Top 50 WordPress Tutorials

As a web developer, you can broaden your potential client base and add value for existing clients by listing ‘WordPress’ as an area of expertise. Of course, unless you want to bluff your way through jobs, you’d better have the skill to back-up that claim. This collection will help.

WordPress Basics

1. Unraveling the Secrets of the comments.php File

Nettuts+ author Gilles Maes has written an in-depth overview of the comments.php file and how to make the most of the template.

2. How to Become a WordPress Developer

iThemes has a tutorial on how to become a WordPress developer. The article covers development tools, best plugins, suggestions for getting clients, and more.

3. Multiple WordPress Installations Using a Single Database

Streamline your WordPress set-up by installing multiple instances of WordPress on the same database.

Theme Tutorials

4. How to Create a WordPress Theme from Scratch

Nettuts+ author Sam Parkinson gives a thorough overview of how to make your own custom theme from scratch, complete with source code.

5. So You Want to Create WordPress Themes, Huh?

A lengthy and thorough series of tutorials covering nearly every aspect of WordPress theme development. A must-read for beginners.

6. WordPress for Designers: Video Series

Drew Douglass will teach us, using easy to understand screencasts, exactly how to design for WordPress.

7. WordPress Theme Hacks

A collection of simple WordPress hacks that you’ll find yourself reusing all the time when working with themes.

8. Designing for WordPress Screencast

CSSTricks has an excellent 3-step screencast that starts with the basics of solid theme design (step 2 and step 3).

9. Turning a Web Template Into a WordPress Theme

Instead of using one of the many standard WordPress themes, you could convert a web template into a WordPress theme with this video tutorial.

10. WordPress CSS Guides

A slightly-dated but still useful guide on how to alter the CSS on default themes to create your own personalized theme.

11. How to Create a WordPress Theme in 5 Minutes

Bothack has a quick-n-dirty rundown on how to create your own WordPress theme in 5 minutes.

12. Mastering WordPress Theme Hacks and Techniques

Nuope has a 4-part series on Mastering CSS, one of which is how to master WordPress theme hacks.

13. Blog Posts in Different Columns

If you’re wanting a little more advanced look and feel to your blog, try setting the posts to display in different columns.

14. Adding Tabs to Your Theme’s Sidebar

Here’s a quick hack that adds tabs to your sidebar using Yahoo! Tab View.

15. Category Styling

This tutorial shows how to add messages in the theme for posts in a certain category using CSS.

16. Multiple Page Layouts in a Single Template

If you’re looking for a more diversified template for sub-pages in a template, check out this quick tutorial for mutiple page layouts in a single template.

17. Rounded Corner Tab Menus

Rubique has a quick tutorial on how to use CSS to make rounded corners for your WordPress menus.

18. Dynamic Classes or ID’s

Elliot Jay Stocks as a useful tutorial on how to apply a dynamic body class or ID to your templates, for styling purposes.

19. Formatting Images for Feed Readers

How to make sure your images are looking good in many of your blog follower’s favorite medium: the feed reader.

20. How to Highlight Author Comments in WordPress

Google blogger Matt Cutts offers some advice on how to style your author comments differently than the rest of the reader comments.

21. Customizing Widgets Using CSS

Widgets are a great way to quickly add information to your layout (namely the sidebar). Here’s a tutorial on how to style the widgets using CSS.

22. Using Sliding Doors with WordPress Navigation

The Sliding Doors technique is a great way to utilize CSS and background images to make tabbed navigation. WPHacks shows us how to utilize Sliding Doors to enhance WordPress navigation.

23. WordPress Categories in a Horizontal Drop-down Menu

How to use CSS and Javascript to make a horizontal drop-down menubar.

24. Separate Comments from Trackbacks

It’s a good idea to separate trackbacks from your comments.

25. Creating a Widget Ready Footer

There’s a trend for blogs to have footers that feature columns of extra information. Learn how to create a widget-ready WordPress footer.

26. Make a Featured Post Carousel

Many blogs use a featured post carousel to show recent posts or flagship content. Learn how to create this nifty feature with Nettuts+ author James Lao.

27. How to Lay Text Over Images

Add a little flair to your blog and add some text to your flagship images by only using WordPress custom fields.

28. The Date/Image Hack

Interesting tutorial on how to combine a combination of images, CSS and WordPress hooks in order to graphically display the date of the published post.

29. Dynamic Sticky Pages

Learn how to dynamically make posts stay on top longer in category and archive listings using multiple loops.

Plugins

30. Your First WP Plugin

Mark Jaquith has a short-and-sweet screencast on how to create your first WordPress plugin in under 5 minutes.

31. How to Write a Simple WordPress Plugin

A step-by-step guide to a simple and fun WordPress plugin.

32. Screencast on Writing a WordPress Plugins

If you’re rather see a visual demonstration of how to write a WordPress plugin, look no further than the Weblog Tools Collection screencast.

The Backend

33. Custom Write Panels in the WordPress Backend

Design blog WeFunction shows us how to create extra write panels for adding extra bits to the “Write” page of the admin area.

34. WordPress as a CMS

WordPress isn’t just a blogging tool, it can also be a CMS with the help of some plugins and theme retooling.

35. Exporting WordPress Data

Learn how to import and export your WordPress posts and comments with this handy screencast.

Miscellaneous

36. Embedding WordPress into OS Commerce

OS Commerce is a popular open source ecommerce shopping script that many web developers use to sell goods. Here’s a tutorial on how to embed a WordPress blog into an OS Commerce installation.

37. Creating An Automatic Sitemap

Sitemaps help users navigate the site, as well as allow search engines to have quick access to all of your blog’s pages. Here’s a tutorial on how to create an automatic sitemap for your WordPress installation.

38. Build a Dynamic Design Portfolio

A terrific guide on how to utilize the query_posts tag to create a design portfolio with WordPress.

39. Create a User Contributed Link Feed w/ WordPress Comments

If you’re wanting to add a Nettuts+ style link feed, Collis has an excellent tutorial on how to utilize WordPress comments to create the feed.

40. A WordPress-Powered Membership Directory

WPDesigner shows us how to create a membership directory using a standard installation of WordPress and some customization.

41. Remove Categories in the WordPress Loop

Sometimes excluding certain posts in categories from showing in the WordPress loop is important. Here’s a quick tutorial with sample code on how to exclude certain categories in your templates.

42. Add a Twitter Field to your Form

How to install the twitip-id plugin to include a field for commenters to leave their Twitter ID.

43. Enabling HTTPS for WordPress.com Blogs Screencast

The WordPress team has put together a how-to video on enabling HTTPS on WordPress.com blogs.

44. How to Add Photo Captions

Good photo captions aren’t that something that WordPress themes usually come with out of the box. This screencast shows how to correctly add photo captions into your posts.

45. Make a Random Post Button

Adding a random post button is only a SQL query and PHP snippet away.

46. RSS-Only Posts

This tutorial shows you how to create posts that only appear in RSS feeds, in hopes to improve RSS subscriber counts.

47. WordPress SEO

Yaost has a lengthy tutorial on how to squeeze the most SEO out of your WordPress blog.

48. Learn How to Make Your Blog Accessible

Most blogs don’t conform to WAI/WCAG standards in terms of accessibility. Learn how to meet these standards with Bruce Lawson’s accessibility hacks.

49. Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs

Although not strictly a WordPress tutorial, Chris Pearson’s guide to semantic web markup for blogs is a must-read for anyone wanting to maximize their results in search engines.

50. Digg-proof Your WordPress

Learn how to configure MySQL, Apache and other things to keep your site humming when it lands on the front page of Digg.

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