RocketTheme Blog

• Book: WordPress for Education
• Author: Adam D. Scott
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Published: 2012
• Skill Level: Beginner / Intermediate
• Price: $15.29 (ebook), $26.99 (printed book)
• Website and Ordering

WordPress for Education from Packt Publishing is a comprehensive guide for setting up a WordPress site using multisite and social networking components. The book has a primary focus aimed at educators wishing to create a course based website or manage a network for classroom students. The book outlines the administrative backend operations, installation and configuration steps for building such a website.

The book is very unassuming in previous knowledge of WordPress or web software and the explanations of set up, installation, configuration are very straight forward and easy to understand. If walks through all the steps necessary to get WordPress installed with a multisite network as well as adding and managing various plugins.

Aside from the standard and commonly used WordPress plugins, many education and classroom based plugins are discussed and walked through in detail. Common WordPress plugins are presented with several options for commenting, contact forms, calendars and more. Many educational based plugins are walked through and discussed. Such as adding courses, quizzes, grading and other educational functionalities that would appeal to educators.

Several sections of the book are dedicated to Buddypress, a popular open source social network plugin for WordPress. It's set up, configuration, features and educational applications are discussed along with it's relationship with several of the aforementioned plugins and educational extensions for Buddypress itself.

Later chapters of the book are aimed at website management. Common website maintenance tasks such as backups, increasing performance, security, and updating software are discussed and walked through in an easy to understand fashion.

Overall, WordPress for Education is primarily for educators and educational based website administrators. The book is very specific in it's educational focus and may not appeal to all WordPress users. Also the focus is more on backend configuration, those looking for design tips and information on building an attractive web site will have to look elsewhere. Other than that, it is well written and the guides and tips are very easy to understand. Educators will most certainly find this to be a helpful resource if using WordPress for the first time.

Pros:

Easy to understand and comprehensive guide to setting up an educational oriented website. Great for beginners with little or no knowledge of WordPress.

Cons:

Much of the focus is on installation, configuration, plugins and backend operations. Not much attention provided on the appearance of the front end or options for enhancing the look and feel of the front end. The focus of the book is very specific and will most likely only appeal to Educators or Classroom oriented projects.

About the Reviewer:

Cliff Pfeifer

A Rocket Theme support team member and forum moderator. He is also a freelance web developer specializing in Joomla and Wordpress, website design and project management. He lives in Denver, Colorado and has a passion for coding, golf and helping others.