Learning WordPress

Hey Flightmac. Right there with you! I've gotten far better with wordpress, but man, I used to bang my head against the wall like crazy!

And yes, it was quite annoying to hear people talk about how easy it is when I was going through that. I feel ya!

What you need to do is find a good theme to work with that has worked well for others. I use genesis, as do many others on here. When you purchase the genesis theme, you get step-by-step instructions. Of course, things always seems to go a little differently than the step-by-step instructions lay out, don't they. So it will still take a little fumbling around to get everything figured out, but in the end you'll get there faster and have a better looking site.

And there are plenty of genesis tutorials on YouTube also.

I might suggest uploadwp.com as well as their youtube channel. if the videos don't answer the questions you have the forum on the site will.

I spend 12 hours with just to fix a problem with wordpress But that was great Now i can create a good website. Its easy but you should work hard and learn then watch youtube to fix some problems also use forums to learn more and more to fix any problem.

Thanks everyone, I will check out Genesis theme and start there, exactly what I was looking for!

WordPress is easy to use to and most beginners use it, since you are good with computers, it should become too easy for you in a very short time, you just need to spend a little time to familiarize yourself with it and with the script plugins, know which plugins you need and use them.

You can perform your own search and ask on forums when you want to achieve something specific and many members will help.

i have started to learn html and css and WordPress is coming up next time.

I don't think using WordPress is that easy (at first). It has a confusing interface with multiple redundancies. I think most users are trying to fit a traditional website architecture into WordPress' native blog format. Although not necessarily true of all themes, some premium themes make this adaptation more straightforward. Many free (and paid) themes simply require too many work-arounds. Here's what I've done:

1. Buy a premium theme geared toward your aesthetic preferences and application.
2. Use a static front-page.
3. Create content only in "pages."

Used in this manner, it's more similar to building a traditional website, and "blog posts" don't continually float to the "bottom." Also, if you manually create your intra-site links, you can also build a fairly silo-like architecture without using plug-ins. I'm currently building two sites in WordPress (using two different premium themes), and basically using them to rapid-prototype sites I will re-build later in Freeway for OS X. Once you understand the basics, WordPress is great for creating content quickly without thinking too much about web design mechanics.

WordPress throws me into a tizzy too - so you have gobs of company! Good 'ol hardball programming is more my bag. Have had this site bookmarked forever - not sure how good it is - but may be worth a try. . . Learn WordPress.com

Before I give you my answer to solving this problem myself, I need to say that I had built several BANS sites and Nich Site Pro sites in the past years. Even after 6 or 8 built, I always had trouble with each new one, simply because I am not techie at all. I hate it and don't get it, but got through it with much pain and time consumed.

Many times over the years I experimented with WP.com just to get the idea of how it worked. I got pretty much nowhere. I really had no clue. Then I discovered this video!


I watched the video 2 times without interruption (yes, it's very long) before I even attempted my WP site. When the day finally came to do it, I had the video opened up in another window. I followed ever single step, stopping the video and taking my time. Before the video was done I had a really good idea of what was going on!

I had my site up in a few hours and spent the next few days tweaking it. I am thoroughly impressed and as impossible as it seems to me, I can actually say yes, WP is easy! LOL....it really is but you have to devote the time to learn it. What more could you ask for than a step by step video? Wow! Good Luck!

I eventually became pretty good with WP but I do understand how it can be confusing. I found one of the most confusing aspects to be the overwhelming number of plug-ins.
There are so many that do the same thing but in different ways. The star rating does help some so you can decide which ones you want. Be sure to keep them (and themes) up to date, primarily for security purposes. You do not want to use too many plug-ins as that can slow down your loading times but be sure to use a good security plug-in. For that I use Wordfence although there are many others of course.

You might be making it a bit more complicated then it really is. Use this as a starting point:

Anything you want to do with your website is in the form of a plugin. Follow direction on installing and setting them. Doing that will get you going. I have never taking a class though there are some good ones out there. I think Lynda.com has some good ones.

Are self hosting? If not, I would.

If you are "Techy", you really wont have any problems, just go through each section item by item. You will get it.

If you have any questions, shoot me a PM. I am no programmer, but I have worked on about 10-15 wordpress themes over the years.

I'm Fearless!

With the new themes like Minamaze the things almost build themselves. They are all drag and drop, pick your options and like magic it's done.

You might want to do some theme research.

Break it down into steps. First like you said Id go to youtube and actually both youtube and google and ask "how to use wordpress" and play around with my search phrases and first just try to educate myself as best as I can. Once you understand the basics its a little easier.

For me its all self taught and I consider myself pretty good at using wordpress at this point but I have been online for over four years now. I guess what I am saying is that there is no magic solution to learning it all in one shot but slowly over time you will do it.

I hope this doesn't sound more like a preaching reply because I don't mean to come off to do that. Just trying to help you out. I'm sure there are some good training tutorials but at the same time if you use both google and youtube and can pretty much learn anything.

Installing wordpress is easy, after all most hosting service have a 1 click auto install
for wordpress.So there is nothing to figure out.Maybe you are not using the right hosting service.
Also most webhost have auto install webstats tracking. You need to take all these in mind when purchasing a web hosting service

There isn't one single book or website for learning WordPress. Go online, check out different tutorials, watch videos, and sign up for free WordPress courses. Once you learn the basics, you can set up your own blog. Over time, you'll figure out how WordPress works.

I found this great step by step Wordpress tutorial - This guy speaks very well and keeps you engaged. It's a 10 part video series.

