Congratulations! You made an excellent decision in choosing WordPress as your blogging application. Becoming a part of the social web as a blogger is exciting and surprising, and you won’t regret your choice to establish your own space in the online world.

You’ve made another great decision by picking up this book. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress takes you through the process of setting your blogging goals, choosing the right version of WordPress for you, setting up your blog, publishing content, changing the design, adding extra features, growing your audience, and making money. In other words, if you read this book cover to cover, you’ll find no stone left unturned that a beginner WordPress user needs to know to become a blogger.

Reading this book front to back is recommended to ensure you know everything you need to effectively use WordPress and join the blogosphere, but I wrote the book in a manner that allows you to skip chapters or parts and focus only on the areas you need help with. For example, if you’re not interested in using the self-hosted version of WordPress, you can skip Part 4 entirely. Similarly, if you have no desire in making money from your blog, you don’t have to read Part 6. However, throughout the book, when it would be useful for you to read another chapter for additional information, I refer you to that chapter.

One of the aspects of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to WordPress that sets it apart from other beginner’s guides to WordPress is that in addition to teaching you how to use WordPress, this book also focuses on teaching you why you should or should not configure your blog in certain ways or use specific tools. Throughout the book, you’ll find deeper discussion related to decisions you’ll need to make as a WordPress blogger, and Appendix B includes additional answers to frequently asked questions about the whys of WordPress blog configuration and design.