9 Best WordPress Books You Must Read in 2023 (Updated)

There are plenty of books to choose from when it comes to learning WordPress, but the best WordPress books are always hard to find. But do not worry, we’ve researched for you.

Whether you are looking for books for beginners or WordPress development, our list of the best WordPress books got you covered. These books are considered best in experts’ eyes and are popular among WordPress users worldwide. 

We have read so many books on WordPress, gone through reviews, and heard from people in person to finalize our list of WordPress books for you. No matter the type of WordPress user you are, if you want to know more about WordPress and sharpen your WordPress skills, these are the must-read books for you.

Best WordPress Books to Read in 2023

Books on WordPress come in different categories – some of these books are for WordPress beginners, some are for developers, some are for WordPress businesses, and so on. Because of this diversity, our list of must-read WordPress books comes in different categories.

Best WordPress Books for Beginners

If you want to learn WordPress right from the beginning, here are some amazing WordPress books that can help you achieve that goal. Besides beginners’ guidance, some of these books cover some advanced topics to learn WordPress deeply.  

WordPress All-in-One For Dummies

WordPress book - WordPress All-in-One For Dummies

WordPress All-in-One For Dummies is written by WordPress expert Lisa Sabin Wilson. It focuses on setting up your account, choosing a host and theme, managing content with editor Gutenberg, and keeping your site secure. You can take your WordPress knowledge to the next level with the information packed inside this WordPress All-in-One For Dummies.

WordPress All-in-One For Dummies helps you learn the following: 

  • Build your site foundation
  • Choose a server
  • Become a site admin pro
  • Learn how to manage content using Gutenberg

WordPress for Beginners 2021: A Visual Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering WordPress

WordPress for Beginners: A Visual Step-by-Step Guide to Mastering WordPress

A WordPress book by veteran WordPress expert Andy Williams to master WordPress using a step-by-step visual approach (over 330 screenshots). This book is a major new release for 2021, covering the latest version of WordPress. Building a professional WordPress website is no longer the computer geeks’ work. Whether you want to build a business site, an affiliate site, a hobby site, or a blog, WordPress is a great choice, and this book shows you the way. WordPress for Beginners is one of the best WordPress books to read in 2021.

You’ll learn essential topics like:

  • How to set up web hosting and domain registrar the correct way.
  • Installing WordPress.
  • A Dashboard Overview.
  • How to update WordPress, themes, and plugins.
  • Understand every single setting. You can use our suggested defaults.
  • Enabling and dealing with visitor comments.
  • Using the media library for images, videos, and more.
  • The difference between pages and posts, and when to use each one.
  • Effective use of categories and tags. Misusing these can get your site penalized or even banned from search engines.
  • How to create content using both the Classic editor and the new Gutenberg editor.
  • Publish or schedule posts for a future date.
  • Using widgets on your site to add neat features.
  • And more.

WordPress: The Missing Manual

WordPress book - WordPress: The Missing Manual

WordPress: The Missing Manual is a well-written book on WordPress by Matthew MacDonald. it will take from the ground up to get into WordPress in a very clear and easy-to-understand manner. The book pays attention to the details of building a website. There are discussions on managing a site, monitoring usage, protecting against spam and hacking, and building and keeping up interest in your site.

Here are some of the things you will know from this book

  • Set up WordPress. Configure WordPress on your web hosting or get it running on your home computer.
  • Create Your Own Website. Get detailed instructions for building all types of websites, from blogs to business sites with e-commerce features.
  • Take it to the Next Level. Add picture galleries, slideshows, video clips, music players, and podcasts.
  • Add New Features. Install WordPress plugins to enhance your site’s capabilities, from contact forms to a basic shopping cart from thousands of options.

WordPress in Easy Steps

WordPress book - WordPress in Easy Steps

WordPress in Easy Steps is one of the popular WordPress books by Darryl Bartlett. This book is written for beginners who are just starting with WordPress. WordPress in Easy Steps is for Bloggers, web designers, or those looking to design a website who don’t want to learn the technical language. Also, anybody who has had a WordPress website built for them can get detailed guidance to update their own website.

