As some of you might already know, back on January 17th, the folks at Automattic have launched WordPress.TV, a website they plan on turning into “Your Visual Resource for All Things WordPress”.
This is a definitely a great project that will undoubtedly become a WordPress resource hot spot. On what do I base my belief? On the amazing community of people around this extraordinary blogging (and not only) platform that is WordPress.
It’s enough to check out their support forums and see the kind of involvement that people show, how willing they are to help, solve problems and answer questions. So yes, I think that the WordPress TV will be a success.
The reasons behind this launch are simple. The WordPress community needs a place where video information (news, tutorials and so on) finds its way to people, after passing through a certain quality filter, where it will be kept up to date with ad/spam free.
By the looks of it, after only one week of existence, the community response is amazing.
So, in case you’ve missed the launch (but not only for this reason), in this post I’m going to guide you to 10 must-see videos on WordPress.TV. Since the website is fairly new, most of these videos are addressed to WordPress.com users, or users that are new to WordPress in general. So, as a heads-up, those of you with a fair level of knowledge might not find these vids to be very educational or spectacular.
But before we get to those 10 videos, let’s start with a small WordPress.TV introductory video.
Welcome to WordPress.TV Video
1. The WordPress.com Dashboard
New to WordPress and its amazing dashboard? At a first glance, the dashboard might seem like a lot information to digest, but with the new administrative options, the dashboard turn into one of the most important and accessible tools on your blog.
2. How to get a post out quickly with QuickPress
This video walks you through the functions and capabilities of “QuickPress”, a section on the dashboard of your self-installed or WordPress.com blog. The purpose of this section is to fasten the publishing of those posts you really need to get out quick, without wasting time with every possible setting available.
3. Moderating recent comments from the dashboard
Moderating recent comments has just become a whole lot easier with WordPress 2.7’s new dashboard and this video guides you through the steps you need to take.
4. Adjusting the discussion settings
This video explains the setting of how will your readers interact with you and your blog through comments.
5. How to rearrange the post editor to suit your own style
With WordPress 2.7 it has become a lot easier to configure the Post/Edit screen to suit your own style or writing. You can choose which sections you need displayed and which you don’t, and even the order they appear in the management area.
6. How to create a static frontpage for your blog
Sometimes, a recent blog posts archive is not enough to display on your blog’s homepage. Sometimes, people need to turn their blog homepages in actual landing pages with additional information. Setting up a static page for your blog is a fairly easy task and this video teaches you just how to do it.
7. Using the WordPress.com Video Player – A DemoGirl Tour
Molly McDonald, also known as DemoGirl, does an amazing job at teaching you all you need to know about WordPress.com’s video player. Quality user videos like this one reinforce my belief in WordPress TV’s bright future.
8. How to change the reading settings
In this video, you will learn how to adjust the settings of your blog in terms of reading, and thus adjusting the way readers experience your content, whether when reading on-site or in their feed reader.
9. Integrating a bbPress Forum with your self-installed WordPress
This video by bbPress developer Sam Bauers guides you through the process of integrating a bbPress forum on your self-installed WordPress blog. Also, this video stands as proof that WordPress developers have now a place to better interact with their community of users through video tutorials.
10. CSS-Tricks: Designing for WordPress
Finally, this 3 part video tutorial by Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks.com takes you through the steps of designing a WordPress from scratch. Since this video is also presented on its author website, I encourage you to view it there, where you also have access to all links and files used.
Here are the links to all three parts of the tutorial:
- Part one: On CSS-Tricks.com / On WordPress.TV
- Part two: On CSS-Tricks.com / On WordPress.TV
- Part three: On CSS-Tricks.com / On WordPress.TV
Next, on WordPress.TV…
Most probably a lot of great, interesting content. Make sure you bookmark the WordPress.TV website, I’m sure it will be worthwhile.