Just a note to let everyone know about the new printed editions of Digging into WordPress 3.0. This is the latest version of DiW, featuring revamped core content, new graphics, popouts and asides, as well as a new chapter devoted entirely to WordPress 3.0. It’s certainly packed with WordPress goodness, with nearly 450 pages of practical, hands-on tips, tricks, and information. The PDF is awesome, but seeing it all printed up in full color on quality paper and heavy, glossy card-stock cover is enough to make you drool:
Congrats to Oliver Edwards for winning the randomly selected book giveaway! Oliver Edwards will receive a complimentary printed edition of Digging into WordPress along with the digital PDF version. Thank you to random.org for the true random number generator.
I have a freeprint version of Digging into WordPress to give away to one lucky winner. To qualify for the giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post stating your absolute favorite thing about WordPress. The winner will receive a free printed copy of DiW shipped to their door, plus a lifetime subscription to the PDF version of the book. I will announce the randomly chosen winner next week. – Good luck! :)
Beautiful custom design with full-color printing on every page
Beautiful custom design..
Make no mistake, this is a beautiful, custom-designed book that makes it fun and easy to soak in the wisdom and advance your WordPress skills. Every detail has been carefully crafted — from the landscape page-orientation and color-coded chapters to the lay-flat spiral binding and large, easy-to-read text — this book is truly a pleasure to experience.
WordPress for Business Bloggers by Packt Publishing was a pleasure to read because it approaches many of the important aspects of WordPress from a slightly different perspective: that of the “business blogger”. The book is aimed at the aspiring business blogger who wants to use WordPress to run a successful business blog. The book claims to skip the basics and jump right into the meat of transforming WordPress into a lean, mean business blogging machine. While this may be true for the book’s target audience, the technical aspects of WordPress covered in the book are familiar ground to the seasoned WordPress user.
Digging into the book, readers will find the expected WordPress topics explored from a business-blogging point of view. The books moves along at a quick pace, and quickly makes the case for using WordPress to achieve their business blogging goals. The book then presents a case-study that serves as a working example throughout the remainder of the book. After a quick romp through some basic design and coding principles, the book covers the essentials on integrating image and video content into your blog. The following chapter emphasizes the importance of content in general, and provides some timeless advice on using WordPress to deliver superior content.
One of the oldest JavaScript tricks in the book involves providing a “print this!” link for visitors that enables them to summon their operating system’s default print dialogue box to facilitate quick and easy printing of whatever page they happen to be viewing. With the old way of pulling this little stunt, we write this in the markup comprising the target “print this!” link in question:
Big yuck there, of course, due to the obtrusive nature of the JavaScript implementation. Adhering to the principles of proper Web Standards, it is better practice to separate behavior from structure by placing this amazing “print this!” function in its own location, either in the <head> of the document or even better in an external JavaScript file. So basically, we want markup that looks more like this:
<a href="http://domain.tld/target/" title="Print this page">Print This!</a>
Notice the new value for the href attribute. Rather than pointing illogically to the JavaScript function, it now points to an actual resource, which may be anything you desire. Previously, users without JavaScript would click the “print this!” link and blink while nothing happens. With the unobtrusive technique, you provide the location to which users without JavaScript shall go. Possibilities here include an explanation page or even just the page itself, depending on how lazy you wanna be.
It’s been awhile since my last personal news post, and I figure that enough has been happening to warrant yet another exciting news update. Yay! ;)
So let’s see, first on my mind is the recent launch of the new design for Monzilla Media, the official site for my personal website and graphic design business. The first two versions of the site were single-page brochure sites, but this new version is fully loaded, featuring tons of portfolio content, business news, and service information. If you’ve got a minute, I would love to hear your feedback!
For on-demand printing of books, calendars, and other desktop-published items, lulu.com is a popular choice. The on-demand service provides customers with online administration interface that provides automated tools for uploading, publishing, and managing their projects. Once published, books may be printed, purchased, downloaded, and/or distributed. Of course, the entire process of using lulu.com to publish and print projects is fairly complex, with many details contingent on your specific needs. As a recent customer of lulu.com, I thought I would share a bit of DIY wisdom for anyone considering using their on-demand printing service.
Editor’s Note: This article applies exclusively to our Lithium theme, which is no longer the default site theme. Different themes may or may not include print style sheets of their own. Click here to check out the Lithium theme, to which this article applies. Click here to see a list of all available themes.
Perishable Press now with fully printable articles! Check out the new print CSS stylesheet by checking out an article’s “Print Preview” from the browser’s “File” menu. Before the addition of special CSS styles for print versions, Press articles printed non-sequentially and included everything — buttons, banners, text fields, icons, and every odd list, break, and scrollbar — and looked utterly disastrous. Well thank heavens the nightmare is over. Articles now print like articles and pages now print like pages. Here are some articles that include some common post elements — text, code, lists, images, etc. — as demonstration 1 of our fresh new CSS print styles.
1 Note: Tested with Firefox 1.5.0.3, Internet Explorer 6.0.2900, and Netscape Navigator 8.0.1. For some mysterious reason yet to be determined, Opera 8.54 refused to cooperate, and thus may not prove worthwhile for printing Perishable Press articles. Don’t cry too much. Also, it should be noted that, for browsers other than Opera, regardless of how jumbled the links or other text may appear in Print Preview mode, the articles will indeed print according to CSS. This is due to CSS2 rules that append and print the full URL after each link.
![[ Digging into WordPress 3.0 ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2010/digwp-update/v3-printed-book-01.jpg)
![[ Digging into WordPress ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2010/misc-chunks/wordpress-logo-blue.jpg){kind=logo}
I have a free ![[ Photo: Fanning color page edges ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2009/dig-wp-print/digwp-print_03.jpg)
![[ Illustration of Gears ]](http://perishablepress.com/press/wp-content/images/2008/lulu-printing/lulu_01.jpg)
For on-demand printing of books, calendars, and other desktop-published items,