 How to create a video tutorial for learn.wordpress.org Did you know that educational videos that appear on learn.wordpress.org Yes, just like the one you're watching right now, can be created by you? Whether you have a particular audience in mind that you'd like to reach, know something cool about WordPress that doesn't exist on learn.wordpress.org, or simply want to contribute back to this wonderful open source software, you are welcome to join us as a content creator. By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to describe the steps contributors take to create a tutorial from start to finish, choose an appropriate tutorial topic, confidently write a tutorial script, record your audio and screencasts, publish your tutorial on learn.wordpress.org. Before we begin, here is an important note. This video is geared toward folks who have already joined the WordPress training team and would like to begin contributing as a content creator. You have not yet joined the training team, please start by seeing our handbook page on Getting Started, which you can find in the resources section of this tutorial on learn.wordpress.org. If you've already joined the training team, before you start making a video tutorial, please make sure to check out the Content Creator onboarding path, which you first must apply to in order to start making videos. This tutorial aims to break down these tasks into bite-sized chunks so that you can get started creating your own video tutorials with confidence. Let's get started. Step one, picking your tutorials topic. Using the training team's GitHub repo, check out the Ready to Create column. This column has a strong list of good ideas, and ones you can create video tutorials about will be marked with tutorial. If you see one that resonates with you, go ahead and add yourself to the topic. If you don't have this access, you can always ask in the training team's Slack to be added to an issue. These let the training team know that you are working on this topic so that somebody else does not work on it at the same time, duplicating the work. If you need help picking a topic or have another good idea, please reach out in the training team channel and ping the training team faculty by typing at faculty. We will be happy to help you figure out a strong first tutorial topic. Step two, drafting tutorial content. Start by researching your topic in the WordPress docs and in learn.wordpress.org. Before you start writing, it's important to see what information already exists. This step will allow you to research credible information that already exists and provide helpful links to the documents related to tutorials or courses or other resources in the WordPress sphere. Checking learn.wordpress.org will also help you to avoid duplicating any content that might already exist, or help you identify what topics may need new, updated content for a new WordPress release, such as creating new tutorials on similar topics for the 6.3 release or beyond. Once you've found some related links, ask for help to or move your content issue into the drafts and progress column. This tells the team that you're actively working on it. Next, write your topic's description and learning objectives if these have not already been written by another contributor in the GitHub issue itself. You may be asking, what's a learning objective? To keep it simple, your tutorial's objective is just the answer to this question. What should learners be able to do at the end of this tutorial? Focus on actions rather than knowing. This chart here, known as Bloom's Taxonomy, can help you pick words to use at the start of your objective to get learners moving at the end of a tutorial and doing something. Aim for two to three learning objectives. Now, if you get stuck at this point, feel free to ask for help in the training channel. Once you know what you want learners to be able to do, it's time to write your tutorial script in a GitHub comment. You are welcome to use AI tools such as ChatGPT to help you brainstorm, but don't use it for the entire script. AI does get quite a bit wrong. It does not currently contain information about block themes. It can be a bit wordy and it won't have information about the latest WordPress release, so your mileage may vary. Once you've finished your rough draft of your tutorial script, but before you start recording, you may want to get feedback on your first script before you start recording. This step is highly recommended for beginning tutorial contributors, as it's a lot easier to revise something in text form than it is to re-record entire sections. Make the request in the GitHub comments. Then, add its link to Slack. This will allow contributors to check your work. They will leave comments in response to your comment on GitHub. Step 3. Record your first draft. One way to start is by using and personalizing a Google slide deck, which you can download or make a copy of. Find this slide deck in the resource section of this tutorial. Note that you are welcome to use, modify, and adapt it to your needs like you see here. The first slide should contain your title, written in sentence case, and your name. The second slide is usually used for your learning objectives. Feel free to add a graphic or two to personalize it, though do avoid anything that might look like self-promotions, such as your social media handle or WordPress website, or any recognizable brand names. Some resources you can use are Openverse, Pexels, or Pixabay. Be sure to check the license of each picture that you use to ensure that you're using images appropriately, and with respect to their creators. It's an optional best