30 Excellent WordPress Video Tutorials

December 26th, 2008 by Jacob Gube | 81 Comments | Stumble It! Delicious

WordPress is one of the most popular publishing platforms currently out on the market. It’s free, highly-customizable, and very easy to install and use. Because of its popularity, you’ll find a wide array of resources that discuss WordPress development, administration, as well as plenty of user guides to help you get started quickly.

In this article, we take advantage of the merits of learning by way of watching video tutorials and screencasts. Video tutorials allow you to learn by following along with the instructor in real-time – a format that’s very effective for many people.

You can use these video tutorials a couple of ways: to learn about WordPress yourself or to send to your not-so-technology-inclined clients as a reference to help them get started. You’ll find the tutorials organized into several topics that include theme development and customization, site administration, beginner’s tutorials, and using some WordPress tools.

WordPress theme development

Designing for Wordpress

See Chris Coyier’s (of CSS-tricks) process for designing a WordPress site in this three part series. Also check out part 2 and part 3.

Creating a WordPress Template

Here’s a tutorial series (also see part 2 and part 3) for creating a WP template using a variety of free tools such as MAMP (for local machine development) and TextWrangler (a text editor).

Hodgepodge of WordPress Tricks

You’ll see a variety of useful WordPress theme customization tips and tricks through this video tutorial.

WordPress as a CMS

Learn how to create a WordPress site that’s more of a fully-featured content management system (like Drupal or Joomla) rather than a blogging platform using a few tools at your disposal such as the SimplePie WordPress plugin.

Install WordPress Locally

Learn how to run WordPress using a WAMP setup on your local machine for development and testing.

How to Modify WordPress Theme

In this tutorial, you’ll learn about some Theme Template tags in WordPress.

Add a Twitter Field to Your Form

Learn how to install and set up the WP Twitip ID plugin to integrate Twitter into your WordPress site.

How to put a Custom Header in your WordPress Blog

Replace the default WordPress header to a custom-made header so that you can quickly get started with your WordPress blog.

Create your first widget

This video tutorial shows you how to create a theme widget for WordPress.

How to make a WordPress plugin

Learn how to create a WordPress plugin that follows the WordPress plugin development guidelines.

Administration

How to setup PrettyURLs on WordPress

Learn everything about permalinks (including how to set it up on your WordPress site) in this video tutorial.

Setting up a member/user directory in WordPress

This video tutorial shows you how to create a member/user directory listing page to display member information.

Lost Password, Update User Info

This helpful tutorial teaches site administrators what to do in case a user loses his or her password.

Enable HTTPS

Learn about HTTPS as it pertains to the security of your WordPress site in this insightful video tutorial.

Best Practices for Upgrading WordPress

Upgrading WordPress is a simple task but there are some steps you should consider before proceeding with a major upgrade (such as backing up your WordPress database). In this tutorial, you’ll learn about a good way of safely upgrading your WordPress installation.

Moving your Blog, changing your domain name

If you need to move your WordPress installation to another location on your server or web host you should check out this general tutorial on the steps involved in relocating your existing WordPress site.

Import and Export WordPress Data

Learn everything about exporting and importing your WordPress data by viewing this excellent screencast.

WordPress blog admin settings

Get a run-down of useful WordPress admin settings to help you properly administer your site.

WordPress User Roles Explained

There are several user roles that you can assign to members of your WordPress site – this thorough video tutorial teaches you the difference of each.

Getting started with WordPress

Creating the Database for your Wordpress Installation

One of the first steps involved in the installation of WordPress is the creation of a database. This tutorial shows beginners how to create a database for WordPress using phpMyAdmin, a freely available web application that most shared hosting plans have.

Creating a Sitemap using the Google Sitemap Generator Plugin

Improve search engine results using the Google Sitemap plugin – this tutorial shows you how to install and set up the plugin.

Getting Started

Geared for beginners, this tutorial is a great general introduction to blogging and WordPress.

Wordpress installation and theme tutorial

Get up and running with a WordPress installation, as well as learn the basics behind WordPress themes, by following along this video tutorial.

How to Upload PDFs

WordPress users that want to learn how to upload PDFs to share to their audience might find this short video tutorial useful.

Photo Captions

Captions describe the photos displayed on a post and in this tutorial you’ll see a method for adding them to photos of a blog post.

Simple Page Edit in WordPress

This screencast shows beginning users how to edit a page in the WordPress admin section.

How do I create a picture gallery in my blog post?

This tutorial shows you how to put together a picture gallery post in WordPress.

HTML & QuickTags vs. Visual Editor

Learn the difference between editing content through the Visual Editor (the built-in WYSIWYG editor in WordPress) and good old-fashioned HTML.

WordPress tools

Using Windows Live Writer

Set up Windows Live Writer for WordPress so that you can let authors write blog posts offline.

How do I write WordPress blog posts with the ScribeFire Firefox add-on?

Make blogging hassle-free with ScribeFire, a Mozilla Firefox browser add-on that let’s you update posts on-the-fly.

81 Comments

Raymond Selda

December 26th, 2008

Great timing on publishing this article! I love Wordpress! Thank you.

Zach Dunn

December 27th, 2008

Thanks for this! Videos are so much better for getting the the basics down. Hopefully the 2.7 interface update doesn’t have too much impact on this batch’s usefulness.

Rajeev Edmonds

December 27th, 2008

Awesome collection of Wordpress tutorials. I particularly liked the tut of adding twitter field in comments form. Very easy to understand videos.

