Beyond the Blog by Thord Daniel Hedengren

Push WordPress past its limits and take the basic blog into an entirely new blogosphere

"Smashing Magazine" is the world's most popular resource for web designers and developers, boasting more visits than leading Web sites and blogs. "Smashing WordPress" is the ultimate guide to WordPress, one of the hottest topics on the web today. Written by a WordPress expert, this exciting book breaks the barriers of blogging basics and shows you how to push WordPress to its limits-and beyond.

As a free and open source platform, WordPress has quickly grown to be the most popular choice for bloggers and it is being pushed beyond its original purposes to power some fairly advanced sites. Its loyal community is constantly developing new plugins and themes to extend its functionality, taking WordPress to a new level of popularity.

You'll learn how WordPress can serve as a CMS, a forum, a photo gallery, an e-commerce site, and more. Helpful and clear instructions explain how to build beautiful WordPress themes, create custom login forms and admin themes, and integrate theme options. WordPress is an open source platform traditionally used for blogging only-but capable of so much more Explains how to maximize the power of WordPress and use it as a photo gallery, an e-commerce site, a forum, and more Walks you through building plugins, integrating WordPress with the social Web, creating custom login forms and admin themes, and building WordPress projects for SEO Demonstrates how to use the Loop to control content and even use alternatives to the Loop

If you're hard-pressed for ideas on how to make the most of WordPress, then this is the book for you.