David's rating:
 5.0
On Mar 31, 2013 David Greenbaum wrote: Great guide for non-progammer types
The missing manual series consistently provides an excellent guide to every aspect of the program or product and this interation in the series is no exception.
Since Wordpress is more of a service than an actual product, the author faced a unique challenge of making it relevant and useful without get stuck by the fact that Wordpress does frequent updates and tweaks to its products. The features were presented in such a way that they empowered the reader to understand the concept and not get caught up in the very detailed aspects of features that could change over time such as where an option is located or which menu to click on. This was less of a tutorial and exercise based book but rather an exhaustive feature guide that didn't get bogged down in overly technical aspects such as the nitty gritty of php or sql databases and was written from an end user perspective. The book mostly ignored fluffy discussions of why you should blog or what you should blog about and keep it all about setup, usage, and maintenance.
The flow of the book assumes no prior knowledge of blogs hosted by Wordpress or self-hosted blogs and clear distinctions were made where applicable between the two versions. After reviewing setup and installation the book talks about how to enrich your blog with media, pages, and comments and then eventually going into the advanced concepts of plugins and multiple authors and then finally turning a blog into a full-fledged website which is all the rage today. This flow allows someone already familiar with how to setup Wordpress to pick up the book to start where the reader's individual skill set ended.
Even though I am an experienced user of Wordpress, the sections on plugins and optimizing the use thereof was extremely helpful and the index was invaluable when I got stuck on a particular feature. Great book for someone who wants to move beyond simply writing a blog and work on taking ownership of it without paying a consultant or designer to do so.
Full Review >
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David's rating:
5.0
On Nov 24, 2012 David Greenbaum wrote: Unix for the perplexed
This small guide gives Mac users a very basic introduction to Unix commands. This book is designed for the do it yourselfer that has always wanted to, but afraid to, open the terminal program and check out the shell.
The commands and options are generally given a context of how you might use the commands in the real world. In particular this book was extremely well laid out making it clear to the reader the commands, options, outputs and results of each section. Many books I've previously read on the subject suffer from text overload but this book had a great use of typefaces, shading and style to make it a clear and straightforward read.
Unix commands can be overwhelming and just downright scary if you don't understand them right and enter them in correctly. This book empowers the reader to explore without messing up their systems and risking damage. Full Review >
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Real Science, Great Nutrition, and Good Health
David's rating:
5.0
On Jun 26, 2012 David Greenbaum wrote: Book Review: Fitness for Geeks
"Getting in shape: using agile and other development methodologies" If you know what agile is and want to get in shape, this book is for you! Unlike other fitness books that focus on just one aspect of getting (or staying in shape) this book is a great broad overview that doesn't tell you what to do, but empowers you with the information to do it yourself. Full Review >
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25 Twitter Projects to Help You Build Your Community
David's rating:
5.0
On May 12, 2012 David Greenbaum wrote: Book Review: #tweetsmart: 25 Twitter Projects to Help You Build Your Community
Although the title doesn't clearly hint at this, this book's primary audience is growing your business or audience using twitter. Each chapter is a short and simple way of using twitter to "build your community" but in reality it's about getting your message across. Full Review >
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David's rating:
 4.0
On Mar 6, 2012 David Greenbaum wrote: Book Review: Privacy and Big Data
With Google not just changing its privacy rules, but these slowly becoming a political and election issue, this book gives a short (75 page) overview of not just how we got here but how other countries deal with this issue. Full Review >
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David's rating:
4.0
On Oct 26, 2011 David Greenbaum wrote: Book Review: Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011 Step by Step
The joke has always been you can’t spell Entourage without “rage” and Microsoft finally retired that product and re-introduced Outlook for the Mac, which hasn’t been around since the classic days! This book is a great overview of all the features of the product including both beginner and intermediate concepts. Full Review >
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David's rating:
5.0
On Sep 11, 2011 David Greenbaum wrote: Great guide to what is new in Lion
Find out just what you need! Full Review >
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David's rating:
4.0
On Sep 6, 2011 David Greenbaum wrote: Book Review: Head First WordPress: A Brain-Friendly Guide to Creating Your Own Custom WordPress Blog
"Head First Wordpress" is a funny and iririrreveren guide to getting yourself up and running with Wordpress in a engaging and dynamic way. This is part technical manual, part exercise guide and part comic book - a weird amalgamation of learning modalities that keeps the reader from skipping over critical sections and avoids talking down to the user or above their head. This is a excellent intermediate to advanced guide. Full Review >
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