As you may know, I have completed quite a few projects and written several posts regarding the integration of Flash and WordPress. In fact, my latest project was a complete Flash and WordPress Website called RocFolio 2.

A few weeks ago I was excited to be contacted by Packt Publishing. They asked me to review one of their books, “WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook”. I was honored that they contacted me and excited for the opportunity to read through their book and see what I could learn. Here is the book information followed by my review.

Book Information

Full Title: WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook
Author(s): Peter Spannagle, Sarah Soward
Pages: 268
Published: April 2010
Publisher: Packt Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-847198-82-2

My Review

The book as a whole is written well and includes over 50 simple and effective techniques on how to control certain tasks relating to Flash content in WordPress. The easy-to-follow step by step instructions, and pictures to help out those of us who are more visual, that accompany the techniques make integrating Flash and WordPress a fairly straightforward process.

This book is aimed at new or intermediate WordPress users who are interested in learning how to create the unique and media-rich sites that using plug-ins and Flash can provide, so much of the book’s content I was already fairly familiar with.  But for the newer user looking to enhance their personal or business sites and blogs, this book definitely contains strategies and techniques to help you do just that. Just remember that a working knowledge of XHTML, CSS, and graphic design is helpful and familiarity with WordPress is required, because the book does not address the basic mechanics of using WordPress itself. Also, any previous experience with Flash is helpful but not necessary.

Honestly, the Cookbook focused more on how to add, edit, and embed Flash into WordPress than an actual integration of the two, which is what I had originally thought it was going to be about. It also mentions several really nice WordPress plug-ins, some of which were strictly for helping you add and control Flash on your WordPress site, while others mentioned are to help you with SEO, Google Sitemaps, and optimizing your WordPress site as a whole. The Cookbook also delves into some Actionscript 3.0 scripting which is followed by examples paired with actual code. Here are links to some of the plug-ins the book mentions that I found to be particularly helpful tools in building a WordPress site:

Kimili Flash Embed Plugin
Dean’s FKCEditor  Plugin
Google Sitemaps XML Plugin
SEO Title Tags Plugin
FLV Embed Plugin

If you don’t know how to use these plug-ins, or have an overall desire to learn more about Flash content within WordPress, the WordPress and Flash 10x Cookbook definitely explains in detail the best way to do so. Overall, this book is a great reference and would be a helpful addition to your desk or workspace, especially if you’re a new or intermediate designer/developer. Hey, even if you’re an advanced user it could still come in handy, teaching you something you might have missed along the way as you taught yourself… we all have something to learn. Right?

Cya

Cya