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The Blogger’s Essential WordPress Guide: 13 Top Tutorials

Posted By Darren Rowse 13th of June 2012 Blog Networks, Featured Posts 0 Comments

Over the last couple of months, we’ve taken a close look at WordPress here on ProBlogger.

WordPressI know that many readers do use WordPress—either the free or paid version—and it’s the content management system of choice for many high-profile sites. I’ve been using it for years, and I’d have to say that it’s served me really well over that time.

The articles we’ve published have covered many of the essential aspects of blogging using WordPress, from choosing the service that’ll suit you and weighing up different themes, to securing, posting to, and making money from your WordPress blog.

In case you’ve missed any of these great posts, I thought I’d compile them all here for easy reference.

Getting started

  1. WordPress.com or WordPress.org? Which one’s right for you?
  2. What you need to know before you start a WordPress blog
    Security
  3. Set safe, secure user roles on your WordPress blog
  4. Secure your WordPress blog without touching any code
    SEO
  5. Essential SEO settings for every new WordPress blog
    Themes
  6. How to select your first WordPress theme
  7. Install your first WordPress theme
    Plugins
  8. Install your first WordPress plugin
  9. 19 Essential WordPress plugins for your blog
  10. 5 WordPress plugins to help you make money from your blog
    Posting
  11. Use email to post to your WordPress blog
    Making money
  12. 9 Ways to make money from WordPress … without having a blog
  13. Premise 2.0 released: complete digital sales and lead generation engine for WordPress

Thanks to all the contributors who put in the work to help us get our heads around these finer points of WordPress, including Matt Hooper, Karol K of ThemeFuse, Anurag Bansal of Techacker, Eric Siu of Evergreen Search, Louise of MoneySupermarket.com, and Sean Platt of outstandingSETUP.

Of course, while this CMS dominates the blogosphere, there are many solid alternatives to WordPress (and no, I’m not talking about Blogger!). If you’re looking for a change for some reason, give them your consideration.

Do you have a favourite WordPress tutorial or resource that you can add to this list? Share it with us in the comments.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. Once you get up to speed on WordPress, it far out performs blogger or any of the other options. Also, there is a lot more development going on that is geared towards WordPress, as the developers, themselves, use it almost exclusively!

    • I totally agree. I went for a custom WordPress install over a free blog precisely because of the level of control you get. However, you do have to invest some time learning the basics but I would say it is worth it overall (especially if you are a control freak like me).

      • While I understand that you all believe that WordPress out preforms all the other blogging platforms but I really don’t agree. It has quite a few things that limit its versatility, on top of that they have gotten to the point where they are running into a Linux complex where they are trying to hard to be as versatile as possible that sometimes it causes more issues than its worth. Personally I am quite happy with my blog at http://www.imbleedingmoney.com because my current host has all the services that I need. :3 Hope you have a good day!

    • WordPress has gone far beyond what it is 5 years ago. If it’s just a blog before, now, it has become a complete Content Management System for a site. That means that it’s not just a blog platform, it’s now a website with a blog.

      • I totally agree with you. WordPress has gone beyond just simple blogging software.. It is everything now!

  2. Sick list there, Darren..

    WordPress has been so great to many bloggers and to share a list right here with tutorials is even more awesome!

  3. I was going to add another link to a plugin tutorial, but after reading the one that you posted, there’s no need. This is an excellent list…and especially one that I can refer and share with others.

    • yes, wordpress is the best multi function nowadays, we can do eveything with wordpress to build powerful website or an online portal …

  4. It is really helpful for all the newbies who just started their blog with WordPress. Do you have any helpful article here at ProBlogger on tips for load speed a WordPress blog?

  5. Thanks for listing these posts. I use WordPress on all of my sites. It is nice to learn new tips for making my sites better.

    I wrote a series for Creatives and Freelancers on how get a website up and running with WordPress. [http://clarabelamedia.com/2012/03/getting-started-with-your-diy-website/]

  6. Thanks Darren for this great list! I’m going to go through a few of them and update my blog.

  7. WordPress is the leading CMS at the moment and this is a great collection of articles about getting started with it. This content would lend itself perfectly for an ebook ….

