101 Essential Free WordPress Resources for Building Your WordPress Website

Having a whole collection of resources in one place is always a great resource in itself – especially when it’s categorized into neat little groups so that you can easily find what you need. Inspired by this post on the always great Freelance Switch, I’ve put together a massive list of all things WordPress.

Setup

• Installing WordPress – The source of all WordPress Knowledge
• The WPMU DEV WordPress and WordPress Multisite Installation Guide – Extensive installation manual for WordPress and Multisite – straight for the WordPress Experts
• 20 Steps to a Flexible and Secure WordPress Installation – Step-by-step guide produced by NetTuts
• Install Xampp – A local server is essential if you’re doing a lot of customization or development
• WP Apprentice – Helpful training index for beginner WordPress users
• How to Install Google Analytics in WordPress – We all want to know who’s visiting us and linking to us. Learn to install Google Analytics
• Step by Step Guide to Installing a WordPress Plugin for Beginners – Great guide for beginners
• 100 Things You Need to Know About WordPress – comprehensive list of all things WordPress
• The Complete WordPress as CMS Guide – Tips, Tricks and benefits

Themes

• WordPress Theme Directory – The safest place around for free WordPress Themes
• WPMU Straight to the Source: 100 Free WordPress Themes – 100 WordPress 3.0+ Themes, compiled by me!
• Smashing Magazine 100 Free WordPress Themes – Mammoth list of free WordPress Themes
• Why You Should Never Search for Free WordPress Themes in Google – What to watch out for when you’re looking for free themes
• 12 Free TwentyTen Child Themes for WordPress – Make Twenty Ten shiny with these child themes
• Dynamic WP - Theme shop that regularly releases free WordPress themes
• Theme Lab – Leland has a nice collection of free themes
• Smashing Magazine Themes – Themes are released regularly by Smashing Magazine

Plugins

• WordPress Plugin Directory – More than 14,000 free WordPress plugins and expanding all the time
• WPMU DEV Free Plugins – We’ve got a growing collection of free WordPress plugins
• Essential Plugins for Every WordPress Installation – help with the basics
• Top 20 WordPress plugins to extend WordPress CMS Capabilities – extending WordPress 3.0+ into CMS heaven

Performance

• Speeding up WordPress – the only guide to speeding up WordPress that you’ll need, from Alex at WP Shout
• Speed Up WordPress with W3 Total Cache – great setup guide from WP Lift for setting up the massive W3 Total Cache
• Using W3 Total Cache with a CDN - part 2 of WP Lift’s W3 Total Cache Guide

Security

• How to Automatically Backup Your WordPress Site to Dropbox – extremely useful tip brought to you by Sarah
• WordPress Security 101: 8  Tips, Tricks and Tweaks to Secure Your WordPress Website - WordPress security guide with 8 essential tweaks
• 10 Useful WordPress Security Tweaks – Even more tweaks to help secure WordPress
• Hardening WordPress - advice from the Codex

Cheat Sheets

• What You Need to Know in One Sheet – everything you need for designing and developing a theme
• WordPress 3 Template Hierarchy  Cheat Sheet - learn what template files WordPress will use
• WordPress 3.0 Template Tag Reference Guide - interactive reference guide
• WordPress Help Sheet Wallpaper – basic template files and php snippets
• WordPress Theme Development Checklist - make sure you’ve done all your checks before finishing your theme

Tools

• Xampp - install WordPress locally on your computer
• Mampp - install WordPress locally on your Mac
• NotePad++ – free text editor for all of your theme files
• Awesome Fontstacks - shiny up your fonts with these free fontstacks
• Google Fonts – take your fonts further with Google’s web gonts
• Google Analytics – monitor your site’s traffic and statistics
• Cyberduck – connect to all sort of servers, including FTP, Amazon S3, Google Storage and even Google Docs
• FileZilla – free FTP client
• Dropbox – backup and share your files

