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My New Book: Digging into WordPress

December 15, 2009 • Tagged as , ,

After nearly a year of production, design, planning, and writing, I am proud to announce the release of my new book, Digging into WordPress! Written with co-author and master designer Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks, Digging into WordPress covers everything you need to get the most out of WordPress and take your WordPress skills to the next level.

The book is nine chapters absolutely packed with 400+ pages of WordPress tutorials, techniques, tips and tricks. From setting up your site and customizing your theme to maximizing WordPress feeds and optimizing your site for the search engines, Digging into WordPress will help you understand what works, why it works, and how to do it. The book also covers website security, comment customization, and performance optimization in considerable detail.

Digging into WordPress also has a companion site, DigWP.com, where Chris and I share quality articles, resources, and even free themes to everyone, not just people who buy the book. Together with the website, Digging into WordPress provides everything you need to run an efficient, well-optimized and secure WordPress-powered site. But don’t take my word for it, read what others have to say about Digging into WordPress.

Currently, the book is available in PDF format, which is ideal for following along with the tutorials and techniques on your computer. All of the code is right there in the PDF — no need to go hunting around the Web to download convoluted zip files — just copy, click and paste the code into place. Each code example and technique is fully self-contained, so you have everything you need to get the job done. A good understanding of HTML, CSS and some basic familiarity with PHP is recommended, but by no means required to benefit from the book. Also awesome in the PDF version of the book: everything is hyperlinked — pages, links, the Index, Table of Contents — everything. Plus, the book is designed in landscape format to fit optimally within the window of your PDF reader.

As if that weren’t awesome enough, everyone who purchases the book will get a free lifetime subscription to all future updates. This is great news because WordPress is a constantly changing piece of software, causing other WordPress books to be outdated almost as soon as they are released. With Digging into WordPress, Chris and I will be adding new material and updating content as WordPress evolves, so you’ll be getting the absolute most value while staying up-to-speed on everything WordPress has to offer. And, better still, we are currently finishing up printing for the actual print-format version of the book, which should hopefully be available before Christmas!

Here are some resources for more information on Digging into WordPress:

So what are you waiting for! Get the book!

Welcome to the New Monzilla Media

August 19, 2008 • Tagged as ,

After several months of planning, preparing, development and design, the new Monzilla Media site is officially complete. New features of the site include a sleek portfolio slideshow, a complete services library, and more personal information than you really care to know. In addition to the portfolio slideshow, I also elaborate on each website project in the growing portfolio archive, where you find information regarding the “who,” “what,” “where” and “why” of each project. And, as if all that weren’t enough to stop your heart from beating, the site now features an official news blog, complete site map, proper site feed, and utterly comprehensive contact page.

For all you technical geeks out there, the site is powered by the latest version of WordPress (2.5.1 at the time of this writing), which employs a hearty blend of PHP, SQL, and HTAccess. The site itself is hosted on an ASO shared server running open-source Linux and Apache software with all the trimminz. The site design is by yours truly and employs valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and a modest serving of nearly valid CSS. The site is designed to maintain visual consistency across all modern browsers, which basically is everything except old (pre-7) versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Having said all that, I invite you to have a look around, explore the site and let me know what you think! I currently have comments disabled on all news posts, but will gladly respond to any questions, concerns, and criticisms sent via email. Especially if you experience any difficulties or issues using the site, please let me know. Thanks, and welcome to Monzilla Media!

Monzilla Redesign Nearing Completion

July 16, 2008 • Tagged as ,

After several weeks working behind the scenes on the new Monzilla Media website, I am happy to announce that much progress has been made. At this point, the main sections of the site are essentially complete. The portfolio gallery is also nearing completion, and will be transferred from the local installation to the live site very soon. Several examples of graphic design and digital photography remain to be prepared, but this should happen relatively quickly, all things considered.

Besides tending to SEO and last-minute optimization and performance measures, the only significant remaining task involves the completion of the Flash slideshow on the home page. The scripts are all in place, but the slideshow is currently displaying “dummy” content, which was used during its creation, implementation, and testing. Now that the slideshow is working as intended, completion of the site rests almost entirely on the furnishing of display content, which will feature as many portfolio items as I can possibly tolerate.

Thus, once the written content is updated, and the slideshow is complete, the Monzilla Media site will be in full effect and officially open for business. In the meantime, please pardon my dust, as I continue to work diligently to complete the new site. Cheers!

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