WordPress in Easy Steps covers the following topics:

  • Setting Up WordPress
  • Working with the Dashboard
  • Creating Site Content
  • Adding Media
  • Appearance and Themes
  • Adding Plugins
  • Comments
  • Setting up Users and Privileges
  • Tools and Settings
  • WordPress Tricks

WordPress To Go

WordPress book - WordPress To Go

WordPress To Go makes it so simple to learn WordPress. You’ll know all the “gotchas” before setting up a WordPress site, discover how to make it content-rich, and even how to attract search engines! You’ll get traffic, and exposure, and ultimately grow your business.

Here are some of the things you will learn from the WordPress To Go book:

  • How to register your own domain and get the right WordPress hosting
  • How to install WordPress with a few clicks of the mouse
  • How to create a professional-looking, commerce-ready website with very little effort
  • How to add and format your content
  • How to use graphics and images
  • All about themes, plugins, widgets, and other WordPress tools

Best WordPress Books for Developers

If you want to develop WordPress themes and plugins, there are some books for you. You can add new functionalities to your WordPress sites and do many more by reading these books.

Building Web Apps with WordPress: WordPress as an Application Framework

Building Web Apps with WordPress: WordPress as an Application Framework

If you are a developer and want to develop web apps with WordPress, then his book is for you. If you have basic PHP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript experience you can use WordPress to develop fast, scalable, secure, and customized web apps, mobile apps, web services, and multisite networks of websites. Along with core WordPress functions and database schema, you’ll learn how to build custom plugins, themes, and services for just about any kind of web or mobile application. All code examples in the book are available on GitHub.

Some of the things you will learn from this book

  • Use themes for views and plugins for backend functionality
  • Get suggestions for choosing or building WordPress plugins
  • Register custom post types (CPTs) and taxonomies
  • Manage user accounts and roles, and access user data
  • Build asynchronous behaviors with jQuery
  • Use WordPress to develop mobile apps for iOS and Android
  • Integrate PHP libraries, external APIs, and web service plugins
  • Collect payments through e-commerce and membership plugins
  • Learn how to speed up and scale your WordPress app
  • Extend the WordPress REST API and create custom endpoints
  • Learn about WordPress Gutenberg blocks development

Professional WordPress Plugin Development 2nd Edition

Professional WordPress Plugin Development

The updated Professional WordPress Plugin Development addresses modern plugin development for WordPress. WordPress plugins are software that can extend or enhance CMS functionality if you’re using WordPress to create and manage websites. This book guides you on writing plugins for WordPress sites to share or sell to other users.

The second edition of Professional WordPress Plugin Development covers the building of advanced plugin development scenarios. It discusses the plugin framework and coding standards as well as dashboards, settings, menus, and related application programming interfaces (APIs). Also, it talks about different topics including security, performance, data validation, and SQL statements.

  • Learn about hooks in WordPress
  • Discover how JavaScript and Ajax will work
  • Understand Block Editor/Gutenberg, JS/React, PHP, and the REST API
  • Create and use custom post types and taxonomies.
  • Creating custom dashboard menus and plugin settings
  • Work with users and user data
  • Schedule tasks and utilize Cron
  • Performance and security considerations

WordPress eBooks For Free 

Kinsta offers some excellent WordPress eBooks completely free of cost. You can download them just by giving your email address. 

Some of the popular WordPress eBooks are:

Books have always been the most useful way to learn new things. Even in this digital world, where YouTube videos and eLearning courses are abundant, Books stay at the top of people’s choice because of the focused and attentive learning experiences. We have made a list of some of the most useful books for WordPress. If you want to learn WordPress by reading books, these WordPress books can be your best friends. 

Amie Suzan
Amie Suzan
Articles: 76

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15 Comments

  1. Personally, I love to learn by reading books instead of watching video tutorials and I am very much excited to know about these awesome books on WordPress. Hope these will make my WordPress learning journey more enjoyable. Thank you very much for sharing.

  2. Hi,

    Could you suggest some books on WordPress Theme Development as well.

    In the above list, I am thinking about reading the last one (i.e. WordPress Plugin Development by Brad Williams).

    Thanks for sharing the list with us.

    Regards,
    Sanjay

  3. Hi,

    Thank you for sharing the books. These editions are all 2020 with 430 pages and 499 pages in the last two recommended books. This will keep me busy reading these for the next two months. Hope it is worth my money!

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