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WordPress

Posted by Jennifer Smith
Jennifer Smith
294 Points

Trying the basic Wordpress tutorial but my interface doesn't match what Zac is showing. I don't see the format section.

I keep on having to ask the most basic questions because the tutorial seems out of date with the Wordpress I have just downloaded. Does anyone know a more up to date way to learn Wordpress? I would pay for it! Thanks.

1 Answer

Eric Butler
Eric Butler
33,512 Points
Eric Butler
Eric Butler
33,512 Points

Hi Jennifer! This is slightly unorthodox advice, but hear me out. The latest version of WordPress is 5.0.3. Version 5.0 brought a dramatic visual change to the Admin area from version 4, but before that there was another visual change to the Admin area in version 3.8. These Treehouse WordPress videos were made BEFORE version 3.8, so the admin area looks (and is) super old.

Here's my advice: since WordPress is open-source software, all the versions are still available as fully-functional, standalone downloads. Since you are just using it to learn WordPress development on your local computer, download version 3.7.28 -- here: https://wordpress.org/download/releases/ -- which should have the same visual interfaces that Zac is using. Amazingly, the WP team still maintains that 3.7 version so it's not even dead code.

Literally every thing Zac does code-wise in these videos is still valid WordPress code that works in version 5 (as far as I know), and in many cases it's still the "right" and best way to do things. So even though the graphics are way different, the code is still solid.

That might start changing now that version 5 is starting to encourage more JavaScript/React programming for interacting with Gutenberg (the new visual editor in WP 5), but for now you're fine. Let me know how it goes!