What is the best WordPress instruction for a newbie?
For a "non-techie" semi-beginner, what is the clearest, easiest, and best way to learn WordPress inexpensively near San Francisco?
I probably learn best one-to-one with a bunch of hand-holding, so it might be a person with a kindly nature in a local coffeehouse, OR a simple video teaching system for the same sort of person. Partially tech-phobic, but it's mostly from getting polysyllabic profundities tossed at me that I don't know at a speed that is overwhelming. KISS, please! Of course it's not as bad as that made it sound, but that's the direction-- Kinder, Gentler Tech Instruction.
Recommendations, advice welcome...
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Sep 28, 2015
Recently, I visited siteground.com site tutorials and it has quality matters for newbie's. Check out this link, https://www.siteground.com/tutorials/wordpress/
Sep 24, 2015
If you just need to post to a blog that is set up for you reading the codex is free and a great resource for more advance tasks as well. It is important if you installed your theme yourself to make sure you create and install a child theme before you start customizing things otherwise you run he risk of losing changes if / when the main theme is updated.
A common misperceptions is that once the site is created one is finished however WP gets updated fairly regularly and sometimes the theme breaks or plugins get left behind and and stop working with new versions of WP. It is good to get a service contract wiith someone who can help you until you are. Independent.
Sep 23, 2015
There are a lot of CMSs (content management systems) that can be a good choice for a website but choosing the right one will depend on the purpose of your site (company website, blog, and so on).
We've been using WordPress, Joomla, Magento, Drupal for many years and when a client asks us as to which one to choose for his website, our answer will be 'That will depend on the type of site you want to build, whether you are a beginner, medium, or advance techie, and whether you have a little bit, some, or a lot of patience and time"
WordPress is a very good content management system and learning how to use WordPress can be very frustrating for a newbie but not impossible for the only requirements will be patience, and time!
Now, if you decide to go with WordPress, we recommend that you download WordPress from wordpress.org and not from the .com version.
For a WordPress theme, we recommend that you stay away from free themes - Trust me, you will be saving yourself from many sleepless nights and a lot of pain killers!
For FREE WordPress Tutorials - You can search YouTube for the free ones (and there are plenty), and I agree with Ray Badger, look for longer videos! You can also check out
- http://videos.wpbeginner.com/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vMO_L_aBZA
For the Paid Tutorials - Visit www.lynda.com
Our Recommendations:
- Avoid installing themes that are bloated
- Go for a Responsive theme
- If you install a widget and decide you don't like it, uninstall it instead of just disabling it
- Don't look at the cheap hosting plan - Pay extract and get good package with great features and support
Hope this helps and I wish you good luck
Sep 19, 2015
The "fastest, best, easiest" way is to have someone that has not only the skill but also the ability to explain simply and clearly in a manner you can easily understand.
Do you have skype or another video means of communication, if so connect with me and we can schedule a time where we can both be in wordpress simultaneously, I can give you a walk through introduce you to your dashboard, familiarize you with your icons and what they mean. Explain what you would like to do with your site and I will let you know what will best achieve your desired results. Show you how to navigate the plugin search in order to find what you are looking for as well as how to determine if a plugin is compatible with your version of wordpress. From there you should be well on your way to confidently creating your site.
It takes a lot of the stress and frustration out of the process. I'll even let you know what to do if you happen to break your site. Even the best of designers has found themselves looking at a 404 error at what should have been the end of a project lol, so little tidbits such as this can go a long way.
Sep 19, 2015
Hi Tim
I have a free ebook on my site, "Getting started with Wordpress" which also includes a link to a free video tutorial on how to use Wordpress. You can get it here: http://www.dorothyk.com.au/getting-started-with-wordpress/
Sep 19, 2015
Are you interested in learning Wordpress to set up your own site or provide Wordpress services to others? If to set up your own site and you don't mind doing the customization yourself, you can buy a theme, set up hosting, install wordpress on the host side, then enter through admin, install your theme and ONLY customize within the admin without adding any custom CSS code (to make your life easier comes updates). The ultimate goal with these sites is to get your message delivered to the right audience, engage and achieve your goal to grow your business so if you're not selling programming expertise, you might consider investing that time elsewhere like creating unique and viral content.
