The WordPress Library is a home for books about the history and development of WordPress. Each book is a volume in the Milestones series.
The origins of WordPress and its first decade. Read the book · Download: EPUB · PDF · Original 2015 edition
WordPress' second decade — the Gutenberg project, the global pandemic, and a look at where the project is headed. Read the book · Download: EPUB · PDF · Original 2023 edition
wordpress.org/book shows the chapters from this repo. manifest.json lists every chapter file (as a URL-encoded path relative to the repo root) and the post it fills on the site, and the site re-imports each chapter after it changes on trunk. Edit the Markdown here rather than on the site, since the next import replaces edits made there.
- The post title comes from
titlein the manifest. The book title and chapter heading at the top of each file are left off the web page because the site already shows them. - Footnotes use standard Markdown:
[^1]in the text and[^1]: The note.at the end of the chapter. - A new chapter needs a post on the site first, then a manifest entry with that post's slug.
python3 bin/check-manifest.pychecks the manifest and footnotes. It also runs on every pull request.
The EPUB and PDF links above rebuild from this repo every time the book changes on trunk, so they always match the text here and on wordpress.org/book. python3 bin/build-books.py builds them locally (it needs pandoc and WeasyPrint). Kindle reads the EPUB directly. The designed original editions, with their typography and MOBI files, stay in each volume's Formats/ folder, but they don't include later fixes.
The following feedback is particularly valuable:
- Factual errors: notes about factual errors are welcome. All suggestions for changes should be evidenced with links that back up any claims. Any facts that cannot be corroborated will not be included.
- Clarity: any paragraphs or sections that you feel are not clear. This would be of particular help in sections that are technical in nature.
- Omissions: anything that you feel has been omitted or not sufficiently covered. Suggestions about omissions should be accompanied with information about why it should be included, and backed up with evidence as to their importance.
- Images: if you have any images that you feel would complement the text, we'd love to have them.
All feedback should be opened as issues in the tracker.
Both books are dual-licensed under GPLv2 and Creative Commons Sharealike 4.0. Just like WordPress, you are free to read, share, distribute, and modify the content however you want, passing on those freedoms to everyone else.