practice to add your Google slide deck to the GitHub issue. Doing so will allow future contributors to translate your text to another language or potentially help you to update this tutorial in the future as WordPress grows and evolves. The next thing you will need is a WordPress environment to record screencast. You can use Local by Flywheel, WP Kinsta, or you can even utilize the WordPress playground by heading to the link in this tutorial's resources to set up a temporary website to take screencasts. One thing I often do to quickly set up a sample website is use the plugin FakerPress, which allows me to generate posts and pages with images, and then quickly adapt them to my needs. Watch as I quickly generate fake content into a WordPress playground. After downloading FakerPress from the WordPress.org repository, I head to my playground, click Add New, and upload a plugin like you do normally. There it is. Let's install it. I activate my new plugin, and now I can generate new posts and pages. I click Posts, give it a good number, backdate it a little bit. I'd also like some pages, so I decide to add posts and pages to this. You have lots of options here. I scroll down and make sure I only select Lorem Pixam. Scroll to the bottom and click Generate. A quick note about using Lorem Pixam. If you're using a program such as Local or WP Kinsta, picking Lorem Pixam in FakerPress will generate open source images on your website. As of the creation of this video, however, this does not work for WordPress playground, so plan to spend some time finding and adding images to your WordPress website. Back to FakerPress. Now, if I head to my posts and pages, fake content has been created. Let's see what this looks like. You can see the fake content here. The benefit of using WordPress playground is that when your sample website is finished, you can download an entire copy of the entire website and add it to GitHub. Watch as I take this WordPress playground and add it to my GitHub issue. Once it finishes uploading, I add this comment, and other people can now download the zip. Now, if I open up a new WordPress playground, I click the Import button, and now the same website with the exact images I'm using can be used again and again. If you import a sample site, you'll need to log in. Type wp-admin in the Playgrounds navigation bar. There, you will see the username and password of the sample site displayed. Type in admin and the password, and then you'll be able to make changes to this temporary website. Now, it's time to record your tutorial. Some methods you could choose to record are, one, use Descript to present, recording audio and visual at the same time. This has the advantage of being able to edit a video, like a text document, which can be a fast way to create recordings for some people. Take a look at this Descript example with the script filled out and video recordings alongside it. Another free software you can use to make recordings is called ScreenPal. This software has two branches, one to record screenshots and videos, and one to edit them together. You can also use additional options such as iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, Camtasia, or even Zoom mixed with OpenShot. The choice is yours with whatever you'd like to use. Whichever program you choose to use, please be sure to take some time to read over the program's documentation to help you get started, which will help you get started recording faster and with less frustration. You'll be finishing your first draft of a tutorial in no time. Step four, submit your draft for review. Your first submission does not need to be pixel-perfect for you to submit it for review. When your first draft of your tutorial is finished, upload your tutorial to GitHub or link to your tutorial in the GitHub issue. Then add the Ready for Review tag, which will generate the Ready for Review message you see highlighted here. You will also need to move your tutorial from the Drafts in Progress column to the Review and Progress column in GitHub to help training team members know your work is ready for review. The rough draft of your tutorial will then be included in the training team's weekly meeting under the section Open Request for Review, but if you would like to move things a little faster, you're also welcome to announce it in Slack that your tutorial is ready for review. Next, allow two weeks or a minimum of three reviews for other contributors to provide feedback on your tutorial. We aim to give actionable feedback that helps you polish your work, correct anything that is unclear, or suggest options for change. Step five, polish and revise your work. Make suggested changes to your tutorial. When you're editing it, you may also notice and correct some problems that you may have missed the first time around, so feel free to make changes as you work. Finally, step six, publish your work. When your final draft is finished, please refer to the Publishing and Tutorial Handbook page. It will walk you through submitting your work to WordPress.tv, provides you with an automated process to caption your work to make it accessible, and help you create the tutorial post on learn.wordpress.org itself. Once it's published, it's time to celebrate. You've just contributed to the WordPress Open Source project, and you should be really proud of all that you've accomplished. Feel free to share your work on social media. Remember, the training team is here to help you through every step of this process. Please don't hesitate at any point to ping the faculty content creators if you get stuck or have questions. Thanks for watching. We can't wait to see what you create.