Learning WordPress Sucks

And What You Can Do About It

Is this you?

And it still doesn't do

what you want it to do.

So whats's next?

Do what?

You're not a coder

You need to know

HTML

CSS

JavaScript

PHP

JSON

AJAX

JQuery

DNS

Git

Local install

Deployment

Photoshop

ALL THE THINGS!

OK. Here's the plan.

Chrislema.com

Become a WordPress Ninja in 1400 Days

Year One

Book: Professional WordPress: Design & Development

Year One

Play with WordPress.org on a host

Explore themes and plugins

Check out theme frameworks

Learn to write child themes

Focus on things like

Metaboxes

Actions and filters

Theme templates

Year Two

Year of the plugin

Single-function ones

Read the codex like the Bible

Read everything Pippin writes

Year Three

Get involved in the community

Write some posts

Speak at a WordCamp

Contribute to core

Create an extension for an existing plugin

Write a plugin for a theme framework

Year Four

Find a group or team to collaborate with

But

I'm not interested in learning all of that

My site doesn't need all that stuff

I don't have a site to work on

Three approaches

1. Find a sad, sorry website and build a good one

2. Find a great site and copy it

3. Make it up

Now to begin…

WordPress.org

Lessons

Codex

Forums

Books

WordPress for Dummies

WordPress for Web Designers

Professional WordPress Design and Development

Videos

Lynda.com

Treehouse

YouTube

Courses

Your Website Engineer

WebDesign (iThemes)

Boulder Digital Arts

Schools

Mythical?

Mentor

Worth every penny

Mentor

Worth every penny beer

Networking

WordPress.org forum

WordPress meetups

WordCamps

Twitter

Google+

Co-working spaces

Coffee shops

Podcasts

Dradcast

WP Watercooler

Your Website Engineer

Shop Talk

WP Plugins A to Z

Apply Filters

WP Elevation

You can't learn WordPress from a…

Book

Video

Tutorial

You gotta...

And when you’re feeling stupid and

overwhelmed

(because you will)

Just remember how far you’ve come

And know that the people you respect

and admire…

Feel the same way too

You can do it

But you can’t do it overnight

You don’t have to do it alone

Ride Your Own Ride

Julie Kuehl

@juliekuehl

www.juliekuehl.com

(it’s pronounced “keel” but I’m good with “cool” too )

http://www.slideshare.net/JulieKuehl