Making the switch from blogger to  becoming a WordPress theme developer is something that a lot of people find a daunting prospect. And with good reason – all those bits of PHP, CSS, HTML! Scary stuff. But it needn’t be. And now it won’t be either:-

Last week on WPShout I ran “A Beginner’s Guide to WordPress Theme Development“. It was more or less just about that – a guide for the beginner WordPress theme developer looking at all of the daunting and different theme files. The series ran over the whole of last week and today has reached its climax with the release of a free eBook which contains the whole series. Over the week, the series looked at all the aspects of a WordPress theme, starting with the fundamentals of any WordPress theme, next moving onto the index.php file. It then looks at the header, sidebar and footer files. Next was the single.php file and finally the other files a WordPress theme has.

The eBook is twenty one pages, 3,508 words and five chapters, with the table of contents as follows:

• Chapter 1: The fundamentals of any WordPress theme.
• Chapter 2: The index.php and style.css files.
• Chapter 3: The header, sidebar and footer.
• Chapter 4: The single, comments and page files.
• Chapter 5: The archive, home and functions files.

As I said, the eBook is free, so download it, soak up the information and become an awesome WordPress theme developer!

Upon downloading the ebook, I was surprised to see that this book is an amazing 950 pages!  In fact, the author did readers a favor and broke it down into a few PDF files for more convenient reading.  If that sounds like a lot of pages, that is because there are a number of screen shots included by the author which inflates the page count a bit, but helps readers to learn and follow along with what the author is saying.

One thing I really liked about this ebook is that the author really goes out of her way to provide options to readers.   Most sections take the time to explain a variety of options to the reader and allows them to figure out what plugin, theme, etc. works for them.  Here are some of the sections within the book that I really enjoyed:

• Creating Membership Sites with WordPress
• Integrating Podcasts into your WordPress Blog
• Creating a Sales Page with WordPress (this is a big part of what affiliate marketers do!)
• Adding a Help Desk to a WordPress Blog
• Building a Jobs Board with WordPress

Some of the sections which could use a little improvement in my opinion:

• More Bookmarks – This ebook comes with some bookmarks, but not as many as I would have liked to see due to the huge size of the ebook.   This of course is not a knock on the book itself, but rather with how the information is presented.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This section has a lot of good but basic SEO information which is geared specifically towards WordPress users.  This is great for someone learning WordPress, but I would have liked to see some more advanced techniques included as well for WordPress veterans.
• Improved Forums Section – I’ve always felt forums are an important part of any successful WordPress blog.  After reading the forums section, I felt like a few more pages could have been dedicated to this section.  It covers WordPress plugins which create forums, but doesn’t appear to cover things like vBulletin or PHPBB, which are probably the most commonly used forum software for WordPress blogs.

Overall, I have to say that I am pretty happy with the WordPress for Internet Marketers eBook.   If you are interested, all 950+ pages are available for only $77.00.   This price includes a document filled with WordPress resources, free updates to the ebook as future versions of WordPress become available, and 100 WordPress themes which can be used to put some of the tips provided in the ebook into practice.

I know a number of our readers do use WordPress MU, so I wanted to let you know that our friend Andrea of WPMU Tutorials has taken her popular post and published the information in an ebook explaining how to install WordPress MU.  For people that are considering starting a network of blogs, you’ll want to check out this free ebook!

In my poll I got a variety of answers, but between the comments from that post and the emails that I received, I was given the impression that people would rather I write a more advanced eBook with a fee attached, rather than releasing a free one that was thrown together quickly and just rehashes stuff you can find in our archives.

Over the past 6 months since that post, I have focused on building an eBook that collects my WordPress experiences, techniques, and other tips and put them together in a new eBook titled Success with WordPress, which is currently available for $24.95.

Because I knew this book would come with a small price tag, Success with WordPress was designed to cover all aspects of WordPress.   In the beginning, you’ll find some general information about installing WordPress, finding good WordPress plugins, etc.  Then it gets into the more advanced stuff that most of you will be looking for:

• Building a Multi-Author WordPress Blog
• Using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS)
• Building a WordPress Forum
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips designed specifically for WordPress
• Maximizing CPC Income with Google AdSense
• Advanced Affiliate Marketing Techniques
• Building a Niche Blog with WordPress

If you are looking to find success with WordPress, this eBook is definitely for you.   Also, if you’d like to promote this product on your website and make some money, you may also be interested in the Success with WordPress affiliate program.   It currently pays out an amazing 33% per sale and we have a 125×125 banner available as well, so you can promote it on your WordPress blogs and start generating some extra income.

So my question is this…..Would you be interested in a WordPress eBook? Let me know which of the following applies to you:

1. I would be interested in purchasing a WordPress eBook at an affordable price. (Price would be $10.00 or less)
2. I would be interested in downloading a WordPress eBook only if it was free.
3. I would not be interested in downloading the WordPress eBook.

Update: This post launched what would eventually become the Success with WordPress eBook!