As of January 2025, there are around 1.2 billion websites online, and that number keeps growing every day. This massive figure shows just how many opportunities exist on the internet, and there’s room for everyone to be part of it. Whether you’re thinking about starting a new business or taking your existing one online, now is one of the best times in history to make that move. We’re more connected than ever, and that means endless possibilities are just a click away.
WordPress is an open-source content management system licensed under GPLv2, which means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software for free. A content management system is a software tool that makes it super easy to manage features of your website – like written content and pages – without having any programming skills.
As you think about starting something and you need an online presence, WordPress can be one tool you can use or leverage to install and manage your own business website, e-Commerce site, Blog, Portfolio or Forum. Due to that, this article provides some books that will teach you the internals of WordPress so that what you are creating can be one of the more than one billion websites aforementioned. We know you are excited about learning WordPress which powers forty percent (40%) of total websites globally.
1. Professional WordPress: Design and Development 3rd Edition
Professional WordPress is a book made specifically for developers who want to dive deep into what WordPress can really do. It goes beyond the basics and shows how to take full advantage of the world’s most popular content management system.
This updated edition (aligned with WordPress 4.1+) includes new examples, updated screenshots, and covers the latest features and tools. You’ll get a look at how WordPress is used in real-world projects as a full application framework – not just a blogging tool. The book includes clear explanations, practical examples, and downloadable code to help you put what you learn into action. Written by experienced WordPress developers, it focuses on real-life uses and advanced techniques that developers can use today and in the future.
This book shows you how to use WordPress efficiently and professionally, giving you fresh insights and expert guidance to unlock its full potential.
- Get up to speed with the latest features in WordPress 4.1
- Explore modern, real-world ways to use WordPress
- Learn how to migrate existing websites to WordPress
- Stay updated with the best tools and practices in WordPress development
Originally created as a simple, elegant publishing platform built with PHP and MySQL, WordPress has grown into a powerful, flexible content management system—thanks to thousands of plugins, themes, and widgets. Professional WordPress is the go-to guide for developers looking to make the most of this versatile platform.
2. WordPress for Beginners 2025
WordPress for Beginners 2025 is your ultimate step-by-step guide to building a beautiful, functional website – no coding required. Whether you’re creating a blog, launching a business site, or showcasing a personal portfolio, this book walks you through every step with clear, beginner-friendly instructions.
From choosing a domain name and setting up hosting, to customizing your design and adding must-have features, you’ll gain the skills and confidence to build a professional-looking website – even if you’ve never done it before.
What You’ll Learn:
- WordPress Basics: Understand what WordPress is, the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and how to choose the right option for your needs.
- Website Setup, Made Simple: Get clear, actionable steps on how to buy a domain, pick a reliable hosting provider, and install WordPress in minutes.
- Full Site Editing (FSE) – New in 2025!: Discover how to fully customize your website using WordPress’s latest Full Site Editing tools—design headers, footers, and layouts visually, with zero coding.
- Themes & Personalization: Learn how to choose and activate modern block-based themes, and customize your site’s design using the global styles panel.
- Gutenberg Block Editor: Master the intuitive block editor to create rich content—add text, images, galleries, videos, buttons, and more with drag-and-drop simplicity.
- Creating & Managing Content: Write blog posts, build pages, organize content with categories and tags, and manage media like a pro.
- Menus, Widgets & Navigation: Improve your site’s usability with custom menus, sidebars, and widgets that keep visitors engaged.
- Plugins & Functionality: Explore essential plugins for SEO, forms, backups, performance, and security – plus how to install and manage them easily.
- Security & Maintenance: Protect your site from hackers and spam with top security tips, regular backups, and trusted plugins.
- Build Any Type of Website: Step-by-step tutorials to help you build a blog, small business website, or portfolio with custom layouts and contact forms.
3. WordPress: The Missing Manual 3rd Edition
Whether you’re just starting out or already experienced in web design, WordPress is one of the most powerful tools for building stunning, functional websites once you know how to use it to its full potential. This updated, jargon-free edition of WordPress: The Missing Manual is your clear, friendly guide to mastering WordPress themes, plugins, and customizations. The book will enable you build any kind of site with confidence.
What You’ll Learn:
- Get WordPress Up and Running: Step-by-step instructions for installing and configuring WordPress—either on a web host or your own computer.
- Build Any Type of Website: Learn how to create everything from a simple blog to a full-featured business or eCommerce site with real-world examples.
- Make It Visual and Interactive: Add photo galleries, slideshows, video, audio players, and even podcasts to create a more engaging visitor experience.
- Enhance with Plugins: Choose from thousands of free plugins to extend your site’s functionality—from contact forms to shopping carts.
- Customize Your Site’s Look: Personalize WordPress themes to match your style or brand. You’ll learn how to tweak layout, colors, fonts, and more.
- Grow Your Audience: Boost your site’s visibility with built-in SEO tools, site analytics, and easy social media integration.
- Keep Everything Safe: Learn how to protect your website with backups, staging environments, and essential security practices.
Whether you’re building a personal blog, launching a portfolio, or running an online business, this book gives you everything you need to create a beautiful and effective WordPress website – without getting overwhelmed by technical terms.
4. Building Web Apps with WordPress
To start with the portfolio of the authors, Brian has been working with WordPress at an expert level since 2008 building custom web and mobile solutions for clients such as TIME Magazine, NBC, Microsoft, Discovery Channel, Constant Contact, and Uber among others. His co-author Jason Coleman, has been pushing WordPress to its limits for years and has helped launch several startups using WordPress as an application framework. They are adept at WordPress and are here to help fellow developers to stake their skills to another new level.
