Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful is my second book on WordPress published by Wiley in the Smashing series (yes, of Smashing Magazine fame). The first one was Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog which will get a 2nd Edition later in 2011.

In Smashing WordPress Themes: Making WordPress Beautiful I’ll teach you how to create great WordPress themes and get the most out of the wonderful publishing platform that is WordPress.

You can expect 368 pages of WordPress theming in full color, written in a way far from boring tech books of the olden days. WordPress is fun, and so the tone of Smashing WordPress Themes is light and conversational, just as in my previous book, without thinking that the dear reader is a dimwitted moron. Read an excerpt or just order the thing and you’ll see what I mean.

11 chapters of theming galore

So what’s in the book then? Lots and lot on WordPress theming of course. We’ll not only learn what makes themes work, but also put our knowledge to good use by building a magazine theme, giving an existing WordPress site community features with the BuddyPress plugin, creating a semi-static website, and so on.

Here’s the contents at a glance:

Part I: What are WordPress themes?

• Chapter 1:
  Gettings Started with WordPress
• Chapter 2:
  This is a Theme
• Chapter 3:
  Digging Into the Twenty Ten Theme

Part II: Hacking a theme

• Chapter 4:
  Using Child Themes
• Chapter 5:
  Choosing a Theme

Part III: Building your own theme

• Chapter 6:
  Planning the Theme
• Chapter 7:
  A Semi-Static Theme
• Chapter 8:
  A Media Theme
• Chapter 9:
  A Magazine Theme

Part IV: Taking themes further

• Chapter 10:
  The BuddyPress Community
• Chapter 11:
  Extending with Plugins

Who should buy Smashing WordPress Themes?

We’ll cover the basics, but you should know that some rudimentary knowledge of HTML, CSS and PHP will help, although you don’t need to be an expert nor know all three. If you’ve dabble with scripting languages, web publishing, or something similar then I’m sure you can use this book to learn to do WordPress themes.

If HTML, CSS and PHP sounds like Greek (or any language you don’t know, should you know Greek), then you should get acquainted with these things first.

Finally, a nice big cover

You may nab that cover if you want to cover (pun intended) the book in any way. I appreciate a link back here should you do so. Thanks!