Learn Everything About WordPress
I was speaking with Simon Baker last night in Google Talk. Simon is a pretty good blog friend of mine and operates a blog at www.zath.co.uk. Recently, simon got motivated to start a new blog at www.cheapbargains.org. I really enjoyed visiting his new site and I can tell that he is putting a lot of hard work into providing his soon to be readers with the best bargains online. I look forward to watching the growth of this site. To better help me keep track of the site, to help boost his traffic to it and to help provide my readers who follow my discount sites, I have added his new site into my “Best Deals Online” mashup. This mashup is very similar to “My Favorite Blogs” mashup.
Anyway… in the process of speaking with Simon last night he asked me a very good question:
Simon asked me if I had any recommendations for the best place to learn about coding WordPress themes. Further he adds, “I can make minor changes right now, but it’d probably be good to learn from the ground up.” I know exactly how he feels and over the last six months, I have really beefed up my experience with WordPress, especially WordPress themes. For me, the answer is www.WordPress.org. The rest of this article will point out a few sections on the WordPress doc site that has helped me the most within the last six months.
Template Tags: This page has an entire collection of tags that you can use in your WordPress theme. You can click on each tag to view a separate page that gives you a very good description of the tag function as well as examples. See screen shots below and click to view full size:
Theme Development: This section is extremely useful, and actually I would consider being the main page for sources of information for learning how to create your own WordPress themes.
WordPress For Beginners: You might not think that you are a beginner… but you are! I am too!!! If you skip this section over just because you think you have a little to moderate amount of experience then you’re missing out. The WordPress For Beginners section is a gold mind and has tons of useful information for beginners as well as the more seasoned WordPress blogger.
The official WordPress site is one of the best places for me to learn more about WordPress and all the wonderful things within, such as being able to make my own themes and tweak and modify existing ones. The amount of information found on the site can be overwhelming… I would suggest making it a habit to invest about 15 minutes to 30 minutes per day reading the site. Just take one thing at a time and try not to expect to absorb the entire technology in one bite. For common bloggers such as myself, it can take a long time to learn all the inner workings of WordPress. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet! This is all in fun too… I love learning about WordPress, and www.WordPress.org is one of my favorite places to go to receive daily lessons.
What do you like most about WordPress? What are some sites that you can share in the comments that have helped you learn more about WordPress? How does WordPress compare to Blogger.com? What are some things that you would like to learn more about? Drop me a comment, I would love to hear what you have to say!
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12 comments
Good luck with your new site, Simon!
Garry,
Thanks for the tip about reading the main wordpress site. It is so obvious of a place to look, but I can tell you that I have not spent much time there.
-Fred
I love wordpress.org site. Another resource is php.net you can use this to get information on any PHP function that might be included in a Wordpress template.
@ Mark,
I think Simon will do well with the site as long as he keeps up with it. I really like the design and I think things flow very nicely.
@ Fred,
I kind of was the same way earlier in 2007. In fact I was quite overwhelmed with the amount of information I could get from that site. But, time and time again, doing Google searches for various terms I needed help with kept returning results pointing to WordPress.org. Eventually, I said to myself, “Garry… you need to invest some time into reading the documentation found on this site”. When I started to make an effort towards reading the info on the site, I quickly started learning more.
@ Owen,
Thanks for the added reference. I will be sure to check that out! I am trying to learn more about php.
Thanks for all your help Garry, I wouldn’t have even looked at separate Type A and B blogs you’ve talked about in the past. I’m just glad I can provide inspiration for some more of your great posts if nothing else!
Cheers man!
I was in the same situation where I would search for something and wordpress.org was at the top of the SERPs and had exactly what I needed.
I spend a lot of time in the WordPress Codex, but I’m not a big fan of their search or cross-referencing, so I still use Google Search alot to find what I want on WordPress Codex.
@ Zath,
You’re welcome bud! Thanks for reading my blog!
@ Kyle,
I totally know what you’re talking about. I use Google to help me find what I need sometimes on WordPress.org by doing a search like this in the search bar:
site:wordpress.org “keyword search”
Example: here.
I have the same problem when trying to find things on message boards or even blogs. Site:domain.com “keyword” Google search usually works like a charm.
The .org site is a great resource and I admit I hardly ever go there. Thanks for the great tip!
Wow. There goes my New Year’s resolution to get a grip on my tinkering addiction.
Hey Terry… nothing wrong with tinkering with Wordpress. I have a sandbox blog installed where I can experiment around with things. I am glad that you dropped a comment, I just checked out your blog and subscribed to your feed.
Excellent post Garry, as usual.
I am so happy to have changed from Blogger.com to my own domains.
I now have Wordpress on my own domains and have started learning a bit about coding, enough to make some little changes and to move widgets around but quite often I end up frustrated and trying to back track my changes so I can fix them.
It’s fun learning new things but to this point it has all been trial and error, a lot of error. I am sure the amount of fumbling I have done has wasted enough time that I could have learned how to create a brand new theme by now.
Perhaps it’s the right time to start learning how to create my own theme template from scratch.
James,
I actually like the theme that you have now. The sidebar is really cool how you click on the titles and they open up like that.
[...] Learn Everything About WordPress – Garry Conn explains just how to get the most from WordPress.org. [...]
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