Navigating the WordPress world and finding WordPress help can be really difficult for beginners.
In this post, we feature all resources where you can seek official WordPress help. If you are looking for tools, guides, and services, please visit our list of curated 100+ WordPress resources.
Here’re the top 8 official WordPress resources that you should know to find WordPress help and support along your journey.
The WordPress software ships with a helpful Readme file (readme.html) that does an excellent job of introducing WordPress to beginners and helps users with the necessary steps for installing WordPress software.
Surprisingly, what most users miss is one of the most important parts of the document that can be of enduring importance along their WordPress journey.
Official WordPress Resources
The WordPress introduction document highlights the top 5 official resources that can be genuinely helpful to all WordPress users.
If you missed going through the section at the start of your WordPress journey or still looking for some of the official WordPress resources, here’s a brief overview of all the useful online resources.
In addition to the top five official resources listed in the readme file, I have included three more official WordPress resources that can be useful to most WordPress users.
WordPress Codex
The WordPress Codex is the official encyclopaedia of all things WordPress. If there’s one resource that you can remember and always refer to, it should be the WordPress codex.
The Codex is the official guide for WordPress, and you will see the pages from the codex linked everywhere to discuss and explain the features of WordPress.
Consider the Codex as the online manual and documentation for everything related to WordPress. The codex has everything covered – starting with WordPress requirements to making the most out of the platform.
You can get started with the main page of the WordPress codex that has a listing of all subpages organised into useful categories.
Learning WordPress, building themes and plugins, contributing to the WordPress development, and giving back to the software are some of the most important categories listed on the page.
WordPress Help and Support Forums
The official WordPress support forum is one of the most reliable places to ask questions related to WordPress and get your questions answered quickly.
It is the best place to find WordPress help on several issues from WordPress installation to themes and templates to plugins and hacks to other advanced issues.
You can start by searching the support forums to see if someone else had similar issues in the past. Most of the times, you will be surprised to see how many others had a similar problem as of yours. If you don’t find anything relevant, you can start a thread about your problem.
Please keep in mind that the forums are only intended for the core WordPress application, and themes and plugins that are listed on WordPress.org.
Most premium themes and plugins providers provide their own support, and it’s not a good idea to seek help about such premium products on official support forums.
Visit WordPress Support Forums
WordPress Blog
Yes, the software that powers millions of other blogs has its own blog. If you want to keep updated with the latest news and information related to WordPress, make sure you follow the official WordPress blog.
The official WordPress blog mostly has news updates about the most recent releases of the software including any security releases.
A list of news categories covered in the blog includes Releases, Development, Meta, Security, Community, Events, Testing, WordCamp, General, and Documentation.
There are also several third-party popular WordPress blogs that cover news and updates related to WordPress extensively.
The news and updates on this official blog also appear by default on your WordPress admin dashboard.
WordPress Planet
The WordPress planet is an aggregator of selected WordPress blogs and those talking about WordPress around the web.
The aggregator includes some popular WordPress blogs including WPTavern, PostStatus and the blog of WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg.
The recent posts from the blogs in WordPress planet also appear in WordPress News widget on your WordPress dashboard.
You can email Matt Mullenweg if your blog is about WordPress and want it to be included in the WordPress Planet.
IRC Channel – Real-time WordPress Help
WordPress IRC Channel is another medium to get support for your WordPress queries. You can join the IRC WordPress Live chat and ask for help or simply join the conversation with other WordPress users.
IRC or Internet Relay Chat is similar to instant messaging and WordPress has been using this for a long time.
However, WordPress has currently replaced IRC with Slack as the primary real-time communication platform.
It seems there’s so much happening at Slack compared to the mundane IRC channel, and I have discussed Slack as another important resource below.
IRC Support Channel is still one of the officially recommended WordPress help and support channels.
WordPress.TV Videos
WordPress.TV is the official videos library of WordPress that publishes interviews, tutorial videos, and WordCamp Videos among others.
Several talks are related to tips, tutorials, and how you can make the most out of WordPress, which can serve as useful WordPress help guides.
Besides, if you haven’t been to WordCamps, a gathering of WordPress users around the world, WordPress.tv is the platform to catch all the awesome talks from the event.
You can also watch the talks in different languages, and filter the videos by dates and specific events.
Make WordPress Core
If you are into WordPress development, you should subscribe to the official blog of the core development team.
WordPress core developers share weekly updates, status reports, chat agendas, summaries and several other updates on this blog while working on the core software.
You can also join the team and have real-time conversations about WordPress development on the #core slack channel.
WordPress Slack Channel
Replacing the above-mentioned WordPress IRC Channel and Skype, WordPress has made Slack as its primary real-time communication platform.
Modern, friendly, and powerful features of Slack make it the communication platform of choice. There are dozens of individual channels inside Slack facilitating communications for different groups, be that core, design, or marketing.
You can sign into Slack at WordPress.Slack.com and join the channels of your choice to get involved in the conversations.
Unlike IRC Channel, the WordPress Slack channel, however, isn’t intended to provide a support channel for WordPress users. The support forum discussed above is the best place if you need any help with WordPress.
Although you won’t find a channel for WordPress help, there’s a channel for Slack help (#slackhelp) that can help you with WordPress Slack-related issues.
Most Useful Official WordPress Resources?
While the Core blog and Slack channel are mostly useful for those involved in contributing to the software, the WordPress codex and official support forum can be useful to most WordPress users.
Don’t forget to visit our extensive list of WordPress resources, WooCommerce resources, and best Website resources to explore our list of recommended tools and services.
P.s. If you use the popular Elementor page builder for your WordPress site, visit our dedicated section for curated Elementor resources.
Which is your most useful resource as a WordPress user? What other official resources do you use to find WordPress help and support?
Great list. As for unofficial resources I would add themeshunter to your collection. They aggregate the themes from different site, score them, and feature in a neat manner.