Wordpress help for a dummie?

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Mr.CookieMonster

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Hi,

I just downloaded wordpress and I am impressed with what it can do.

I would like to know where can I get help on using Wordpress from the basics to all the complicated ****.

Is there an ebook I could download or a video series on youtube for this?

Thanks
 
WP is great but documentation is poor. I had to teach myself a lot of the stuff.

What are you looking to do with it? Develop themes, plugins?
 
Pixual said:
What are you looking to do with it? Develop themes, plugins?
Click to expand...

How viable is that as an income stream? I see a truckload of "Theme Markets" for WP, Joomla, etc.

Mind you, I suppose the mere fact that there are so many sort of answers my question...
 
ngadao08 said:
... Someone said ...
Click to expand...
Some people say lots of things.

But that's not the point. What are you wanting to achieve? You can quite easily install WP on your computer with wamp and play around with it. If you're wanting to learn PHP hop over to the w3schools, they've got some nice simple tutorials to start off. But try working on a simple project before you dive into editing WP.

That being said, once again it depends on what you're actually wanting to achieve? If you just want to play with a blog, you don't need to know PHP. If you're not sure how to install WP on your computer, just Google a bit, and follow these instructions.
 
GarethC said:
Some people say lots of things.

But that's not the point. What are you wanting to achieve? You can quite easily install WP on your computer with wamp and play around with it. If you're wanting to learn PHP hop over to the w3schools, they've got some nice simple tutorials to start off. But try working on a simple project before you dive into editing WP.

That being said, once again it depends on what you're actually wanting to achieve? If you just want to play with a blog, you don't need to know PHP. If you're not sure how to install WP on your computer, just Google a bit, and follow these instructions.
Click to expand...

I want to make a blog on my site on my computer first, i have wamp setup and wordpress installed. Im going to have news, some downloads, nothing too complicated. The thing is i can make this site with HTML and PHP. The only knowledge of php i have at the moment is connecting to the database, select database, get results from the database (i.e: display top 5 news according to date).
 
GarethC said:
Some people say lots of things.

But that's not the point. What are you wanting to achieve? You can quite easily install WP on your computer with wamp and play around with it. If you're wanting to learn PHP hop over to the w3schools, they've got some nice simple tutorials to start off. But try working on a simple project before you dive into editing WP.

That being said, once again it depends on what you're actually wanting to achieve? If you just want to play with a blog, you don't need to know PHP. If you're not sure how to install WP on your computer, just Google a bit, and follow these instructions.
Click to expand...

I want to make a blog on my site on my computer first, i have wamp setup and wordpress installed. Im going to have news, some downloads, nothing too complicated. The thing is i can make this site with HTML and PHP. The only knowledge of php i have at the moment is connecting to the database, select database, get results from the database (i.e: display top 5 news according to date).
 
I think you are missing the whole point of WordPress.

Do you want to publish or do you want to develop? These are two totally different streams. From what you have written it seems to me that you're more interested in the former, so don't concern yourself with PHP or mySQL. Concern yourself with building content.
 
Pixual said:
I think you are missing the whole point of WordPress.

Do you want to publish or do you want to develop? These are two totally different streams. From what you have written it seems to me that you're more interested in the former, so don't concern yourself with PHP or mySQL. Concern yourself with building content.
Click to expand...

Im more intrested in publishing a blog website with wordpress.
 
Then you don't need to know PHP. If you have the funds get yourself a shared hosting server and run you WP blog on your own domain, else go to wordpress.com and sign up for a blog. Build one up that anyone can access, and focus on content.
 
So you have WP set up on your localhost.. the next step would be to find a theme that suits you..

Once you install a theme that's close to what you want, using a little php can be handy to tweak it to look exactly like what you want.. though you can probably get away with a lot just editing the css, there's a lot more you can do if you tweak the theme files themselves.. like move elements around..

Also, there are TONS of plugins, so depending on your content, find plugins to serve your downloads and display news feeds and all that.. No need for php here, unless you need to do something unusual, and you can only find a plugin that does almost what you need, then editing it can be a fun way to explore php..

I think you should dig into php and edit a theme, you learn a lot. And if learning is your goal, there are tons of tutorials floating about. So instead of looking for a general tutorial that covers php and wp, instead, start putting your site together, and when you find something you want to do/change that needs some php tweaking, google specifically for how to change that particular element, and work from there.. I enjoy learning like that.
 
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GarethC said:
If you're wanting to learn PHP hop over to the w3schools, they've got some nice simple tutorials to start off. But try working on a simple project before you dive into editing WP.
Click to expand...

W3school is best online place to learning a all web page development tutorial in easy way. It's provide a easy example on each topic. I have created one simple sites using w3school tutorials. click here
 
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If you are really keen on getting a solid foundation in wordpress, spend some cash on it - visit lynda.com, get a months membership and go for your badge (They cover everything from first time set up to advanced development). I have been using wordpress for years and I am still learning new things here and there, a foundation in html, css and php are pretty much essential if you want to build your own theme or tweak an existing theme.

w3schools is where I learned about html, css, ajax, javascript and php before the days of "video tutorials" and they seem to be holding up the tradition of making everything clear and conscise - so you should definitely dedicate a couple of days there before embarking on a wordpress site. Its easy to set up and all but you wont get everything you want out of it unless you dedicate some time to learning how the engine works.
 
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