Upgrades.

• Hosting your blog using WordPress.org – Design and implementation

• Implementing a multi-user blog with WordPress MU – Managing your community

• How migrate your current blog to WordPress – Typepad, WordPress.com, etc.

As the front cover tells us, this book is “A reference for the rest of us”. It truly is! I have already marked several sections so I can go back and explore them further. Just because you have a WordPress blog doesn’t mean you immediately know how to make it work. Lisa explains how to make sure the search engines can find your posts, how to manage your categories, which plugins to use to eliminate spam, and more. Much more.