Asad

December 27th, 2008

Would you happen to have a list like this for Joomla? Would love to read that.

Zsolt Balla

December 27th, 2008

Wow, impressive list! It’s incredible, how a simple and user-friendly blog engine like WordPress can be so versatile and complex in its depths. I use WP for over 4 years now, but now I have to face the fact that I still have a lot to learn and to explore.

thanks,
Zsolt

Mick T

December 27th, 2008

Wow. Thanks for going to the effort to compile a huge list of useful tutorials. I’m adding wordpress to my site and thought i needed to get more information.

I have found the right place. 5 Stars

Cheers

Jacob Gube

December 27th, 2008

@Zach Dunn: That’s the aim, I think the video/screencast format of teaching is very effective. It’s in real-time and you can see the nuances in the instructor’s speech, something you can’t do in text-based format. I don’t think 2.7 changes a lot of the custom theming guides, theme development has been about the same for quite a while.

@Asad: There isn’t a Joomla! list yet, I have to admit that I’m quite rusty with Joomla! after switching to Drupal. I’ll have to find someone that’s more familiar with it.

Thanks for the kind feedback everyone, this list has been a couple of months in the making and I’m glad to finally release it.

Hamd

December 27th, 2008

WOW!

MaverickFAIL.com

December 27th, 2008

Very nice list. My favorite ones are the enabling https and making a plugin and widget. Will try those two. One I would be looking for is .htaccess, still this is a very goood list. Congrats indeed.

Brian McLeod

December 27th, 2008

Wow, what a great list.

Blogged it, will continue to offer it as “suggested reading” for clients.

Bravo.

Best,
Brian McLeod
Miami, Florida

Todor Christov

December 29th, 2008

Great list. I added it to my bookmarks and will read everything very carefully during the holiday.

Great job!

James

December 29th, 2008

Fantastic list of plugins, never seen anyone do the lot with videos before. Great.

SC

December 29th, 2008

Thanks Jacob for collection, I enjoyed some of the clips here, though not all of them were “useful” for me.

And if anybody wonders how to install WordPress, see my step-by-step blog post: http://www.spacecakes.info/2008/12/19/wordpress-27-installation-step-by-step-with-screenshots/

Shawn

December 29th, 2008

Nice list, there is a bunch of good resources here.

This is probably rudimentary for most of the readers at Six Revisions, but I created a video on how to upgrade WordPress, Here is the link: http://shawncope.com/2008/12/13/how-to-upgrade-to-wordpress-27/

Mike Seidle

December 30th, 2008

Take time out to watch:

* Best Practices for Upgrades
* Photo Captions

Great tutorials.

vipseoweb

December 30th, 2008

Its Great!! Wonderfull!! WOW!! Я в захваті!!!

hediye

January 6th, 2009

Yeah, great list. Thank you so much.

madme

January 11th, 2009

Great list. I added it to my bookmarks and will read everything very carefully during the holiday.

Great job!

J.J.

January 14th, 2009

Excellent list.

Also, a collection of screencasts aimed at helping content managers and editors use the WP dashboard can be found at http://wpscreencasts.com

Jacob Gube

January 15th, 2009

@J.J.: That is an excellent resource! Great find.

jesus

January 19th, 2009

Very nice list. My favorite ones are the enabling https and making a plugin and widget. Will try those two. One I would be looking for is .htaccess, still this is a very goood list. Congrats indeed..

Orelly

January 20th, 2009

Wow, what a great list.

Blogged it, will continue to offer it as “suggested reading” for clients..

Tony

January 21st, 2009

This looks extremely useful. Bookmarked so I can go through everything. The Wordpress forums are so poor and there are so many Plugins and Widgets, it’s hard to know which are good and which are not. I can see I will be making good use of these to improve the theme on my blog.

yugandhar

February 9th, 2009

nice contribution

Docmac

February 26th, 2009

Hey, just what I needed to buff up all my wordpress sites and a source to send others to needing help managing and improving their blogs.

Thanks,

000WH

June 8th, 2009

How a wonderful resource! All things webmasters need to be a pro bloggers.
Thank for your share.

Abu Farhan

June 30th, 2009

Excellent collections, thanks for this great job

the_guv

August 10th, 2009

Tx Jacob, nice find, your site.

Here’s a couple of screencasty additions, if I may be so bald.

Install WordPress on Nginx ..
http://www.guvnr.com/web/web-dev/configure-nginx-wordpress/

10 Tips to make WP Hack-Proof ..
http://guvnr.com/web/blogging/10-tips-to-make-wordpress-hack-proof/

Catch you on Twitter …

yanxerip

August 25th, 2009

Wow. i love this.. Really my dream come true… free of learn do it all with wordpress is my hobbies and job.. Good stuff.. thxs for share..

elaraji

October 26th, 2009

Ow God! your Killing me…! =D
really want to create my own WP theme, (even if I love my actual one)
thanks for you share!

Mark

November 6th, 2009

Love these tutorials. I especially find the CSS-Tricks ones very useful and would not have even known about them were it not for this post. Thank you!

Cenay Nailor

November 6th, 2009

Great advanced videos for Wordpress and the development for Wordpress. For those looking for more of the “how do I get started”, I can suggest this site.

http://www.videos.bycenay.com/category/blogging/wordpress/

Like more blogs, the later videos are up top, but a search box is provided to allow you to find exactly what you are looking for.