Stephanie Leary

Writer and WordPress consultant

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    • Content Strategy for WordPress (2015)
    • WordPress for Web Developers (2013)
    • Beginning WordPress 3 (2010)
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    • Fascism Watch (2016-17)
    • Content Modeling for WordPress series
    • WordPress Hidden Gems series
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Speed Up Your Site

June 10, 2003 Stephanie Leary

Book review #2 for today. Unlike Designing With Web Standards, this one wasn’t enchanting enough that I read it cover to cover. In fact, after the first chapter I started skimming. Kept skimming. Slowed down long enough to read the chapter on search engine optimization, most of which I already knew. (It’s explained better at SpiderFood anyway.) Went back to skimming.

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Speed Up Your Site is riddled with overly technical jargon and the kind of statistics only a middle manager could love. On top of that, I found many of the suggestions—such as removing all whitespace from CSS files—completely unworkable. (What happens when I need to edit that CSS file?)

I know I’ve read Andy King’s articles and found them useful. I was really looking forward to this book. It just doesn’t add anything useful to the articles available online.

Books

Fascism Watch

The Fascism Watch is a daily(ish) news roundup. View all the previous Fascism Watch posts »

Latest WordPress Book

Content Strategy for WordPress

A short book for content strategists and managers on implementing a complete content strategy in WordPress: evaluation, analysis, content modeling, editing and workflows, and long-term planning and maintenance.

Read the sample chapter

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WordPress for Web Developers

WordPress for Web Developers (9781430258667)

This is a book for professional web designers and developers who already know HTML and CSS, and want to learn to build sites with WordPress. The book begins with a detailed tour of the administration screens and settings, then digs into server-side topics like performance and security. The second half of the book is devoted to development: learning to build WordPress themes and plugins.

This is the second, much-revised and updated edition of Beginning WordPress 3, with a more accurate title. Everything’s been updated for WordPress 3.6.

WordPress for Web Developers is out now. See what's inside...

The best WordPress features you’ve never noticed

  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Screen Options
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Bulk Edit
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Private Status
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Dashboard Feed Readers
  • WordPress Hidden Gems: Options.php

Content Modeling for WordPress series

  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 1: analyze content
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 2: functional and organizational requirements
  • Content modeling for WordPress, part 3: a sample content model

This is an excerpt from Content Strategy for WordPress.My latest books are Content Strategy for WordPress (2015) and WordPress for Web Developers (2013). Sign up to be notified when I have a new book for you.

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