The best way to learn and use WordPress is to start creating your own business or portfolio or blog website by using WordPress (CMS). It’s a totally practical, fastest, and most effective way to learn to build a WordPress website.
When you start learning WordPress. Your goal has to be to build a website or blog or portfolio and you also want to traffic from search engines to your website.
To achieve this goal, you can do online WordPress courses, you can watch free video tutorials related to WordPress on YouTube and you can read WordPress-related blogs.
But if you don’t have goals but you do online courses or learn WordPress then I don’t think you will be able to learn practically or you will become skilled.
The only way to become skilled in WordPress is to set the goal to create a high-traffic website/blog in WordPress within 2 or 3 months. And then start doing that by searching on google, doing online courses, watching videos, and whatever helps you to achieve your website goals.
So, to do it effectively on your own, I am sharing with complete path or syllabus that you can follow to learn WordPress in the best possible ways in detail with examples:
Ways to build WordPress Website:
1. Set goals and create a plan:
What kind of website do you want to build in WordPress. Learning with purpose makes it interesting and consistent to learn WordPress. It will not look difficult, instead, you will be happy, excited to learn WordPress.
Now you can have the following goals:
- You want to build a website for your business.
- You want to do blogging, want to help people, want traffic from the search engines, and looking to earn money through display advertising.
- You want to promote specific products as an affiliate marketer, and or that you want to learn WordPress so that you can create an affiliate marketing website in WordPress.
- You want to work as a WordPress Freelance Developer and for that, you want to learn WordPress skills.
- You’re a housewife and want to use your time to work from home and for that, you want to learn WordPress so that you can do something creative.
- You’re doing a job, but now want to build a part-time income source online and now you’re looking to learn WordPress so that you can do diversify your skills and services online.
etc.
Now the common thing in the above goals is the purpose. But the question is, what type of website I can build. How can I do it? Is my website idea is good or will it work or not. These questions can prevent you from learning WordPress, it’s because you’re not prepared.
But here is the tip for you to defeat this procrastination or perfectionism challenge:
Nothing is in this world is perfect. You just need a small idea. The idea for a WordPress website is near to you, but you’re not able to look for it. And to find it. You have to believe in yourself that your idea will work. And you want to make it possible.
But for now, you need to stop comparing your idea, you have to stop comparing or learning what will work or whatnot. You don’t have to find all the answers. The most beautiful answers are within you. And most importantly, you’re doing it for learning. And so always be in learning mode. And within 6 months to 1 year, you won’t’ believe you have the income source, WordPress skills, and the business that can grow even bigger. Believe me, It’s possible.
So I want to you that set any type of goal that can be good for you, it can be a business goal, earning goal, writing goal, WordPress development goal, or WordPress freelance goal.
But do it before taking the next step.
2. Start learning and executing each step one by one:
Now you have a goal and plan. It’s time to follow the technical part to learn WordPress and achieve your goals.
One thing you have to remember is that to achieve your WordPress website goal, you not only have to learn WordPress, but you also have to learn about the things that make any type of website successful and useful. In that, there are many things.
If I am your course teacher, then I will teach you all of these. It’s because I know only learning technical things related to WordPress is not enough for students. They have to make something that is useful and successful. So that they can represent themselves as freelancers or team members or they can become confident to start a bigger WordPress-related project.
The point is, you need to create your own syllabus for success in WordPress-related projects and skills.
And the following is the best way for you to follow to learn WordPress Skills and to achieve your WordPress website goals:
Create a basic plan for your WordPress Website:
Planning is very important. The plan means, what kind of website you want to build and what is the goal of the website. And who will be your best reader, visitor?
Example 1: WordPress Skills + Portfolio website:
If you want to work as WordPress Freelancer then your target audiences are small business owners, web design, and digital marketing agencies. Now you have to add content in which you can display your skills, resume, and personal info impressively. And you want to get find out by employers or clients from search engines. And for that, you have to write some content as well on your WordPress portfolio website.
Learn more: How to learn WordPress to work as a freelancer
Example 2: WordPress + Professional Blogging + Affiliate Marketing
In this case, your plan must include what kind of products you want to promote. It will help you think about the best domain name, hosting plan, design, and content.
Example 3: WordPress + Blogging + Display Advertising
You want to share your ideas, experiences with other people. You want to have 1000 to 10000 visitors per day or month on your blog. And you want to monetize it with display advertising such as Google AdSense, media.net, etc. + Affiliate marketing. Now you will or you have to learn WordPress to achieve this goal.
Example 4: WordPress + Business website to promote services and products
You don’t want to become a professional WordPress developer but you just want to use WordPress to build your business website. Now you have to find and follow the course that will teach you to build a business website.
Learn more: How or how not to build a website for your business
Example 5: WordPress + Online Business
You don’t know yet what can be the possibility. In this case, you have to learn WordPress in many ways. For example, you can study directory themes, photography themes, and listing websites.
So, your learning should be based on goals that are similar to the above goals. In this way, you will be able to get benefits from learning WordPress skills.
Now the next step.
