WordPress is now the most popular content management system in the world. Over 30 percent of websites are powered by WordPress, from personal blogs, to branded blogs like Target Pulse, Nokia Conversations and LinkedIn Blog, to giant news magazines such as Bloomberg and Vogue.

It has even opened doors to new industries. There are million-dollar SaaS businesses built around WordPress plugins and online marketplaces that sell WordPress themes.

WordPress is not just about making blogs anymore, it’s now also a platform for growing small businesses, building brands, and launching products. Here are some of the best books you can read to learn more about the popular CMS, and help you find the hidden opportunities of using WordPress.

You can find plenty of guides, tutorials, and resources for learning about WordPress. But, wouldn’t it be great if there was a physical manual that shows you how to work with the CMS software? Well, this is that missing manual.

"WordPress: The Missing Manual" is written in a way to cover all aspects of the software and to be useful to both complete beginners and advanced users. It will take the readers from the initial website setup process to building an audience, customizing themes, publishing content, and more.

This is a book written for the complete beginners with little to no experience in web design. The book is a complete training guide that helps readers setup their first website using WordPress. In addition to the detailed guide, the book also comes bundled with 29 WordPress related training videos. The author of the book even provides one-on-one support sessions to answer your questions.

Blogging is one of the best marketing strategies small businesses now use to make their brands and websites more discoverable, promote products, and generate leads. WordPress has been the most effective CMS that helps businesses achieve this goal. If you’re also thinking about using WordPress to build a business blog, "WordPress for Small Business" is a guide that will help you find the many ways you can use this software to your advantage, with step-by-step instructions and real-life examples.

"WordPress Mastery" is another book that focuses on providing useful tips and strategies small to medium businesses can use to build a profitable blog using WordPress. The book covers all aspects of using WordPress to promote brands, attracting leads, generating sales, and even include tips on setting up email marketing services to grow your email list using your WordPress blog.

Much like many other popular services and websites on the Internet, WordPress websites often get targeted by hackers. While the CMS comes with basic security tools for securing a website, its users are mainly responsible for protecting their own websites and keeping hackers at bay. This guide is designed for both WordPress beginners and advanced users on how to make WordPress websites more secure. The author himself has experienced a hacker attack on his website. The book covers all the steps he took to learn how to build a blog that never gets hacked again.

If you’re thinking about developing your own WordPress plugin and building your own business around WordPress platform, this "cookbook" will definitely come in handy. Written by a professional WordPress plugin developer, this book aims to educate the advanced WordPress users on how to take advantage of the WordPress plugin API to build their own plugins with detailed instructions and examples.

"Web Designer's Guide to WordPress" is an advanced guide on how to develop responsive themes for WordPress. It also includes guides on converting HTML websites to WordPress themes and working on a development server.

Creating effective content is an important part of growing a blog. "Content Rules" is a beginner-friendly guide that shows you how to create great blog posts, eBooks, and podcasts that captures your audience. Ann Handley, an expert content writer, shows how to find your own unique voice to create great content to grow an audience around your brand and your blog.

Content strategists aren’t cheap, and it can be difficult to afford one when you’re starting a small business blog with a tiny budget. This book is designed for solopreneurs just like you. "The One Hour Content Plan" is a book that helps small businesses come up with effective blog post ideas and topics in under 60 minutes to create an effective content strategy to grow your blog. [Learn more tips from "The One Hour Content Plan" in an interview with the author on our sister site, Business News Daily.]

Search engine optimization is an important skill that every blogger should master before even starting a blog. Google is the best source for generating traffic to a blog and you’ll need to understand SEO to use Google to your advantage. Written by a Google-certified internet marketing expert, "SEO 2018" covers everything from the basics of SEO to a detailed description of the algorithms used by Google Search, researching for keywords, link building strategies, and more.

Even though WordPress seems like a difficult software to master, once you get to know it, you’ll realize how easy it is to get around the platform and manage your website. All it takes is a little bit of hands-on practice.