Top 3 WordPress Training Resources

WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) out there. With a huge and growing user community and endless functionality, there is no way that you can refuse to use it for your website. In fact, a huge portion of the internet is based on WordPress sites as revealed by the huge traffic from WordPress sites. WordPress is highly customizable to fit your needs and this can be done by making use of themes and plug-ins. Themes change the visual appearance of your WordPress site while plug-ins are used to add custom functionalities, such as e-commerce and visitor statistics.

Having knowledge about developing these themes and plug-ins is essential if you want to have a great user experience on your site while still having a ton of features. In addition, you will have more control over the structure of your site and bring out your brand, company or business in the best way possible. There are a lot of online resources where you can find training on developing great themes and plug-ins for your WordPress site. In the next few sections, we look at the top 3 WordPress training resources.

1. WordPress.org (http://wordpress.org)

This is the site belonging to the developers behind WordPress and is definitely the best place to learn not only about WordPress itself, but also the history behind it. It is definitely a huge reference for WordPress themes and plugins development and you can always take part in the forums with other users. Additionally, this is the source where you can download the CMS itself and get access to hundreds of popular themes and plugins. This is one resource you should definitely check out as it has the original and verifiable content. The resources also get updated regularly to keep up with the latest version of WordPress, so there is no need to worry about outdated content on this site.

2. Lynda (http://www.lynda.com)

This is arguably the biggest resource for training videos on a variety of topics and subject areas. There is an extensive library of videos with an entire section dedicated to WordPress. This offers training on all levels of skills straight from beginner to advance. The videos are detailed and offer step by step guidance on WordPress theme and plugins development. Some of the video tutorials on Lynda.com are free and readily available for anyone to view but in order to have full access to the video tutorials; you will need to have a paid subscription. This is a very good resource for visual learners and it offers a hands-on experience in theme and plugins development. The tutors have wide experience in WordPress development and they teach the concepts in a manner that can be understood easily by anyone.

3. Nettuts+ (http://net.tutsplus.com)

This is a website which is specifically targeted at web designers and developers. It offers training articles and tutorials to show you the tricks, techniques and technologies to get your web development going on smoothly. They offer a wide variety of WordPress tricks which can come in handy when you want to develop your own themes and plugins. The tutorials are step by step with hints on what may go wrong along the way and how to fix it. They also show you how the finished product should look like at the end of the tutorial so that you can easily see if you are on track. WordPress development can be quite tricky at first, but with the right training, you can easily develop themes and plugins in a very short time. The articles at Nettuts+ offer the required training and take you through every step of the way. The tips are also very important as they show what can be done differently in order to achieve the best results. A clever combination of these tips and tricks can help you to come up with quite some amazing sites.

In conclusion, learning about WordPress themes and plugins development is now a breeze thanks to the great many resources readily available on the internet. In this article, we have looked at the top 3 which will get you started on WordPress themes and plugins development. In addition, these resources also have some downloadable themes and plugins which you can download and modify to fit your needs as you learn more about the specific themes and plugins.