Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of your Website Engineer Podcast. My name is Dustin and I am happy to be back in my house in Ohio. It was a long six weeks. I really enjoyed the time being away and exploring a different country and exploring… just time away. And I'm just glad to be back in front of my studio with my equipment and so I can have a better sounding podcast than it has been for the last couple weeks. So, today, we are going to just dive in and we are going to talk about different places. And some of these I've used to learn different skills to level up our game when it comes to WordPress development. Whether you just want to learn a little bit of HTML and CSS or you want to go whole-heartedly in and learn JavaScript, and PHP, and MySequel, and different types of things, that's what we're going to talk about today.

I do have some announcements, though, that I want to share with you that's coming out in the WordPress space this week. The first one is WordPress 4.6 Beta 1 has been released. Again, this is under development software. Of course, we don't want to install this on any live sites but you can go ahead and download it and you can use the WordPress Beta Tester plug-in if you want to and set it the "Bleeding Edge Nightlies" and you can get the latest version every single night. It will just go ahead and update. A couple things that are going to be coming out in WordPress 4.6 which is slated to be released on August 6th is Shiny Updates.

And I talked about this a few weeks ago but this is a process of installing updates, and installing things, and just makes it that much nicer and that much cleaner. There's also Native Font on the admin so this will allow you to experience faster load times, especially when working offline if you're working locally on your WordPress site and so that's really nice. And there's Editor improvement so there's a more reliable recovery mode and the detection of broken URLs when you type them so you may not need the Broken Link Checker anymore – they'll let you know, notify, you right away when there are URLs that are not legit inside your post or your page. But there's also some developer things. I've got a link in the show notes on Episode No. 292 for all of the things that are coming in WordPress 4.6. And if you're a developer and you develop themes, and plug-ins, and things like that, you probably should go out and install a beta copy and just start checking and making sure that your plug-in works well with this new updated version.

Another thing that's in beta this week is the WordPress New Directory for Plug-ins. They're starting to overhaul and redesign what that experience looks like and so if you want to go head and check that out, there's a link in the show notes to get you right to that page. It's basically just the same thing that's a WordPress repository but it's got a big search box at the top. It just looks more like 2016 versus 1992 when the rest of the page does. So that's something else that you can check out this week.

And the last thing I want to share with you this week is about a sale that's going on at Flywheel. And Flywheel's the hosting company that I use and absolutely love and I haven't had any problems with my site down. It's been down 30 minutes in the last three years which has been pretty incredible. But, all month long in July, they're giving away three months free with the purchase of a new annual plan. So, if you sign up for the annual plan which they start at $15 per month, you get three months free so you save three months if you pay for the entire year upfront. So, if you want, you can go over and check out… Use my affiliate link at yourwebsiteengineer.com/flywheel and you can get a great deal there. And I am absolutely loving my site over there on Flywheel.

Alright. Now let's move onto the "Is there a plug-in for that?" section. There's thousands upon thousands of plug-ins and the one I want to share with you today is called Popups. And it's called WordPress Popups. It's just called Popups-WordPress Popup and it is the most complete free popups plug-in. You can do scroll trigger popups. It's compatible with social networks, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Contact Forms, Seven, MailPoet – and you just have a lot of options that you can go in and configure these. Basically, it's not a specific plug-in that works with your newsletter mail of choice – it's one that will work with a lot of them. So, if you're using MailPoet, MailChimp, or Postmatic, or any of these, you can go ahead and it just integrates with that and it allows you to customize the experience. The forms look really great and they have that ability to go in and you can… it basically adds a custom post-type and the ability to edit and create your own popups.

You can use short codes into your popups and you can trigger them based on if you want them to come up in the lower bottom, you want them to be triggered when somebody scrolls 50 percent down the page, you want them to scroll in or appear after they've been on your page for seven seconds. And you can set a cookie expiration date if somebody clicks the close button and you don't want that to appear again for the next 90 days, or whatever. You can do all of those things and it's got a lot of features. It looks a lot like some of the features that are in OptinMonster that I was using before and a few of the other plug-ins. And so this is one to definitely give a check out. It's called Popups. It's a WordPress Popup. It's got more than 30,000 downloads. It's in the WordPress repository and, of course, the link is in the show notes for Episode No. 292.

Alright. In today's episode, we're going to talk about different places online that we can learn different skills to improve our efficiency with WordPress. And there's more than four – we're just going to talk about four today. But there's tons, and tons, and tons of these resources but I decided to pull four of them together – or five of them together – and spend just a little bit of time today just diving in, talking about them, and just some of the benefits – the pros and the cons and what not. And so the ones that we're going to talk about today – and these are in no real particular order – but we're going to talk about Tree House, we're going to talk about Udemy, we're going to talk about Lynda.com, we're going to talk about Codecademy, and we're going to talk about Skillshare. So all of these are the ones that we're going to talk about. Some of them have prices of $0 or $0 per month. Some of them are more annual – so Lynda.com is $25 per month, Treehouse is $25 per month – and so there's a lot of different ways that we can learn about to make ourselves more efficient at WordPress.

