So you want to learn WordPress? Good news – because it’s open source (meaning free to use) there’s a large community available to help you. But the bad news is – there’s a VERY large community ready to help you. Sometimes you just don’t know where to even start. There are video tutorials, books, meetup groups, virtual classrooms, the WordPress Codex, blogs, free webinars, Facebook groups, college courses, and of course your thirteen year old nephew could probably teach you in two weekends. Just because everyone claims it’s easy to use – does not mean it’s easy to do.
We’ve put together a list of resources that we’d suggest checking out. Some of these are newer to the market, some are old standards that we know are pretty great. The truth is though, while WordPress is completely user friendly – the average person is going to struggle trying to get a WordPress website up and running smoothly. There’s all sorts of hiccups you’ll experience along the way, but these resources should be a great starting point, and remember that we’re always here for you!
Are you a DIY’er?
If you’re a Do It Yourself type of individual who is just trying to get your WordPress blog or personal WordPress website up and running perhaps you can use resources like:
- Easy-to-follow Blog http://www.wpbeginner.com/
- They Have a YouTube Channel Too https://www.youtube.com/user/wpbeginner
- If you like to read there’s Head First WordPress
- Another good online resource http://learn.wordpress.com/
Start-up Business Owner
Are you a business owner trying to get a WordPress business website launched and able to be found by the search engines? This will require some more advanced effort than just the average blogger. Depending upon your industry, you may want to hire a web development firm to build your WordPress website for you. This way your website will present your brand and products (or services) professionally. Hopefully, the company will build your site correctly too, for SEO purposes. Let this company do the heavy lifting (developing) for you and get the website built correctly.
However, we highly recommend that you know how to maintain WordPress yourself. Some places you can find tutorials for maintaining a WordPress website would include the resources above and:
- WebTegrity’s YouTube Channel
- WP101 – Free Levels
- SiteGround – Online Tutorials
- In Person (local) WordPress Meetup Groups – Good for networking too
Designer & Developer’s Resources
- Smashing Magazine – Online Resource
- .Net Magazine Geared more toward Developers (E-style or printed versions available)
- WPDevSolutions – A new comer to the blogging world but actual step-by-step tutorials
- CodeinWP is another blog’s resource for Design
There’s a lot of controversy between teaching yourself WordPress and trying to pay to have someone else walk you through things. Really it comes down to this question: How best do you learn? Do you need to read something to retain it? Do you need to watch it be done? Do you need to be shown how to do it and then walked through the process while you attempt to progress through the steps? ManageWP wrote a blog post about Teaching Yourself WordPress vs. An Online Course – interesting perspective.
Small to Medium-Sized Businesses & Marketing Directors
When you’re at this level of business really depending a lot on your online presence to either drive sales, build your reputation, engage with customers & drive brand loyalty, you’ve got to be willing to really understand online marketing and your WordPress website. You need to know that there’s a certain kind of content that should be on your website. You need to have your game plan together when it comes to conversion on your WordPress site as well as how to drive it up the search engine results organically, minimizing your AdWords budget.
Resources to get you this type of knowledge are more rare. They must be more involved than the WordPress basics offered by a random blog. You need full insight to good habits of SEO, Google Analytics, Reputation Management, Content Curation, Site Conversion Fundamentals as well as WordPress knowledge. That’s just too much to expect anyone to learn from one or two books. We’re excited to announce our WordPress Courses:
- WP Beginner Fast Track – This is ideal for the DIY’ers and Small Businesses that just need to know WordPress
- Web 360 – This is the complete course you’ve been waiting for. Learn every angle of online marketing in an intense 16 week course.
- If you need to open up your business website and just get some One-on-One Training – we offer that as well.
- If you’re a company that wants your entire marketing team to learn it – we have even taught Corporate Groups at their location.
Connect with us today. One simple phone call with one of our WordPress mentors can help get you moving in the right direction to learn WordPress, SEO, Social Media Marketing and so much more. Why do we do it? Simple – WordPress is about Community & so is WebTegrity!