There are more WP tuts online than you can shake a stick at, just Bing (or Google) what you want to do.
Beware of old information, it's your worst enemy, you may spend 3 hours tinkering and then find out your site breaks when you apply it.

Here are a couple of suggestions that may help.

Use a good paid theme with timely support, look for bad reviews, not those with affiliate links.
No bad=good

Download WP onto you local machine (use InstantWP) then you can muck about with it all you like without fear of messing anything important up.
You can test out themes, plugins, and coding just as you would on a live site (you will also need mySQL) Those progs are free.


Before you go anywhere near your website, plan your content, ideally use a Mindmapping software like Freemind or a spreadsheet at a push.

Use the major keywords your would like to rank for as categories, then use posts with tight groups of related keywords to add content under each pertinent category.
Planning a (biggish) site is not be rushed, I don't know about anyone else but it takes me a week, to research the keyword phase.

Make sure the theme you use will accomodate say 12 categories (if you need that many) (2 -3 lines in the navbar) some themes don't.

Analytics codes can usually be added in your cPanel.

Originally Posted by flightmac I have little experience in the WP world. Its overwhelming and I seem to get frustrated quickly, not because I have no knowledge, but because I don't have a good starting point. When I start trying to figure out what I need to do to properly build a valuable site that I can post my content on, I quickly lose track of where I am at and what I should be doing to meet my end goal. I think what really frustrates me is I hear so many people say "WP is sooo EASY!!" Yet I cant seem to find out where to begin Does anyone know of a great youtube tutorial, website, or ebook even.. that will help get me nose pointed in the right direction. I am good with computers, and I know the process as I have paid others to set up ecommerce sites for me and I have worked with Bluehost and others on their hosting platforms. What really gets me confused is things like "Just insert this google analytics code line into your website code and you are good to go!" At that point I just sit there and go "WTF?" Haha I may be making this harder on myself but Im sure Im not the first to struggle...

You know what?

I felt exactly the same way as you 4 years ago when I started internet marketing.

Here are 13 steps to setting up your Wordpress based on my experience. I hope this might be useful to you and others.

1. Go to your hosting C-panel.

2. Select Quick Install. Used to be Fantastico De Lux but that application is no longer in use.

3. Select the domain name you added on into your hosting and fill in all the necessary details as in Admin Email, Blog Title, Admin User, First and Last Name etc.

4. Once you are done, select Install Now.

5. Go to your domain wordpress admin as in http://yourdomainname.com/wp-admin

6. Login your username and password. You can change the password to your preference under Users but you cannot change the username unless you clicked Add New User with another password before deleting the old user account.

7. Sign up and activate Akismet

8. Setting Permalinks to custom

9. From under Posts, select and change Categories from Uncategorized to General Articles temporaily.

10 Install all the necessary plugins. For me I used All In One SEO Pack, CKFontEditor For Wordpress, Exclude Pages From Navigation (for Free Report Download page), Google XML Sitemap, Pretty Link or Redirection to cloak my affiliate linksand WP Super Cache

11. Select the theme you want under Appearance.

12. Overwrite the posts and pages with relevant content related to your site. Your first post should be a welcome message to your visitors while the About page should be what your site is all about and who is it for.

13. Finally under Widgets, delete everything else except Recent Posts and Categories.

Then select Text 3x to be transferred to your Primary sidebar before you input your Youtube video embed, optin form html code and affiliate product link banner html.

Once you are done with all these, you are good to go about your first Wordpress site adding additional content on both posts and pages.

I learnt WordPress using free youtube videos, this site here Learn WordPress from 25 youtube vidoes seems to link to the important videos in order.
WordPress is confusing in the begining but its really quite simple and the videos explain everything step by step.

Hi Macintosh Fighter,
I don't get what you want to learn exactly!!
do you want to learn how to convert PSD or HTML & CSS to WordPress Theme?
or you want to know how to manage WordPress CMS ?
about to insert Codes in head or some page in website it's easy just use 'Plugins' I use a good one called ' Code Insert Manager ', if you need any help with WordPress you can use forums or WordPress Support
by the way I have a good courses But in my HDD but this course is so good it will go with you to create your own theme from scratch here
& when you faced a problem ' at anything' work hard to solve it because we learn from the error & try

I'm surprised no one pointed you to the source....Wordpress Codex

It is an incredible resource of information for anyone from newbie to expert and it is from WordPress.Org themselves...

Hi flightmac,

I use Wordpress on my Internet Marketing site (| MoneyMakingSecrets.info) and the free Blaskan theme. There's of course thousands of themes so just pick one that suits YOUR TARGET MARKET, not you! (big insight there!).

I've bought OptimizePress ($200) to make my sales pages with and it was the best money i've ever spent. If you click on any of the tabs at the top of my site, you can see an example of the clean, offer-only focussed sales pages you can create very easily and quickly.

The best FREE tools though i've gotten from SumoMe.com which is by the founders of AppSumo who are legends in the IM / Marketing space. On sumome.com you can download their app set which is just incredible and simple to use and install on your Wordpress plugin page.

Two of note are List Builder - I set this up in late July when I launched my first WSO and because of that one free app, I gained 600+ new subscribers to my list that were viewing my WSO than I would have otherwise gained (225 subscribers who were actual buyers).

The other thing I've setup and am super excited about is Content Analytics - this is in the same SumoMe application set, takes all of five seconds to setup yet shows exactly where people are reading my sales offers to before they leave the page. This helps immensely with figuring out what you need to improve upon on your page to convert better.

I've done a quick video review of it here this afternoon and uploaded it to Youtube.

Hope this helps you.


Cheers, Rob.