In typical Just Tadlock fashion, he has written and published another in-depth tutorial that covers User Taxonomies. The tutorial is not for the faint of heart as it requires that you know how a few sections of WordPress work such as plugins, themes, users, and the taxonomies themselves. Just imagine how awesome the Codex would be if Justin wrote the entire thing! ∞
Review – The WP101 Plugin
The WP 101 Tutorial Plugin is a combined effort by Shawn Hesketh and Mark Jaquith. The premise of the plugin is simple, to showcase video tutorials of WordPress from within the back-end of WordPress. After using the plugin and watching a few videos, I think it delivers on all levels.
A view of the player within the back-end of WordPress
From what I could tell, the video player is powered by Vimeo but don’t go to Vimeo.com looking for a way to view these videos for free, I already tried that. The player supports watching videos at full screen or in HD which is a nice touch. The audio within the videos is easy to understand and follows the flow of the animation. As far as the settings go, there is only one to worry about, your API key. Once you pay for your monthly subscription, you’ll be given an API key that gives you access to the videos.
I believe there are two groups of customers that will really benefit from these videos. The first are consultants. I’m sure many WordPress consultants dread the time they spend having to teach someone where to click and what does what in WordPress when they could be spending their time doing something else. The second group are those looking for educational materials at a low cost. There are 17 videos in all covering everything from the Dashboard to the media library, to changing the theme. Basically, just about everything a novice WordPress user should know before they decide to tinker with the inner workings of WordPress on their own. So, for $48.00 for one month, you can cram in all 17 videos and then cancel your subscription. In this instance, I think $48.00 for one month of viewing is a great value for this content considering the production quality. However, $48.00 per month for 12 months is $576.00 per year which is a hefty price to pay as a user who just wants to learn about WordPress. This is why I think the majority of customers for WP101 will most likely be consultants who are the ones with recurring revenue through jobs that can afford subscriptions lasting three months or more.
Overall, the plugin is simple to install, simple to use, and definitely delivers when it comes to professional quality training videos for WordPress. You can watch a sample video that’s part of the package here.
*Update*
As mentioned in the comments, this video package is different than the one offered on WP101.com where individuals can access the same video content by paying a $19 one time fee for a lifetime membership which is extremely more affordable for individuals than this package. They are the same videos but clearly, the Plugin reviewed in this post is aimed at consultants, not at individuals.
SeeHowTwo – WordPress.TV Competitor?
The other day, George Plumley contacted me to let me know of a new site he launched called SeeHowTwo.com. The site contains a variety of videos specific to WordPress.org with plans on adding videos to cover WordPress.com topics as well.
Initially, I had to increase the font size on my machine since it was a bit too small for me. No biggy as the site adjusted well to the increased font size. Unlike WordPress.TV, this site contains a key which makes browsing through the videos an easy process.
One of the videos I watched instructed me on how to hide comments on individual posts or pages. The video quality was pretty good while the audio quality was very good. In this particular video, I would have enjoyed seeing the screen zoom in on specific areas to make the content easier to read. George is a good narrator but at times, it’s difficult to see what he is doing on the screen.
Another thing I think sets this site back is that the screencasts are purely flash based with no way of sharing them on other sites. While doing the screencasts on your own ensures the best video quality and control, not having the ability to embed that video across the web I think is a major step backwards. Why would you not want that kind of exposure? On the SeeHowTwo videos, George already places a SeeHowTwo link at the bottom which does not make sense to me if you’re watching the video on the HowTwoSite. That link would be perfectly acceptable on a video that lets say, is embeddable across the web. Talk about branding!
While George provides quite a bit of good content already on his SeeHowTwo site, I think there are a few things that could be done to make it better. And while you might be hoping to have people simply link to the page with the video on it, I’d much rather embed the video on my own blog.
Head on over to George’s site and then come back and let me know what YOU think.
50 Plus WordPress Tutorials
NetTuts.com has put together a fantastic list of fifty WordPress related tutorials. They range from configuring multiple installs of WordPress to use a single database to, unraveling the secrets of the comments.php file. Some of the tutorials have been around on the web for a few years now but it’s still good to see them resurface from time to time.
Out of the list, which tutorial is your favorite?