From a writing/publishing point of view, WordPress is awesome. From a development point of view, it’s even more fun. The whole reason WelcomeToWordPress.com exists is because somewhere along the line I started playing with the code on one blog or another and was instantly hooked. Now, I fully recognize that not everyone wants to become a full blown WordPress developer/programmer, but a lot of WordPress users out there have, at one time or another, wanted to change something on their blog, and been stuck hunting for the code to do it. These videos go through enough of the fundamentals to make that process a lot easier.
The WP For Developers Series was posted on the ThemeForest blog a while back, and it’s a pretty solid set of tutorials by Drew Douglas. It covers everything from installing a local installation of WordPress (incredibly useful if you plan on doing much developing/customizing of themes) to creating all of the necessary files for a functional theme to building a simple plugin.
If you’re looking to learn how to develop your own themes, these videos are perfect. If you just want to be a little more comfortable next time you look “under the hood” of your own blog, this will make your tweaking much, much easier. Think of it as a guided tour of the guts of your blog, so that next time you need to change something, you’ll know what you’re looking at!
The initial post (linked above) contains links to the first eight videos, but don’t be fooled! There are 18 videos in total, and they aren’t hard to find 
Here’s a breakdown of the different videos:
Here’s a breakdown of the different videos:- Installation (local, so you can test and tweak without publishing incomplete code)
- A tour of the WordPress admin panel (including an introduction to the built in Theme Editor
- Creating the beginning of a theme
- Adding a header and a loop to display posts
- Creating a sidebar and establishing default widgets
- Creating a single.php file to display individual posts
- Registering a sidebar on functions.php to allow users to add their own widgets
- Setting up the comments section
- Comments (part 2)
- Creating a basic plugin
- Converting a PSD
- PSD conversion (part 2)
- WordPress Coding – creating a more advanced theme with a static front page
- More Coding – finishing the static front page with some more advanced WordPress features
- Adding a JQuery Slider
- Creating and styling a page from scratch using custom fields and inputs
- Finishing Day 15′s slider and integrating it with the backend of WordPress
- Creating an AJAX contact form (without relying on a plugin)
Now, this is a list of the main topics of each video, but for a lot of them you can plan on getting some additional little bits of info. As you can see, the videos progress from some basic content to some much more advanced stuff, so whatever your current skill level is, they are sure to be helpful.
Once you finish with Day 8, you’ll notice you’ve run out of links to the rest of the series, but don’t worry. Simply change the number at the end of the URL to the day you’d like to jump to, and you’ll be good to go!
If you have any interest in increasing your WordPress development skills, or just getting more familiar with how your blog runs, I definitely recommend checking out these videos. Let me know what you think in the comments!