Theme Frameworks & Parents

• Thematic
• Hybrid
• WP Framework
• Buffet
• Whiteboard
• Toolbox

Theme Development

• Basics of WordPress Theme Design – learn the basics of Theme Design
• Designing a Product Page with WordPress – useful guide from Justin Tadlock
• Theme Development Checklist – interactive theme development checklist
• How to Integrate an Options Page into your WordPress Theme – useful guide, particularly if you’re building for release or for clients
• 16 Vital Checks Before Releasing a WordPress Theme – more checks for you to carry our
• WordPress Child Theme Basics – learn how to make yourself a child theme
• Powering Your Design with WordPress - Recent presentation given by Ian Stewart. Packed full of information.
• 5 Simple Ways to Improve a Boring WordPress Theme – quick fixes to jazz up your theme
• How to Code a WordPress 3.0 Theme from Scratch – start from zero and arrive at your theme
• How to Create a Basic WordPress Portfolio Theme – part three of this series involves taking a design and turning it into a WordPress theme
• 10 Basic Tips to Improve WordPress Themes – 10 quick tips to help you out

Plugin Development

• How to Create Your Own WordPress Functionality Plugin – learn to make a plugin and create a great functionality one for your website
• Your First WordPress Plugin: Simple Optimization -  create a simple optimization plugin
• Create WordPress Plugins with OOP Techniques - learn how to create a plugin with object-oriented techniques
• WordPress Hook Sniffer – determine the sequence in which WordPress actions and filters are fired
• WordPress Hooks, Barbs and Snags – interpret the output from the Hook Sniffer tool
• PHPXRef - browse the code in the WordPress trunk
• WordPress Plugin API – essential plugin development information
• How to Write a Restricted Content Plugin – user default roles to restrict content
• 10 Things Ever Plugin Developer Should Know – useful list from Smashing Magazine

Job Boards

• WPMU DEV Jobs
• WP Candy Pros
• Customyze.me
• WPHired
• Smashing Jobs
• WordPress Freelance
• Get a Coder

Blogs

• WPMU.org – WordPress, BuddyPress and Multisite News, Tutorials and Tips
• WP Candy – WordPress news from across the community
• Weblog Tools Collection – one of the longest running blogs in the WordPress community
• WP Lift – loads of tutorials, showcases and guides
• WP Beginner – tutorials for everyone from beginner to expert
• ThemeShaper – theme goodness from the theme team at automatic
• WP Shout- blog run by Alex Denning

Hacks

• WP Recipes – Daily recipes to cook with WordPress
• WP Engineer – Regular hacks and advanced WordPress techniques
• Digging into WP – hardcore WordPress techniques with companion book
• Compilation of WordPress Hacks – big list of WP Hacks from WP Hacks
• WP Snippets - huge collection of code snippets
• New WordPress Power Tips for Template Developers and Consultants – WordPress 3.0+ tips for developers and consultants

People

• 50 WordPress People to Follow on Twitter – huge list of people compiled by Sarah
• Justin Tadlock - lots of helpful tricks and tutorials from the developer of Hybrid
• Lorelle on WordPress – WordPress documentation queen
• Binary Moon – TimThumb developer (amongst other things)
• CatsWhoCode – Jean Baptiste Jung of WP Recipes – lots of cat images :)
• Otto on WordPress – regular WordPress tutorials and info from Audrey Capital’s Tech Ninja
• Mark Jaquith – useful info from WordPress’ lead developer

Inspiration

• WordPress Showcase – WordPress.org shows off the best WordPress websites
• We Love WP – WordPress showcase
• WP Inspiration – another theme showcase

Support

• WordPress Support Forums – help from the source
• WPMU Q&A – Q&A from the WordPress experts
• WordPress Answers – Q&A from Stack Exchange
• WP Tavern – look for answers at a friendly WordPress community
• WordPress IRC Chat – chat with experts across the world

I’m sure that I’ve missed loads of resources that you could tell me about. Let me know in the comments and I’ll add them to the list!