WordPress at a beginner level is not very difficult and is extremely intuitive. You can have a decent looking site up and running very quickly.

However, it boils down to the features you want to implement. Coding may be needed in order to make your own specific theme (even though there are plenty of good ones that are free), insert specific features, etc.

Google wordcamp and find one in your area. I have been to a couple of wordcamps and they are a fantastic way to really learn about WP. So many people that work on WP sites share so much at wordcamp well worth the $20 or so they charge to get in.

[quote=SaltspringRE]Google wordcamp and find one in your area. I have been to a couple of wordcamps and they are a fantastic way to really learn about WP. So many people that work on WP sites share so much at wordcamp well worth the $20 or so they charge to get in. [/quote]

It's the first time I hear about Wordcamp, but it sounds very nice indeed.

I was in the same boat about 5 months ago. Like everyone is stating, learning Wordpress and how it works is easy. However, understanding the full gamut of plugins, which plugins are best, and how to effectively integrate those plugins can be a real pain. I found that I ended up uploading countless plugins just to experiment and I ended up wasting a lot of time. If I were to recommend off the bat for someone starting out, it would be these:

- Simple Real Estate Pack (SREP)
- Disqus (although I've heard Google has a hard time of crawling these comments)
- Related Posts (YARPP)
- W3 Total Cache: I would recommend setting up a CDN through Amazon but avoiding CloudFlare
- FB Tab Settings: you can setup pages for your FB page in your site so your FB page doesn't look like garbage.
- XML-Sitemap and then submit the sitemap through Webmasters.

[quote=BillW]I was in the same boat about 5 months ago. Like everyone is stating, learning Wordpress and how it works is easy. However, understanding the full gamut of plugins, which plugins are best, and how to effectively integrate those plugins can be a real pain. I found that I ended up uploading countless plugins just to experiment and I ended up wasting a lot of time. If I were to recommend off the bat for someone starting out, it would be these:

- Simple Real Estate Pack (SREP)
- Disqus (although I've heard Google has a hard time of crawling these comments)
- Related Posts (YARPP)
- W3 Total Cache: I would recommend setting up a CDN through Amazon but avoiding CloudFlare
- FB Tab Settings: you can setup pages for your FB page in your site so your FB page doesn't look like garbage.
- XML-Sitemap and then submit the sitemap through Webmasters. [/quote]

And of course, All in One SEO Pack + a contact form plugin + Akismet.

I LOVE Wordpress. I'm just about to get my license, and have already started a blog for RE.

I think there can be a lot of confusion about how to do it, and how to do it right.

Basically there are three parts to proper Wordpress-ing

1) Writing posts - This is as simple as thinking of a Title, and writing a short article

2) Templates - The way your Wordpress blog looks it totally independent of the stuff you write. Your theme, is the way your blog looks to the world. You can get a free one, pay for a premium one, hire someone to design a custom one, or DIY it yourself

3) SEO - Right out of the gate, Wordpress has some great features that make it easily indexed by the major search engines. But there is all kinds of tweaking you can do (like getting your own domain name).

I've found that you want to do #2 once. Do #1 everyday. And check #3 about once a month.

What do you want to learn in wordpress ? It's famous for five minutes installation .. everything is easy.

Here's the scoop, even though people tell you that Wordpress is a cinch to install and use, if you don't have much of an acumen towards website building and theme manipulation, it still may seem like Greek once you get it set up. I've worked with a drop and drag theme which utilizes wordpress. It makes things MUCH easier. And your site will look less "cookie cutter" as well. The company is called Page Lines and the drag and drop theme that I used was Platform Pro. If anyone tried wordpress and saw that it was a little too "techy" for them, try this avenue instead.

I don't feel it is that complicated to learn. However, you are using an "Open Source" software which can become vulnerable for hacking.