And I say that because, if you are proficient with CSS and HTML, it's going to make getting your content to look perfect on your website, it's going to be much, much easier, much, much simpler, much, much, faster, to be able to mold your website to look exactly like you want it to. If you are somebody who wants to dynamically create things on your page or have a lot of visuals, that's when you're going to need some either PHP, you need some JavaScript. If you want to run special queries, you may need to learn how to use MySequel and different things. So there's all different levels of proficiency when it comes to WordPress. Obviously, you can get better at using the dashboard, and navigating the dashboard, and doing things more correctly there. There's some courses on that – beginner courses – on how to use WordPress on these sites which is really nice, as well. So there's courses out there for all levels and all ranges of technical ability so that's really nice, as well.

So let's go and dive in and we'll start off with Treehouse. Treehouse is one that I'm currently using. I'm using that to go through a couple WordPress courses in there. I'm doing some JavaScript in there and just a few other courses, as well. I really like Treehouse because they do have an IOS app. I'm not sure about all the rest of them but this one, I know for sure has an IOS app and you can download the videos to watch offline which is really nice. I was able to do that. I downloaded a few lessons, or a few courses, to watch on my iPad as I traveled to and from WordCamp Europe. The only downfall with that is that, when you don't have internet connection, you can't actually do the exercises but you can learn and you can go through all of the videos. I also like Treehouse and the way that they have the ability to speed up tutorials so you can watch them at 1X speed, you can go 1.5, you can go 1.75, you can go 2, and you can also go the other way – you can slow it down to .75 if you need to be able to… if you're really listening to something or taking notes, you can really slow it down so you have that ability to take notes, as well. That works on both the iPad and the desktop version. It's actually just in the browser.

But Treehouse starts with a 14-day trial. You have a $25 per month as a fee on top to use Treehouse after that 14-day trial. You can learn by watching over 1,000 videos. You've got code challenges. There's forums for people who pay monthly and then, if you want to go Pro, you can pay $50 per month and that gets you all the benefits that I just talked about plus access to talks for industry professionals and other bonus content. So there's no contract so if you wanted to just go in and give it a try – give it that 14-day trial – you can go ahead and do that. It does look like there is an Android app and a desktop app along with the iPad app as well.

So it's perfect for… I found all kinds of variations of code in there, or programs, and it doesn't just necessarily have to go with code. You also have the ability to learn about how to use Photoshop and InDesign, and Terminal, and all kinds of different applications on your computer. So Tree House is perfect for that. I really like just the interface for Tree House – they have hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of courses to look through and watch. So that's something that, if you're interested in a recurring subscription that will help you level up your game, Tree House would be perfect for you.

The next one, Udemy – this is basically more like a no-strings-attached course marketplace. It's like a theme shop where you can go in, you can just cherry pick what courses that you want to take. You can sign up to be a member but membership is free and you only pay for the course that you want to access. There's more than 90 free WordPress courses to start with and there's more than 500 premium courses to choose from, as well. So there's a theme development with BootStrap. You can do WordPress for Beginners and you can master WordPress quickly. There's the Ultimate WordPress Plug-ins Course.

So, like I said, there's free courses. There are individual stand-alone courses that you can purchase. They range from $9 to up to $300. There's lots of short videos, there's a lot of long videos. You can download the videos and take them with you – you can put them on your devices – and so that may be the best way for you to learn, as well. And so it's great for beginners, especially a lot of those beginner videos that are there. And, if you want to take it slow in a free journey and you just don't want to start investing right now – you're just starting to use WordPress – then Udemy might be the perfect solution for you. So that is Udemy. Again, it's free to sign up and then the premium courses start at about $9 and you go all the way up to $300.

The next one, Lynda.com – this is the one that is owned by LinkedIn which now is owned by Microsoft and this is more of a professional site. It trickles down from the parent companies to the course presentation so it looks very LinkedIn-like. It's a very organized environment. It doesn't have the casual vibe that some of these others do. It has high-quality presentations that are there and this one isn't just based on WordPress. You can learn thousands of things on Lynda.com.

