Working with WordPress
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Have you recently or maybe even today, become the proud owner of a WordPress website? Or maybe your boss just told you that you are going to be taking on updating your company website, because the last person just left!
People find themselves in front of a WordPress website in so many ways, only to feel a little overwhelmed. Now whilst we can't really answer all those questions and issues you've probably got here and now, we can offer some insight into finding a safe place for you to learn and try out changes.
As one of the problems when you are learning WordPress is that any changes to your WordPress effects the live website if you publish the changes, or if you add an addin or themes to the website.
Where can you learn
So where do you learn, until now the best option has been a second website somewhere, or better still a clone of your website. A number of hosting companies offer a WordPress Staging environment that allows you to Clone the live website into Staging with an Install of the Default WordPress (6.7.1)
This then gives you a website (WordPress Environment) you can safely make any changes you want to. One issue to watch out for with this option is to make sure that you stop this website copy from being able to be indexed by search engine bots.
Playground Fun
However if we said "How does an exploring environment with one click sound"? That also allows you to just throw it away when you are finished, or something goes wrong. We're guessing you'd jump at the chance.
Well the good news is you can do this now, its called WordPress Playground. Which is a platform that lets you run WordPress instantly on any device without a host. It’s your place to build, experiment, test, and grow. All from within a browser tab and its free (The price that everyone likes).
Head to wordpress.org/playground to get started.
How it works
Once inside you can install themes or addins and learn your way around with the knowledge you can just start again when ever you want.
But we can hear you saying "hang on a minute that's not my website"!
How about this though, you can Clone your website and experiment in a private sandbox. You just need to install an Addin into your website from wordpress.org/plugins/playground and follow the instructions on that page to install it.
If you happen to already be working with GitHub then Good News! You can Live preview pull requests in GitHub by following this guide preview WordPress pull requests with playground
The playground has a lot more we can't cover in this overview, so why not head to the WordPress Playground Docs to explore all the features.
Studio time
Another option available which enables you to work with and explore WordPress locally on your machine is Studio by WordPress.com. Once you have installed it, it gives you the ability to work on WordPress within a local playground but also brings the ability to share what you are working on with others powered by WordPress.com. It also includes Studio Assistant which is an AI helper which you can chat to for information or ask to complete tasks.
So if you are working on building up a WordPress website, take a look at the main product page for WordPress Studio or to learn all about it check out the docs.
WordPress Resources
So now you have a safe environment to explore settings and features, but where can You learn more about WordPress features?
WordPress has WordPress.tv with a load of videos to watch.
WordPress also has plenty of Documentation to read though.
The WordPress YouTube channel also contains hours of videos.
Whilst there are lots of WordPress videos on YouTube, beware as not all of them are up to date or easy to watch and learn from. Though we have found the videos by Jamie WP to be of the highest quality and very informative. We're sure there are plenty more good channels on YouTube but have not really had to look further for our needs.
Maybe even your Hosting vendor has a help section that might contain some very useful documentation, go take a look.
Always happy to help
We hope that you have found the above helpful in some way and we wish you every success on your WordPress journey, should you have any questions or input please reach out to us using our Contact form.
We have some plans to bring more WordPress content to JasmineDesign websites over 2025 tailored to Small/Mid size business users that are self building or running their own WordPress websites.
If you are in this sector and keen to get some information on an element of WordPress, or looking to solve problems you currently have. Share your thoughts and questions with us and just maybe they could feature in our plans of what to provide insight into. Our Contact form is always available and we are keen to help others where we can.