Truth be told, it felt more like a rough draft of a book that with 2-3 times the information might hold the secret.

If you already grasp basic SEO techniques and ideas, skip this one.

Rosie Hausler

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Michael Silverman

Important to say, that at the time I bought this book, in my shelf sits more than 10 books on this topic and I run PPC campaigns for 5 years already. And the book with a title DUMMIES – if written by such author as Kent, are invaluable. There are gems gems gems inside! Sadly, that a real “dummy” will definitely miss them, and in contrast, those who might get a lot from those gems – experienced PPC warriors like me – will just avoid book, because of the title.

And here is what I need, to say. As you probably know, that Dummies books are usually annoyingly full of screenshots of how to make so commonsense things, like I wonder sometimes, why they do not force the author teach how to switch on the computer, before move to cover PPC or SEO topics.

And here is where this authors genius steps in.

- Thank you to Peter, that he avoided to copy paste half of Google Help menu, I can imagine, his fight with dummies staff on a topic.

- Book in fact is 3:1 in or 4:1 – it covers a topics what hardly are covered in other books on topic – like landing page optimization, website usability and even website branding and positioning – in context of PPC! All those pearls are thrown to readers under ‘dummy” title, which I consider unfair to author.

Anyway, there is one of the best book as for experienced and same for dummies.

Based upon my experiences, I can confidently assert that no experience with WordPress is necessary to benefit from this book. The book states the assumption of such knowledge up front and, after that, never returns to WordPress basics. Ample materials on WordPress installation, operations and configuration can be found online and I appreciate that the book didn’t spend any time rehashing these items.

Instead of focusing on simpler procedural activities, the book weaves together the challenges of solving business issues for Chiliguru, a fictitious business blog, with advanced WordPress operations, guidance, and plugins. The book manages to bridge the challenges of running a day-to-day blog with WordPress-specific knowledge in a unique style. One would be hard pressed to cobble together the information and knowledge this book imparts from the web-based tutorials currently available on the Internet. Examples of the unique content covered in this book include:

* Search engine optimization, including coverage of keywords, permalinks, and sitemaps supported by a variety of WordPress plugins

* Integrating social networking content from Twitter and Facebook into WordPress blogs

* Blog statistics analysis with both WordPress stats and Google Analytics

* Integration of Google AdSense and Amazon Affiliate programs into WordPress-based blogs

* Coverage of advanced technical topics including: increasing scalability via WP Super Cache, using WordPress MU for multi-blog environments, and backing-up, restoring and moving WordPress blogs.

If you’re looking for a beginners guide to WordPress, this book is not for you. On the other hand, if you’ve accumulated some basic experience with WordPress or another blogging engine and you’re looking for insight and knowledge to take your WordPress blog to the next level, you really can’t go wrong with this book.

Brown cites studies that predict 231 million online users in 2009 spending as much as $3.7 billion. Brown shows readers how to reach those users through various online marketing techniques, in particular through PPC (pay per click) advertising. He details for owners methods for generating traffic, developing marketing strategies, budgeting, building sales, and protecting themselves from fraud. In addition to this information, useful to most business owners interested in generating Internet traffic, the book also operates on another level.

Brown goes into considerable detail on optimizing a web page for search engines and working in detail with Google and Yahoo marketing programs. No doubt, there are individuals who are equally comfortable with web page design and business operations, but it is more likely that a business owner will best use the web page design information to guide their interaction with a programmer. The book closes with case studies and more expert advice from individuals who have been there and done that. Brown has created a thorough guide loaded with a great deal of useful information.

For a book published Dec 2005, I found it to be a little dated although not enough to be an issue. I also found several typos.

In my opinion, this book is very good for a person who has installed mambo/joomla, and is trying to understand how the ideas behind how the CMS works. This book is great for accellerating the learning curve of how Components, Modules, and Bots interplay… What positions are and how they work… And overall how to start extending the default install.

About half the book is nice overviews of 3rd party extensions. I think that is the best part of the book. It’s nice to have them but I wouldn’t buy the book for it.

The sections on security and Search Engine Optimization, and performance tuning are good for begining web/cms developers, but readers already familiar with the basics (applicable to all web apps) are not going to get a whole lot. There isn’t much that is “Mambo/Joomla” specific.

Overall I’d say that it’s a good book that I would recommend to a mambo/joomla beginner intent on building service style sites.

I give this book 3 stars because it is a good book, but despite what it says, that it is for “anyone who has developed a mambo site”… anyone who HAS developed already knows how the core components works, already knows how to search for, find, and install Comp, Mods, Bots… at least. So half the book is useless, the other half is 3PD extensions which can be found and on the web.

Again, good for noobs who are trying to figure out what all the admin pages, fields and parameters are for but if you’re already comfortable in the backend… move on.

This is not a book if you have already PPC campaigns running. I would recommend a more advanced book.