5 Useful Web Development Books

Although there’s nowhere better to sharpen your skills than your favorite search engine results, I’m still a fan of a good book and thought I would mention a few that I like and use regularly.

Professional WordPress

Professional WordPress is, I think, the best book on wordpress to date. Released in 2010 from Wrox, this book covers a lot of ground, starting with the basics and moving through to more advanced topics. Highlights include a great section on building plugins and a thorough discussion of the different methods of building custom loops and when to use them.

Simply Javascript

Simply Javascript, from Sitepoint, is a great introduction to modern Javascript standards and practices: meaning non-intrusive, lean & clean code. Although I rarely use straight javascript, with so many great javascript libraries out there, it’s important to know what those libraries are built on and how they make things easier for us.

Jquery: Novice to Ninja

Jquery: Novice to Ninja covers some of the most common uses of the powerful Jquery javascript library. There are a lot of good libraries out there, but Jquery is as good as any, and seems to be the industry standard these days. This book will certainly get you up to speed.

Front End Drupal

With the increasing popularity of WordPress as a full featured c.m.s., I spend most of my time working with it, rather than some of the other options, such as Drupal. But Drupal is a powerful c.m.s. and excels in a lot of areas that WordPress just isn’t built for, particularly straight out of the box. Front End Drupal covers all aspects of building custom themes for Drupal.

PHP 6 and MySql 5

PHP 6 and MySql 5 by author Larry Ullman offers a solid introduction to the php and mysql languages and how they can be used to build web applications. And when you’re done with this one give php 5 Advanced a try. This one covers advanced php networking, object oriented programming and a lot more.