3. Learn and execute the following things one by one:
(i) Best Domain Name: The domain is the first thing that you have to buy to build a website. Before learning to create a website in WordPress, learn about the domain names. And buy your first domain name as a professional. You need to learn about how to use keywords in the domain, how to make it unique, broad, and attractive. To learn all of these will not take you more than an hour. But make sure you’re making notes. These notes will also help the next WordPress project.
(ii) Best WordPress Hosting Plan: Hosting is a service where you have to buy space on the server to store your website data and run a website 24/7 and 365 days. When you purchase hosting, you will get the name server. The name server will create a connection between your domain and the server. You can also purchase the domain and hosting from the same company then everything will be set up automatically. So, you need to learn and research which hosting plan is good for a WordPress website. There are various types of hosting plans. If you want to host only 1 website then there is a low-cost plan but if you want multiple websites then you can use shared hosting. And I suggest you shared a hosting plan, to begin with.
So, learning about hosting, server, bandwidth, SSL, storage space, cPanel, the file manager will help you to move on to the next setup with full confidence. You can learn all of these things just by searching on Google within 1 or 2 hours.
(iv) WordPress Installation: In this step, you have to learn about WordPress installation. Many hosting companies such as HostGator, siteground provide automatic one-click installation of WordPress on your domain name. This is a little technical. You have to understand the WordPress installation process in detail.
In simple, WordPress is an application or software that is used to build a website. Now you have to install it on your server. It’s like you install antivirus or Microsoft office on your computer’s hard drives.
A server is just a group of many hard drives.
(v) Best WordPress Theme – Free or Paid: Once the installation is finished. The next step is to find a free or paid WordPress theme for your website. WordPress theme is pre-designed or created templates. You just have replaced already existing content with your content. And you can customize the settings and design as per your priorities. There is various paid and free WordPress theme. So, learn about WordPress themes.
(vi) WordPress Plugins: Plugins are the small application of some specific features or utility software. You can say add-on features. Plugins enhance and improve the features and functionality of your WordPress website. The website is not complete only by using WordPress themes. That’s why plugins and themes are the most important part of WordPress.
(vii) Search Engine Optimization: Search engine optimization is the method in which you make your website content communicative. When it’s simple, shorter, rich, unique, and useful it will be displayed by Google/Bing and found in search results by people.
Many can say that SEO is part of digital marketing or SEO is not essential to learn when learning about WordPress. But I think SEO is the most important part due to the following reasons:
- You will learn how to optimize, style, and design the content on the website. I mean user experiences, design, and responsiveness.
- You will learn how to speed the website. It means getting ranked or getting people on your website from the search engines. it’s important that your website speed is fast.
- Google Analytics code integration in the footer, to track the user behaviors.
- Site submission to Google, Bing search engine through sitemap.xml
- Testing of roboto.txt and .htaccess for any error or search engine crawler blocking.
Etc. I am just writing the 2 reasons. But the point here is that you need to learn to build a complete website like you opening a shop in the market.
Learning these things will help you present your WordPress website professionally and effectively in Google, Bing search engines, and in front of your friends and social media.
Final Testing:
Wait for 2, 3 days after submitting your website to the google search console for any error. Also test responsiveness, content, internal links, and speed.
If you have done all of the above by searching on Google, doing online courses, reading blogs, and forums then your basic WordPress course is completed successfully.
At the end of this type of syllabus, you have your own website that you can use to market your business, services, products. You can use it as a blog, affiliate marketing website, or for anything.
4. Keep setting new learning goals after previous achievements:
As you know learning never ends. It’s also with WordPress. In this time you have to set the next goals for learning advanced WordPress skills.
Your next goals can be the following:
- 1000 daily visitors on the blog.
- 2-3 product/service inquiries per day.
- 4 to 5 affiliate product sales per day.
- Own plugin or theme development
- Website maintenance and upgradation
Now you will learn many things after following the above things. And within 3 to 5 months you will become good at creating and editing any type of WordPress website.
But if you want to work as a freelance WordPress developer then start working on another website. And host that on the same shared server space.
So, friends, this is the best way of learning WordPress skills. The real thing is not a source of learning. The real thing is the syllabus and content that you want to learn and it should be stepwise.
So, now it’s your own choice to learn from any of the following methods:
- You can learn by reading WordPress Blogs
- You can Watch Free WordPress Tutorials
- You can do online WordPress courses.
- You can learn offline by WordPress instructor
- WordPress Community
- You can learn in any way that looks good for you.
The only thing you have to remember is the way that I have written above. Follow the above steps one by one and I hope within a few weeks you will be good at WordPress website creation or you will be able to build your own website.
5. Things you will be able to do:
- Do freelancing: and provide WordPress Services to small business owners/shopkeepers and companies in your area.
- Do Blogging – Affiliate marketing/Displaying Advertising
- Build and run directory websites
- Build your own plugins/themes and sell
- Learn to program and create add-on services for WordPress websites such as social media plugins or auto sharing etc.
So, the above is the best possible method that you can follow. I have followed it 7 years back. And it’s worked in a great way for me. I know you will like it, then please share this on social media to help more people to learn WordPress in the best possible ways mentioned in this post.
Learn more: Best online courses to learn WordPress Website Design Skills