  8. Thanks for this! I’m just in the process of starting my blog so this is an ideal list.
    Also, it looks like I might have to read a few more of the articles on here as they appear to be just what I am looking for.

  9. Great list :) Thanks for putting that together, Darren. It’s a keeper.
    I also found Kristi Hines’ post at Kikolani really useful:-
    70+ Resources on how to start a WordPress Blog . http://kikolani.com/how-to-start-a-wordpress-blog.html

  10. thanks for your sharing. WordPress is a great way to start a blog, with instructions will be very helpful for new bloggers, just one thing makes me feel uncomfortable in wordpress that I can not directly edit widgets when viewing content such as blogspot. But generally start a blog wordpress is wise choice for new bloggers

  11. I am one of those bloggers who uses the paid version of WordPress. I couldn’t imagine blogging without it, and I have actually seen and read some of these tutorials before they were very helpful.

  12. Thankx for the list Darren. They are indeed very useful for all the newbies as well for pros. I am a crazy fan of WordPress due to its simplicity and versatility. A great platform for creating a high profit online business!!!

  13. HI Darren,
    thanks for sharing this list. I especially like “9 Ways to Make Money from WordPress…” – it’s really helpful
    BR, Chris

  14. niche post and may be try and try it to be right your blog

  15. I always find great resources here at ProBlogger – Thanks!

    Another place I’ve found helpful stuff in language I can understand is Blogging with Amy by Amy Lynn Andrews. http://bloggingwithamy.com/categories/

    And by chance I wrote a post about a WordPress plugin just yesterday on The Crafty Mummy – not my usual blog topic, but I was helping out a friend: http://thecraftymummy.com/2012/06/wordpress-most-shared-posts-plugin/

  16. Hi Darren!

    WordPress has certainly give a lots of control over theme customization and can control the website changes easily which is really awesome feature of wordpress.

    You also provided great tutorials here in one list. Thanks for sharing awesome resources. I love to use studiopress themes, which is also awesome framework easy to customize themes.;-)

  17. Very informative post Darren. It is almost the full package that includes everything you need to exist online easily and effectively.

  18. Great tuts for WordPress. I’ll let my readers know about these too.

  19. Great to see all of these in one place! If I can use WordPress, pretty much anyone can! Cheers Darren!

  20. This is a nifty guide for people who want to start up with wordpress. It’s remarkable how many users wordpress has now as compared to its use base several years ago.

  21. Darren

    Great post on a subject that I spend much time on. Thank you for the information…

  22. I do love my blogging with wordpress. It is really make me fun. Many blogger must agree that wordpress is the best choice for making website. Thanks for sharing all the tips. I appreciate that.

  23. Thanks for posting this guide. I was trying to explain to a fellow fiberartist how to set up her own wordpress site, and she was giving me the glazed over look. So I headed over to Problogger to find something that would help explain it in a step by step, easy for a beginner to understand, way. And I found this. Kuddos for the clear, step by step grouping of articles. It was just what I was looking for to help my friend out.

  24. Thanks for this posting!! This is a wonderful guide for people who want to start up with wordpress.

  25. Useful list :) Thanks for putting that together, Darren. I like the article 5 WordPress Plugins to Help You Make Money From Your Blog most it must help blogger monetizing their blog

  26. Thanks for this we are starting to use wordpress a lot more, we have our own custom CMS which does work fine but find things can be so much quicker with wordpress as so many plugins are already developed.

  27. Thanks Darren for sharing this list. Currently my gaming website http://www.meyraj.com is built upon ASP.NET platform, and now, by realizing the strength of wordpress I’d like to migrate onto wordpress. I’m still confused whether wordpress (CMS) can host a gaming website? Please share if you know any example of this kind. Regards.