This one has a ten-day free trial and it has a standard and premium plan. The standard plan is $25 per month and you get access to the entire subscription library including transcripts, playlists, and more. And, if you want to use, premium, it's $35 per month and it includes everything that's in the standard packages plus there's practice files to download along with the instructor and you can do offline viewing with IOS, Android, and the Windows 8 app. So that's for an extra $10 per month. So ten-day free trial. You get discounts for annual subscription so if you pay for the entire year up front. And the courses are very niche rather than being very broad – they're very, very focused. And so that is another option as well. I've tried Lynda.com. I don't particularly like it as much. I really enjoy Treehouse and I like the way that Treehouse works and so Treehouse is the one that I'm a big fan of.

The next one that we're going to talk about is called Codecademy and you can find more at codecademy.com. And Codecademy, their tag line is, "Learn to code interactively for free." And so, basically, their subjects that are covered is JavaScript, JQuery, HTML, CSS, Python, PHP, Ruby, and APIs. So there's seven tracks with 100 courses containing 5 to 10 exercises each. So the student level, they base things on beginners. They have an interactive console so you can use… there's exercises so you can type right into a console then you can test your programming.

There's no formal certification and it's all completely free. And so they're pretty lightweight – the courses are lightweight. They're introductory. They range from anywhere between 3 to 13 hours in content but they give you the most important coding concepts and techniques and it will give you the building block to develop your skills over time. And so, if you're interested in Codecademy, you can go ahead and check that one out. So I've used this one, as well. There was a beginner terminal course that I went through and it's a great entry point for somebody who wants to begin getting involved with programming. I know that I have this itch that I want to just become a better programmer so I'm always looking for places where I can go and I can learn. And where can I pick up some skills and talents and become just more proficient when I'm looking into code. And how can I fix things and how can I solve questions faster for our customers over at WooThemes.

And, let's see. The last one that I want to share with you today is called Skillshare. And, as this name implies, it enables members to share their skills and knowledge through video courses. So, like Udemy, the variety of courses varies because there's many, many people that are submitting videos and courses to this whereas some of the other ones like Treehouse and Codecademy, that is an entire team that are working on these and they're very, very cohesive – all of the videos in the who site just feel really, really great. Skillshare, they also have a lot of things that are outside of the WordPress space so, if you are interested in learning about business, or design, or crafts… I see one here where it's an hour and 47 minutes and you can learn how to build your freelance business on Fibre.

So there's just a ton of different videos that are there and this is at skillshare.com. They have two membership plans. They have a free plan which offers you 500 free courses – you've got a mobile app access and online member community. Or you can pay the premium version which is $8 per month and that gives you more than 4,000 courses. You get offline access to content. It's free to join. They also have AppleTV streaming which is nice. It is the cheapest option when you actually have to pay when you're getting premium content versus Codecademy – which is completely free – but there's just not a lot of courses there.

So Codecademy may be a perfect place to start – try to figure out where you want to learn and what you want to do and then go for one of these other options, as well. So it's very cheap. It's sometimes a very quick way of learning WordPress. You can start there, again, for free and just check out skillshare.com and choose some of those 500 free courses and just a real feel of how the site works. And, for $8 a month, it's really inexpensive. If you break that down over the course of the month, you're talking a couple dollars per week that you would be investing in your career, investing in just becoming more proficient at developing and being a programmer.

So those were the four – or the five, actually – that we're talking about today. And, again, as a recap, they are Treehouse, Udemy, Lynda, Codecademy, and Skillshare and they range in prices from $0 up to $49 per month if you get the premium Treehouse version. And so that's the gist of what I wanted to share with you today. I'm really excited about taking time in the second half of this year, just really focusing on becoming a better PHP programmer and, of course, I'm going to try to learn more JavaScript because that is something that Matt Mullenweg continues to reiterate – to learn JavaScript deeply. He talked about that at WordCamp U.S. back last year. He's also talked about it at WordCamp Europe this year. There was a Q&A session and there was a lot of different presentations that talked about the benefits of using JavaScript and learning JavaScript and so I'm starting a JavaScript course on Treehouse which is really, really fun, and I'm leaning a lot, and I'm really excited about that.

Lastly, before we get out of here, I just want to let you know that today, the day that the podcast comes out, I will be at Podcast Movement. I'm only going for Wednesday and so, if you are in the area, be sure to let me know and send me a message, and I'd love to meet you. I'll be hanging out at the WordPress.com table for the most part of the day. And, also, lastly – and I promise this is last – just remember that Flywheel's having a sale if you head on over to yourwebsiteengineer.com/flywheel, you can sign up. If you pay annually, you get three months off. So, if you get the $30 a month plan and you pay for the whole year, you'll save $90. And the bigger, the plan, obviously, the bigger the savings. So that's what I want to share with you this week. Next week, I will be in Berlin on a Woo trip with all of my colleagues but I've got a podcast I'll be recording later today and I'll get that out to you next week, as well. So, in a couple weeks, I will be back and we'll talk again, then. Take care. Bye-bye.