Before proceeding, it is useful to note that this book will be most useful for WordPress developers looking to work on heavier applications, and PHP developers with some WordPress experience looking for a PHP-based application framework. Beginners will find it a little bit deep.
If you are a programmer with familiarity with PHP, HTML, SQL, jQuery/JavaScript, and CSS, this book will show you how to use WordPress as an application framework to build any web app, large or small.
Some of the things you will find inside:
- Managing user accounts and roles, and accessing user data
- Building asynchronous behaviours with jQuery
- Using WordPress to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android
- Integrating PHP libraries, external APIs, and web service plugins
- Collecting payments through e-commerce and membership plugins
- Learning how to speed up and scale your WordPress app
- Extending the WordPress REST API and creating custom endpoints
- Learning about WordPress Gutenberg blocks development
Do not forget that in this updated second edition, Brian Messenlehner and Jason Coleman cover new features and functionality added to WordPress up to version 5.4. Click below to get it all in your collection from Amazon and get coding in WordPress.
5. WordPress Explained
Stephen Burge combines teaching and web design by running OSTraining.com which teaches people how to build websites. He has managed to work with clients including Apple, Pfizer and the U.S. Departments of Energy among others.
In this text, the author walks beginners through installing WordPress, planning sites that are easy to use and manage, adding content, and incorporating powerful site features without programming. In the end, you will learn how to run your site securely and efficiently, no matter how big or popular it becomes!
Comprised of eighteen chapters, you will master WordPress hands-on, through a complete case study, crystal-clear visuals, simple explanations, and on-target analogies, all extensively tested with real WordPress beginners.
The biggest motivation is that if you follow along, then by the end of the book, you will have a complete WordPress site and will be ready to build WordPress sites that make you proud. Your copy awaits on Amazon at the link below.
6. WordPress For Dummies
Author Lisa Sabin-Wilson is a popular conference speaker who co-owns WebDevStudios, a development company specializing in custom WordPress plugins, themes, and deployments. She has a deep understanding of WordPress and is here to help anyone with an interest to learn this tool that changed how websites and blogs can be set up.
Crafted for beginners and anyone with the desire to own their own blogs, e-commerce sites, or any kind of web application, this book drops you right into the fast lane to publishing your first website or blog by teaching you everything you need to know from the very beginning.
What you will get inside:
- Customizing a theme
- Creating your first post
- Using the content management system
- Working with multimedia formats
- Adding plugins to your site
- Building a publishing schedule
- Becoming proficient in using the Dashboard
- Hosting multiple sites
Armed with the knowledge in these text skills, you will be wielding the awesome power of WordPress―the web content-building tool used by individuals, organizations, and corporations worldwide to get their messaging out attractively and professionally. Waste no more time, click below to order your copy from Amazon.
7. The 5-Day WordPress School
This guide gives you the easiest and simpler way to set up, design and secure killer WordPress sites. This can be used by anyone even if you do not have any prior knowledge of coding or nerve-racking technical things.
We all know that WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms and Content Management Systems you can find in the world. Today it powers 52% of websites on the internet dues to its efficiency and amazing features.
To manage the WordPress site effectively, you need some guidance. For that reason, Cyrus Jackson who is a professional WordPress designer guides you on how to know and understand the WordPress platform effectively. In this guide, you will learn how to set up, design and secure your WordPress site with step-by-step illustrations, screenshots, graphics and guidelines to give you the needed road map.
By reading this guide, you will get:
- Deep explanation of the WordPress platform
- A general understanding of the WordPress dashboard
- How to set up a self-hosted WordPress Website
- All that is required for web hosting and domain registration
- The available web hosts that are reliable and affordable
- Factors to Consider when choosing a web host
- How to install the WordPress plugins and themes
- How to customize sharing buttons and widget area
- How to create and publish posts
- How to delete posts and plugins
Obtain a copy of this guide:
8. Professional WordPress Plugin Development
This is the updated version of the Professional WordPress Plugin Development guide that covers all the modern plugin development for WordPress. If you use WordPress to create and manage online content, then you should be interested in plugins. They are used to extend or enhance the CMS functionality.
This edition will teach you how to build advanced plugin development scenarios. It covers all the information for plugins, frameworks, coding standards, dashboards, settings, menus, and related APIs. More topics cover performance, security, data validation, and SQL statements. etc.
In this book, you will understand:
- The ability and importance of hooks in WordPress
- JavaScript and Ajax and how they work on your site
- The key technologies: Block Editor/Gutenberg, JS/React, PHP, and the REST API
- How to create and use custom post types and taxonomies.
- How to work with users and user data
- Using Cron to schedule tasks
You can find more information about this book using the following link.
9. WordPress for Beginners
Although WordPress is so easy to use, it needs some knowledge to unearth its full power and ability. This guide, provided by Kevin Lioy should make it so easy for you to manage a WordPress site without any prior knowledge.
Here, you will learn and understand several concepts that include:
- WordPress abilities and why it’s the best platform for your blog
- How to install WordPress, step by step
- How to improve the performance of your website using advanced techniques
- Why backups are required on a site.
- How to use the platform
- Analysing data and improving traffic
- How to publish posts
- How to deal with your community
- SEO-friendly way to use categories and tags
- The plugins can be used to create photo galleries, podcasts and any other content
This guidebook can be obtained by following the link below:
Final Comments
After learning WordPress, the limits that your imagination can take you will determine what you are about to showcase to the world. It has been made as easy as possible so that you can focus on what you would wish to share with the global citizens spread across this huge earth. Begin your venture today as we wait to drop our jaws at your creativity, your dream and your vision.
Away from that sweet sauce, we would wish to extend our gratitude for the support we continue to receive from you all. You keep us going. If you would like to read more learning material, some are shared below for your reading.
