If you haven’t checked out Learn WordPress lately, it’s probably a good idea to do it today. This free educational hub has just had a serious glow-up, and I’m here to give you the scoop on why it’s worth your attention. 👋
What’s Learn WordPress, anyway?
For those who might not know, Learn WordPress has been around since 2020, offering free lessons, tutorials, and other training material for anyone looking to level up their WordPress game. The platform was okay (I guess), but the design and content organization left a lot to be desired.
Fresh new look, better content organization and experience!
Thanks to the hard work of the Training, Design, Marketing, and Meta teams of WordPress contributors 👏, we can all now witness the birth of the new Learn WordPress; and it’s looking quite sharp!
It’s not just about good looks, though. The whole site feels more intuitive now. You know how frustrating it can be to hunt for the right resource on a cluttered website, and especially when we’re talking things like training materials, right?
But what has happened here goes beyond simple redesign. The team also did a lot to improve the content offering and overall organization of the platform.
Most notably, we now have:
“Learning Pathways”
Quite simply, those are your “getting started” points based on your current understanding of WordPress and where you want to go with it.
In other words, instead of there being just a bunch of random courses, there’s now a better organization at the top level that makes it much easier to pick the material that’s best tailored to you.
When you go to learn.wordpress.org, the first thing that jumps right at you is a nice section that lets you make one of two choices – there’s “Develop with WordPress” and “Start using WordPress.”
This seems like a good top-level organization, since most people dealing with WordPress are either users or developers. Plus, the user pathway also creates other opportunities for how this platform can be used (more on that in a sec).
The courses
Entering either of these pathways shows you a couple of more options and the courses available (for now).
Granted, not a huge choice as of now, but what’s there is already surprisingly useful (in my opinion, at least).
To take a course, all you need is a WordPress.org account. And, of course, it’s all free.
The learning platform itself is neatly organized – it’s basically a classic LMS website structure, but done really cleanly and accessibly.
I was wondering what actually runs the LMS underneath, so I did some digging in the project’s GIT, to find out that it’s Sensei PRO.
The lessons that are currently there have been put together nicely, with good editing, and highlighting the most important parts of the lesson.
Or, to say it another way, even though the ones I checked are basic screen recordings with added commentary on top, they do deliver all the content very nicely. This makes me hopeful for the future of the project overall and the value it can bring to the community.
All the lessons right now are technically hosted on YouTube, so I could just embed them here, but I choose not to do that – not to take away from the complete course experience you get with the platform.
Practice yourself
What’s also unique about this WordPress course is that it allows learners to practice on a private demo site, which is powered by, yes, you’ve guessed it, WordPress Playground.
This one’s cool, since you can do all your learning and experimentation there, without having to deal with any “difficult WordPress setup” (although there have been people who installed WordPress on Raspberry Pi in the past – we know those people(!)). Plus, if need be, you can export your work at the end.
License and potential
The courses are also licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, which is a notable detail.
I’m no lawyer, but that license allows you to “copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially” and “remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially,” which means that the courses there can serve as a foundation of your own work, plus you can use them to educate your users/clients/team/colleagues.
Check it out!
In the end, I encourage you to check out “Learn WordPress,” click around, get a feel for what’s there, and see how you might integrate the material into what you’re working on.
Just to give you one example of what you could do; there’s a pathway called “Intermediate Theme Developer,” which goes through the current ins and outs of working on themes, including some newer developments in the WordPress platform. Many of the videos in the course were added as recently as two months ago.
The WordPress team isn’t stopping here. They’re planning more pathways, including ones for designers and contributors. So if you don’t see exactly what you’re looking for yet, keep an eye out – it might be coming soon.
As someone who’s been around the WordPress block a few times, I’m genuinely impressed with this update. It shows a real commitment to education and community support, which has always been at the heart of WordPress’ success!
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