Wordpress is giving me hell. How do you all master it?

There are so many FREE wordpress training videos on the net. All you need to do is google a few or go to youtube and check out some of the "basic" training.

As for that, you only need a few plugins to gain maximum functionality.

I like the XML Sitemaps plugin, and the All in One SEO Pack for mine.

You have to keep testing and playing with it. If you only have one
WP installation, you're missing out.

The truth is that many plugins don't work well together, so sometimes
you'll have something you like that is working, but you find another
thing and add it and the first thing stops working.

I think there is a thread on here of all the favorite Wordpress plugins -

ah - here:

http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...fications.html

Setup a blog in another throw away domain, play & test with every single link you can find in Wordpress.

Do it long enough, you'll master Wordpress.

Here's how I mastered it (sort of)

I have a Mac, so installed MAMP (for Windows XAMPP).
Installed WP locally.
Played with it for hours.

The main benefit of having WP on your local machine is it saves you time. You don;t have to wait for pages to load and all.

Karan

Using Wordpress isn't hard;all it takes is a little time to get used to the interface. Youtube is a good place to find some video tutorials, but in reality, one doesn't have to rely on tutorials to master Wordpress. Just keep playing with the settings and you'll soon learn all of the controls. The Wordpress documentation is a good way to clear all your doubts in the beginning. Good luck! WP is surely the best blogging platform there is.

What specific things do you need to do with Wordpress that you are having problems with? For instance, you said that you look at the blogs belonging to others and cannot replicate it. This will indeed make Wordpress a pain but if you KNOW what you need then you can Google and find a solution. (This almost, always work for me)

Example:
1. I always start a site by installing all the essential plugins (Link already provided by another Warrior in prior post)

2. If you need something in addition to the essential plugins (lets say you need to create a membership site for instance) then you can do a search and almost always get the solution you need. In the case of the membership site, an example search will be: Wordpress plugin for membership site or How to build a membership site wordpress.

It you cannot find a solution using the SE then you can always ask here where someone is always willing to help.

All this to say...
Trying to accomplish the simple things you need for your wordpress site one step at a time (Easy)

Trying to do everything at once with your only guide being the appearance of blogs belonging to others (Not So Much)

Crystal

Ok this is funny, but I just received an email on a FREE WordPress Course available. Check it out and see if its for you How to Install WordPress: A Complete Guide to Using WordPress and Installing a WordPress Blog? I am not an affiliate of this and well hey its free. Again you can find out most WordPress Tutorials on the net too. So learn, practice and you will get it!

Wordpress is the best tool to use for blogging. If you're looking to build some other kind of website then it's better to use a full-fledged CMS or a custom-made design. Wordpress is certainly the best tool available for blogging at this moment. The competition can't even get close to it!

right click - page source ---> for figuring out which plugins are being used

It took me a few months, up to a year, to have my WordPress blogs running like I wanted them. I learned the hard way, you know, trial and error. Tried a plugin I read about, liked it and kept it, didn't like it and removed it. Now I have a set of plugins I always install on my blogs. There are a lot of courses out there to learn WordPress, free or paid, but in the end, what plugins or themes you use depends on what you're after with your blog.

Leslie

Honestly?
If I was making "$12,526.01 With Just A Push Of Button" I wouldn't master anything: I'd just pay the best webmaster $1,000/month to do all the WP/blog related stuff for me

Barring making "$12,526.01 With Just A Push Of Button"...
I'd just buy the videos and PDF tutorials in Istvan's sig, as they are easily worth 100 times what he is charging for them, IMO.

How quickly a site loads is important to Google and to users. The more you load your blog down with plugins, the slower it gets, not to mention incompatibility issues ... some plugins don't play well together. I like to keep my blogs lightweight.

I would certainly agree with the suggestion to download a local copy and use this as a development site before uploading to your on public blog once the blog is working as you wish, you will find this quicker to develop and helps to make sure the live version is stable, it is a useful way of going ahead as it allows you to roll back versions if you find a new plugin is incompatible with your existing setup

Hang in there man, I'm going through the same thing right now.

I'm mainly learning through trial and error.. and asking questions on this forum. Things do seem to be getting better and I'm almost finished creating my site... finally!

I didn't.

Yet.

(Might try again with it, soon.)

Agreed. Enormously steep, compared with so many of the other things I've had to learn to do online.

Some of the people commenting above about how "easy" it is might like to read this recent thread which - if nothing else - will serve to remind them that there are many successful Warriors making a pretty good living online who can't cope with Wordpress at all.