If you run your own website, it’s probably on WordPress. After all, the open-source software hosts over 851.4 million other websites—including those run by major brands like Spotify and CNN. With roughly 409 million people viewing an average of 20 every day, you can rest assured that the platform is one of the most reliable ways to create your own website and give it the best exposure possible.
However, ensuring that your WordPress site looks polished and runs smoothly is a whole other challenge. You’ve got over 60,000 plugins to try—and those are only the ones that you can use for free. A similar number of themes are available to make your website more visually appealing. With a little more coding, you’ll have virtually endless ways to customize your site to your needs.
That said, though WordPress is definitely something you can use with little to no coding knowledge, learning how to leverage its more technical features can help you take your website to the next level. The best way to do so? Listen to some audiobooks.
Leveling up with audiobooks
But why listen to audiobooks when you can simply read some quick WordPress guides or watch an online tutorial? Compared to these resources, audiobooks are more comprehensive and professionally written. Unlike regular books, however, you can get through them faster, especially since you can consume them while multitasking. That can be especially helpful for upgrading your WordPress site while you’re listening—it’ll be like you’ve got a personal expert at home whispering instructions in your ear. All these benefits are even more attainable thanks to the audiobook’s accessibility.
Today, you can listen to multiple titles at once for the price of a single book instead of buying them individually. This means a subscription plan can give you access to Everand’s extensive list of computer audiobooks. Here, trending works like Fundamentals of Software Architecture sit alongside more curated titles like WordPress for Beginners. You can also take advantage of your local library for free resources. For example, the audiobooks from St. Louis County Library are easily available via a QR code—no library card required. So, where should you start, if not with the basics? Try these audiobooks to level up your know-how—and, ultimately, your WordPress website.
WordPress audiobooks for your website
WordPress: The Missing Manual
Dubbed by author and tech expert Matthew MacDonald as “the book that should have been in the box,” WordPress truly goes beyond teaching you the basics of creating websites on the platform. This audiobook also goes into the details involved in building various types of websites depending on what you want to achieve, how to jazz up your pages with multimedia content like galleries and music players, which plugins to use depending on the features you want to add (like shopping carts), and how to customize the appearance of your site to your liking. However, MacDonald takes it a step further by demystifying technical details, breaking down SEO and website statistics and telling you how to analyze them so you can draw more visitors to your site. More importantly, he emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity, such as which tools to avoid to keep your website safe. That’s especially crucial to know nowadays, with researchers finding that many WordPress hacks occur due to the vulnerabilities found in specific plugins. All these things make WordPress a truly comprehensive manual worth listening to.
The Quick Guide to WordPress and Pinterest: Surviving the Social Media Revolution
Integrating social media into your WordPress website is crucial, especially if you run a monetized blog or use your site to sell products or services. That said, you may want to listen to an audiobook that can teach you how to optimize your website for the specific platforms that are most frequently used among your target audience. The Quick Guide to WordPress and Pinterest can show you how to do just that. Pinterest’s growth in popularity—especially among Millennials and Gen Z—is attributed to its reputation as being more “positive” than other social media platforms, which is why you may want to prioritize it. In that case, this audiobook will tell you how to do that in a way that directly draws visitors from Pinterest to your website. The tips and tricks you’ll find in this guide can even give you ideas on how to do the same with other social media platforms, making it an especially handy listen if you’re looking to level up traffic to your website by marketing it more widely on the internet.
Building Web Apps with WordPress: WordPress as an Application Framework
Of course, every new website needs a few essential WordPress plugins. We consider WP Reset to be the most important, as it will help you update and maintain your site while preventing unnecessary data loss. Meanwhile, our own WP Sticky plugin can effectively make any element of your choice look “sticky,” adding to its visual appeal. If you run a particularly niche website, however, you may want to go beyond the usual plugins by adding some customized ones. Why not develop them yourself? With Building Web Apps with WordPress, it doesn’t have to be too hard. This particular audiobook dives into the basics of coding languages like PHP, HTML, and JavaScript. From here, it teaches you how to use that knowledge to make not just your own plugins, but also personalized web apps and services. If you’re looking to hone more advanced WordPress skills, this audiobook may hold the answer—and the insights you’ll glean here will truly help level up your website in more meaningful ways.