  28. Learnt a lot from this blog post, thanks.

  29. I use only WordPress for all of my blogs. And I think that WP is the best CMS – not only for the blogs but also for websites.

  30. These tutorials are simply great. I needed some of these. Thanks

  31. I like WordPress. It has gone from a blogging tool, the best one in my opinion to a full on website design tool and it is free., how cool is that?

    • Totally agree with you, wordpress is power cms flatform to create from simple informatio site to online portaal with multi control panel but easy and friendly user usage.

  32. Great link bait Darren!

    I’d add these plugins to your essential list

    Woo Dojo – Add custom sidebars and custom menu’s to different pages
    Jetpack – Excellent subscription service, comments features and contact forms to name a few
    Wordfence – All in one security plugin covers the 7 most important security features

    If you’re a Genesis user like myself, Genesis offer an excellent range of plugins to help customize your theme as well

  33. I love WordPress, but I don’t think it’s perfect.

    My biggest problem with it, by far, is the fact that you can’t choose different fonts from the WYSIWYG editor in the default installalation.

    I’m sure you can pick different fonts by using the HTML editor, but I don’t really want to mess around with that.

    Oh, I also kind of find it annoying how the default text color for headlines is more of a light grey than black.

    That, I wouldn’t mind changing.

    On the whole though, I think it’s a great system, and I will continue using it for pretty much all of my blogs.

    I like that it’s extremely easy to get a professional looking website just using a cheap custom theme, and I also like how it really streamlines web design and customization when you need to hire designer.

    Yeah!

  34. This is a great article! WordPress has definitely been the platform of choice for my wife and I. She is an artist (www.juliettecrane.com) and has launched two successful ecourses which we built on WordPress. So many other people are using blogger, facebook, and flicker and I just didn’t think it was professional enough. So, I built an ecourse framework using WordPress, so her users have a cohesive and unified learning experience. It worked out really nicely. Not to be too sales-y but, ;) you can check it out at http://www.humanityllc.com/?page_id=119

  35. As others have said, one of the reasons why WordPress is so powerful no is because it’s so flexible. We’ve build our eCommerce commercial printing site based on WordPress and two key plugins, and at a price and flexibility that’s tough to rival with any other CMS or even specialized cart programs.

  36. I honestly think that the 2 security posts are the most important by far. Personally, I was sailing along fine with everything (seo, traffic, etc.) until my sites got hacked through the timthumb script. It took 2 full days to get them back up and loading properly. That was 2 days where I was completely delisted from the serps. It turns out that you don’t need to worry about security UNTIL you get hacked.

  37. Hey- Great list! I have already loaded several and and very satisfied with the results. Thanks!

  38. One of my favorite plugins is the comment luv plug in, I think this is an amazing plug in. Letting somebody have a link to their last post it very cool! I seen it on another site I was posting on and had to add it to my blog. http://pinchincents.com

    Great list! I love your site!

    Blessings,
    Victoria

  39. Great list to start. More tutorials and help is available out there to explore.

  40. I love Platinum SEO Pack and Missing Platinum SEO Pack tells you what meta data you missed on pages and on posts if you didn’t install it from the beginning of your blog.

  41. WordPress is truly beyond as compared to other simple software. It is truly beneficial and offers quality work.

  42. This is an excellent list of articles. I especially liked the ones on Security, although I think the list would have been a whole if you’d added an article on optimization and how to speed up WP.

  43. the wanderer says: 06/25/2012 at 12:22 pm

    Thought you might be interested in this analysis of WordPress themes in the top 1 million sites.

    It has some interesting take aways, including the fact that of the 160000 wordpress installs in the top million websites; the most popular wordpress theme is “Optimize Press”, a product sales focused theme.

    http://hackertarget.com/wordpress-themes-in-top-1-million-websites/

  44. I’m using wordpress and some of the suggested plug ins myself.
    I personally think that the selfhosted version wordpress.org is the way to go.
    The effort and time to put in are minimal and well worth your independence.

  45. I really like WordPress but am not real techie so thanks for the useful info.

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