I’ve had a few great guidebooks on my shelf ever since I started fiddling around with blog templates years ago, but when Michelle Goodman recently asked me a few questions for ABCnews.com, it brought my attention to the fact that many of the resources I recommend are aimed at readers with more XHTML, CSS, and PHP experience. So I immediately mined through my bookmarks for the best books I had read or come across so far for the less technically-inclined. Here are ten of the best books for WordPress beginners, either recommended by Automattic themselves (developers of WP), or highly respected in the business blogging community, in no particular order:

1. Blogging For Dummies – In this super-easy introductory primer, Susannah Gardner & Shane Birley provide a guide to blogging for business owners and folks with a cause to promote. They teach you all the basics of the “blogosphere,” about the anatomy of a blog, how to stand out in the crowd, find your niche, attract readers, generate revenue from your blog, and much more.
2. WordPress For Dummies – Fellow WordPress evangelist Lisa Sabin-Wilson wrote the definitive beginner’s WP bible! She explores the differences between hosted accounts on WordPress.com, self-hosted WP blogs, and multi-user blogs, and examines all the basics of plugins, templates, moderating comments and spam, and troubleshooting common problems.
3. WordPress Complete – Another introductory look at WordPress, designed to get you up and running quickly with your very own blog. Looks at the main aspects of a blog—users, communities, posts, comments, news feeds—and how to manage them using the open-source WordPress software.
4. Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers – Shel Israel and Robert Scoble (whose blog has over 3.5 million readers!) discuss the benefits of blogging as a communications channel: they’re easily publishable, findable by search engines, social and viral in nature, syndicatable, and linkable!
5. Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging – The original blog evangelist, Andy Wibbels, gives a history of blogging, compares the features of several blog software options, provides tutorials for creating and maintaining your own blog, and shares key tips for a successful business blog.
6. ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income – Some sources say Darren Rowse’s two blogs bring in over $20k per month! In this new publication, the Problogger founder teams up with Chris Garrett to look at how bloggers make money, the best monetization strategies, and optimizing your advertising.
7. Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress – Robert T. Douglass, Mike Little, and Jared W. Smith look at content management systems, blogs, and online forums, and the most popular open-source platforms that run them.
8. WordPress Theme Design – Tessa Blakeley Silver gives clear, step-by-step instructions and best practices for building your own blog templates for WordPress, including code markup, testing, debugging, and incorporating third-party plugins.
9. Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them – Bob Walsh takes a no-nonsense look at what blogs have to offer, and how to use them for job hunting, business branding, news gathering, and more.
10. Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World’s Top Bloggers – Michael A. Banks interviews thirty of the most influential and successful bloggers, who write about everything from business trends to parenting. Includes eye-opening insights from Dave Taylor, Chris Anderson, Gina Trapani, Frank Warren, Robert Scoble, Steve Rubel, and many others.

Happy reading!

WordPress is a free, open source blog publishing platform. There are freely hosted accounts available at WordPress.com, or self-hosted software available at WordPress.org (we deal solely with the latter). The platform was developed by Matt Mullenweg and a large online community of software developers, which means there is a lot of support available out there, plus tons of free themes and plugins to increase the functionality and aesthetic of your blog.

The admin panel is web-based, which means you can access and update your site from any wired location in the world. And the biggest benefit of content management systems like WordPress is that they separate the layout & design of your page from the content. In other words, once you have a suitable template designed for your website, anyone can update the content of your site—the CEO, the PR department, the intern, whomever—without any need for technical knowledge of XHTML or CSS. Unlike programs like DreamWeaver or Microsoft FrontPage, even the most non-technical person can create, edit, or update as much content as they want, and never have to worry about corrupting the structure of the webpage!

To expand, I want to share some thoughts from lead developer Matt Mullenweg himself, co-founder of WordPress and its parent company Automattic, Inc. This is the best explanation I’ve ever read about the benefits of WordPress, from Matt’s Foreward to WordPress for Dummies:

“There used to be a program from Microsoft called FrontPage that was the first visual interface for creating Web sites that I saw. It worked like Word or Publisher, so with very little knowledge, I was able to hack together the world’s worst Web site in just a few hours without worrying about what was going on under the hood.

Years later when I look back at that Web site, I cringe, but at the time it was incredibly empowering. The software, though crude, helped me publish something anybody in the entire world could see. It opened up a world I had never imagined before.

Now, using software like WordPress, you can have a blog or Web site lightyears beyond my first one in both functionality and aesthetics. However, just as my first Web experience whetted my appetite for more, I hope that your experience entices you to explore the thousands of free plugins, themes, and customizations possible with WordPress […].

WordPress is more than just software; it is a community, a rapidly evolving ecosystem, and a set of philosophies and opinions about how to create the best Web experience. When you embrace it, you’ll be in good company. WordPress users include media organizations such as CNN, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, along with millions of personal bloggers like myself for whom a WordPress blog is a means of expression.”

Who better to hear about what WordPress means in the bigger picture than one of the founders! Thanks to Lisa Sabin-Wilson for compiling the WordPress for Dummies guide.

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Sudeep D’Souza wrote a useful little post recently at ProBlogger that details some lessons he’s learned that will help bloggers get their start on the right foot. The list of nine tips includes many practical pointers, but I also really appreciate when he says Expect to Ride an Emotional [...] Continue Reading…

There are many benefits to leveraging a blog for your business or even for your personal use. When many people hear the word “blog,” what immediately comes to mind are things like MySpace, teenagers sharing stories of heartbreak, love poems, emo photos, and so on… But chances are, if [...] Continue Reading…