WordPress Development Is Hard To Master

Does any of this sound familiar in your WordPress work?

• "I don't think I can learn all this."
• "Wait, how do I even ask this question?"
• "Everything I read confuses me more—I can't find the ends of the yarn ball."
• "I'm constantly worried that something will break and I won't know where to turn to get it fixed."
• "Imposter Syndrome is my life."
• "I want to take on bigger projects, but I can't invest the time to learn how."
• "I wish I could just show this bug to someone who knew how to fix it."
• "My clients are counting on me, and I'm stuck."

Nope, we're not mind readers: almost all WordPress developers feel these things at least some of the time. The job covers a huge body of knowledge that is difficult both to learn in the first place, and to keep current.

And so our work is full of technical potholes where we can get stuck, not knowing how to proceed. We also face clouds of worry and insecurity about all those things we don't understand—and, maybe worse, the things we're totally unaware of.

Here's the good news: there's a cure for the stuckness, insecurity, and overwhelm that so many of us feel. And it's not Stack Overflow.

You Need Expert Human Help

We've been teaching WordPress development on WPShout for ten years, and there's been a clear trend: people learn best from people, directly.

We found this first in ourselves. We love documentation, blogs, and video courses for steadily expanding existing knowledge.

But for those truly-stuck, this-is-all-brand-new, "What even is this?" moments that are some of the scariest in our work, we turn to something a bit more old-fashioned: asking someone we trust, directly.

This support system isn't a nice-to-have—it's an absolute necessity. As a WordPress developer or development learner, you simply must have technical people who've got your back.

In particular, to work boldly and confidently, every WordPress developer needs two kinds of human connection:

1. Expert access: being able to ask somebody who knows, and who is excited to help you learn.
2. Community: learning and belonging among peers with similar, but distinct, strengths and learning edges.

Starting this fall, we're thrilled to be offering both.

Announcing the WPShout Pro Community

The WPShout Pro Community is our new premium digital community that will bring together hundreds of WordPress development experts and learners into a collaborative network of learning, accountability, and support.

By giving you direct, person-to-person mentorship from WordPress experts (led by Fred Meyer and David Hayes, and the WPShout team), a strong and vibrant peer support network, and awesome member benefits, the Pro Community will give you the knowledge, community support, and confidence you need to take your next steps in WordPress development.

Those next steps can be wherever you're going:

• Handling the WordPress work your own business needs.
• Launching yourself fully as a hireable—or even more hireable—WordPress developer.
• Stepping up to take on more complex and lucrative development projects.

We're uniquely placed to solve this set of problems in the WordPress ecosystem, and we honestly think you can benefit immensely. Below you'll find more specifics about exactly what we're offering.

How You'll Benefit From the WPShout Pro Community

The Pro Community combines the two ingredients you need to take your WordPress work further: expert access, and community.

Here's how the WPShout Pro Community will bring your WordPress work to the next level:

• Live technical Deep Dives.Every two weeks we'll run a live learning event that dives deep into a technical topic in WordPress development—based on what you, the Pro Community, request to learn about. In this 75-minute event, we'll give a 50-minute detailed presentation—addressing your questions in chat live as we go along—followed by plenty of time for discussion and further exploration. We'll poll the community for the most helpful presentation topics, and we'll record each Deep Dive for all Pro Members to access.
• One-on-one expert support calls.  Your Pro Community membership entitles you to one hour per month of direct, one-on-one, video-sharing support with the WPShout team (Fred and David!) on any topic. Use this to get highly personal, highly specific WordPress problems solved. You're welcome to use your hour all-at-once, or in smaller blocks. (By the way, we're undefeated at solving people's WordPress tech worries.)
• Crowdsourced knowledge in a dedicated developer discussion space. Share knowledge in the Pro Community Slack, a space exclusively for WordPress developers and development learners. Bugfixes, how-to questions, software recommendations: ask and discuss anything with us and your fellow Pro Community members! Just want to show someone the mystery error you're seeing? Our Slack Pro account transitions seamlessly into voice calls with full screensharing.
• Small-group weekly discussions in a supportive learning community.  We'll help you find a comfortably sized group of other Pro Community members with complementary skills, interests, and schedules, and help you organize small-group calls on either a weekly or biweekly schedule. We have an amazing amount to teach each other—find out just how powerful peer learning can be.
• Discounts and supported-learning plans on our paid courses.  You'll get major discounts on our two paid courses: a $67 coupon code for Up and Running, our guide to the fundamentals of WordPress development. This will get you a free copy of the Core tier, or a major discount on other tiers. You'll also get 50% off WordPress Security with Confidence, which teaches you what secure WordPress code really means. We'll support your learning with a three-month guided group through the material of the courses. 
• Weekly email recap.  You'll get an easy-to-digest weekly email summarizing discussions and new learning from the Pro Community, as well as members-only learning, tips, and editorial content, and more.

We'll roll out additional member benefits regularly, all with the goal of skyrocketing your learning, productivity, and confidence in WordPress development.

The Pro Community isn't a bunch of tech education homework you never get to. It's a true community of experts and peers, all excited to help you learn WordPress in exactly the practical ways you need on your real projects.

Who's the Pro Community For?

If you want to do great work with WordPress, this community is for you.

That means:

• WordPress freelancers
• Agency developers
• WordPress development learners
• Coders learning WordPress from other CMSes or technologies
• Power users from other web careers: web design, SEO, digital marketing

So who's the community not for? Simple:

• People who aren't committed to learning and practicing WordPress development fully and properly

There's nothing at all wrong with that—but this community is for people who truly are "in it to win it" with WordPress development.

You'll be in a space with like-minded people who want you to succeed with WordPress  This, plus the expert training and access, is the formula you need to take your next steps with WordPress development.

If you're nodding along at this point, now's the time to reserve your spot.

And who are you?

Hi! We're Fred Meyer, David Hayes, and Alex Denning: we've run WPShout.com since 2009 where we've taught hundreds of thousands of people WordPress development.

Fred and David are professional WordPress developers, and will be leading the expert parts of the community. Alex is a WordPress power-user who'll make sure the community aspect is a success. We'll be supported by the WPShout team to ensure you have a wonderful experience.

As well as WPShout itself, we've co-written Up and Running, a "learn WordPress development" course, and David created WordPress Security with Confidence, a course on WordPress security, last year.

Between us we've worked on WordPress development projects from small to very large. We've organized and spoken at WordCamps and other industry conferences in the US and Europe, contributed to WordCamp Core and other teams, and written thousands of posts about WordPress development.

We know our stuff, and can't wait to help you

Reserve Your Spot in the Pro Community Now!

Let's continue your journey toward WordPress development mastery!

You can reserve your spot today, opting for either a three-month or six-month subscription. Whichever subscription you choose will automatically renew at the end of its term, unless you cancel.

To ensure we're able to offer the community elements we need to make this a success for you, we'll only be going ahead if we get 75 pre-orders by the end of our pre-sale period, on Friday, October 12. If we do get the green light, the Pro Community will launch on November 1.

You should reserve your spot today, but you won't be billed yet. We'll only charge you at the end of the pre-sale period if the project is going forward.