A new WordPress book (pdf), Digging into WordPress, by Chris Coyier and Jeff Starr, just came out today. Looks pretty good... 400 pages of WordPress How-To goodness. You can check it out at digwp.com

Anne, did you get this book? If so, I'd love to hear a review.

Yes, I got it... I haven't had a chance to read the whole book yet (pdf's for me are not as convenient to read as paper books... I tried converting it to mp3 to listen to, but that didn't work out so well), but I'm almost 1/2 way through it, and I like it. It basically covers the same topics that Eric went over in his talk, but a little more in depth (400 pages!)

The book consists of 9 chapters that cover quite a bit of WordPress goodness:

1. Welcome to WordPress
2 Setting Up WordPress
3 Anatomy of a WordPress Theme
4 Theme Design and Development
5 Extending Functionality
6 Working with RSS Feeds
7 Working with Comments
8 Search Engine Optimization
9 Maintaining a Healthy Site

I've been working almost exclusively in WordPress for the last few months, so the first couple chapters were pretty much review, although I did pick up a few good tips. I've gotten a lot out of the rest of what I've read so far (I'm up to chapter 6). Their explanation of the loop, in particular, helped some things click for me (sometimes you have to hear something a few times before it completely makes sense to you). I am looking forward to the SEO and Maintenance chapters.

The book is pretty well written (although there are still a few typos, and you can tell there are 2 different authors with different writing styles who may or may not have read what each other wrote-- some overlap). The two authors both have well respected blogs (Chris Coyier css-tricks and Jeff Starr perishable press . good resources!) and have lots of experience with WordPress and writing tutorials. One advantage of the book being in pdf format is the clickable links. The chapters are peppered with links to examples and resources. I found this especially helpful with the plugins... there are so many of them, it's difficult to know where to start. It's nice to have some specific examples. The book is well organized and easy to understand and follow. Sometimes they dive a little deeper into the code than I'm comfortable with, but that's better than just skimming over it. I think it will be a good reference book. The authors intend to keep the book up-to-date, and with the purchase of the pdf comes a lifetime subscription to future updates. They also have a companion blog digwp.com full of examples and how-tos and free themes. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to get a handle on WordPress.