The WordPress Codex – Refusing to read :-)
Sometimes I wonder if my friends (particularly the new friends I’ve made through blogging) just shake their heads in disbelief. For all my interest in blogging and platforms, and CSS, and themes, and geek-speak, I rarely visit the WordPress Codex. I talk about it. I enjoy having drinks and discussing it. Yet I avoid at all costs reading it. Why? Because I am a hands-on kind of guy.
I read blogs/news/books/journal articles/papers in a large, overview kind of approach, to help me understand the world. But if I want to use a piece of software, or a platform, my brain kind of shuts-off. It took me all of ten minutes to absorb what Rebecca did for my new theme (e.g. changing the header image, which is as far as WordPress.com will let you go). She showed me how to add text on my sidebar. Visually, it was a piece of cake. Andy helped me fix the centering problem I was having with my photos. It took me all of ten minutes to understand what exactly he had done to help me with a theme that overrides the center tags. Piece of cake. Show me once, I can do it myself. Kulpreet has also been always very helpful on Twitter giving me small bits of advice here and there.
However, the problem with me is that I am very visual when it comes to computers. I don’t like having to read to learn how to use a program or a platform. Show me how to do it. Don’t do it for me, let me do it myself. Do it along with me. So, if I could find someone who has digested the WordPress Codex and just sit down with him or her and get a tutorial (or two or three, however many I needed), then I’d be in WordPress bliss. But I am sure I am not going to get that pipe dream, so I am writing this post to encourage those of you who use WordPress and are in what I call the “intermediate” stages of geekification, to check the Codex.
And to my geeky friends whom I frequently ask questions re: WP – apologies in advance, but I’ll still keep asking you random questions about how to do this or that in WordPress. Hope you don’t mind 
Related posts:
- Switching to WordPress from another platform: What do you want to hear?
- I want to convert you… to WordPress!
- The CSS customization and going self-hosted “light”
- The move from WordPress.com to WordPress.org and self-hosting
- The potential move from Blogger to WordPress
Dude, I LIVE and BREATHE by the codex! It’s a must when themeing etc. Google any issue like “getting parent pages to show up in my wordpress sidebar” and the solution will be the in Codex. It’s the freaking Google/Bible/Betty Crocker Cookbook of WordPress.
It’s not something you sit down and read, I use it as a reference and as a chance to read the forum-like comments to see what has worked for people and what hasn’t.
Hey I’m always available too. I’ve been hacking the codex to suit my needs too!
If it cannot be done with the Codex, I can script it with PHP and MySQL queries to work too.
Like Rebecca, I too use it more for reference when needed. If you read it from front to back you might get overwhelmed. I don’t know about you but if I read something that isn’t useful to me at the time I might not fully grasp it (usually I won’t remember it) until I need to use it.
Btw liking the new layout. When I read the RSS feed and came to comment I was like.. did I click on the wrong link? Oh there’s the Hummingbird.. Cool!
[...] option for WordPress as I want to be able to tinker with the layout and the theme color scheme. Since I’ve been previously known to avoid the WordPress Codex, I figured this time I would follow the rules and go and read the Codex before I ask my friends [...]