I do this for a living at pixelfanatix.com. Most clients just have no time to tinker with themes or site development when they run successful businesses so their time is valuable and it costs them too much to do it themselves, I get it and take it off their shoulders. Contact me directly through the site if you have more questions.
Sep 19, 2015
Why WordPress? If you can grasp MarkDown (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown), which is very easy to learn, you can by pass all of the issues related to WordPress, like performance, security, updates, poorly written plugins or hosting expense and have complete control of your website's layout by using one of the many free static site generators like Jekyll, Hugo or Middleman. Writing in MarkDown can be hugely productive for writers or anyone who would like to create content and have the best performance possible.
Sep 19, 2015
There are some terrific tutorials on YouTube. You won't learn enough from the short ones. Look at some of the ones that run one to two hours. Assuming you are building a site for yourself and you have no experience with WordPress I have a suggestion for you that will save a lot of time and a lot of frustration.
Before I get into that let me say that I have been working on my first WordPress web site. I am not a novice to web sites. I have about 8 different ones for my business. Way back I used FrontPage and have been using Dreamweaver until now.
Figuring out WordPress has been very frustrating for me. My suggestion would be to watch the video tutorials on YouTube then use the exact theme they are using in the tutorials. That way you can follow step by step and it will be easy for you. They are all using free templates and the free ones are better for a beginner.
There are some plug ins that are easy to install and most will want them and I would recommend them.
Here are the ones you will need.
Page Builder
Widgets Bundle
Easy Google fonts,
Black Studio
Title remover
Contact form 7
Spacer
Light Box plus color box
All are free.
Sep 19, 2015
Hello , I would be happy to help you in your approach. First of all it is important to know what you want to do with WordPress .
Do you intend to develop your own website ?
Do you intend to install a development platform in order to host and program multiple websites ?
Are you already a programmer in PHP and / or JavaScript ?
These questions can help guide you along the way .
There are very good books about the subject but aimes vary from each other . I could give a good plan in order to learn the spots in the correct order .
Jean-Paul EOZENOU
Sep 19, 2015
To learn Wordpress, you really have to learn from doing. Start by building your own website, or try to learn by mimicking someone else's website to start. Best of luck!
Sep 19, 2015
Tim if it's already installed, and you have selected a theme, you're halfway there and just need to tinker.
Sep 19, 2015
Give Udemy.com a try. They have several free courses and they will start you with the very basics. I built my website using only their videos.
Sep 19, 2015
Since you asked this question in the middle of the night San Francisco time, I have to think you are really frustrated! For a small subscription fee you can join Lynda.com, an exceptional source of tutorials on many topics especially tech. The tutorials are well planned and executed and you can repeat segments as many times as you like. When I have a "how can I" question about some software, it's the first place I look and I seldom have to look further. Good luck!
Sep 19, 2015
Hi Tim,
It depends on what you want to use WordPress for really. Whether you intend to use it to build a website or blog then create posts, pages etc. This can be usefu if you want to start your own blog or if you are having to maaintain a WordPress build for work.
Or whether you want to learn how to code and customise WordPress and learn the inner workings of the CMS.
Since you've said that you're non-techie i'm going to assume that you just want to learn the basics of using WordPress from a non technical standpoint.
Learning one on one is great as you can ask questions and learn at your own pace but for learning the fundamentals of WordPress I really reccoment that you use some online resources first as there are plenty out there and a lot of them are free.
Just doing a quick search online I found this Video tutorial series on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vVfEsi-R6M&list=PLfOXCtnURNbZjLUyU_Isp39VdAjqEctNw
It covers the fundamentals pretty well and the sound / video quality is good.
One bit of advice I give to people who are learning new and technical skills is don't worry that you don't completely understand what you're learning. Often things won't make sense and the tasks ahead can seem daunting but as long as you stick to a learning schedule things will slowly but surely get easier whilst everything falls into place.
Also you'll find that paying for a theme on a site such as Theme Forest will save you hours of time as they have built a feature rich set of tools into WordPress that are very beneficial to most people.
Hope this helps : )
I agree with Ann. Lynda.com has been very helpful for all things tech. I just started the WordPress tutorials myself and they are very easy to follow. If I do not quite understand, I can simply rewind, or pause while I try the same exercise myself.