Git for WordPress Developers: A Free Video Course from WP Pusher

Peter Suhm, creator of WP Pusher, just released a new free video course for WordPress developers. After the success of his email-based WP Git Crash Course, Suhm jumped head-first into creating more educational material in video format. Git4wp.com launched this week with more than 1.5 hours of recorded lessons, split up into 35 videos.

The new course offers a comprehensive look at commands, workflows, and anything a WordPress developer would need to know about using GitHub. Suhm’s teaser for the course is a 5-minute screencast demonstrating how to contribute to an open source WordPress plugin on GitHub.

More Git-proficient WordPress developers means more potential customers for Suhm’s WP Pusher product, which allows you to deploy WordPress themes and plugins from GitHub.

“The videos are a great way for me to educate developers who might be interested in WP Pusher, so we can be more on the same page,” Suhm said. “There’s a lot of jargon in the world of Git.”

In addition to the new video format, he opted to take a beginner-friendly approach with bite-sized tutorials for all skill levels.

“The email course I made last summer was very well received and the number one piece of feedback was to create a similar thing in video format,” he said. “The email course was very much chronological, mostly showing my own workflow. With the videos I wanted to make something that was more for everyone – from beginners to developers already using Git. I think there will be a video for everyone, even more advanced Git users.”

The course begins with videos explaining what Git is and why you might want to use it, the difference between Git and Subversion, and covers the most commonly-used Git commands. The following videos include a breakdown of more advanced commands like git bisect and git rebase.

With more WordPress-related projects moving to GitHub, Suhm thought that it was a good time to create a video resource to help developers get on board. He underestimated the effort it would require until after he had already jumped headlong into creating Git4wp.com.

“Honestly, when I started recording the videos, I didn’t realize the amount of work I was in for,” Suhm told the Tavern. “Since I’ve been using Git professionally on a daily basis for a good amount of time, I thought I could just hit record and start talking. Recording and especially editing the videos ended up taking way more time than I thought initially.

“Screencasts are something I’ve wanted to try for a while. I’m not a native English speaker, so it’s also been a personal challenge releasing the videos,” he said.

Suhm plans to keep updating the videos and will add more as time permits. He is committed to keeping the course free as an educational resource for WordPress developers.

“I don’t need to make money from the videos, since they are in a sense subsidized by my product WP Pusher,” he said. “It’s much like when a company contributes to open source, which they can only afford if they have income coming from somewhere else.”

The last set of videos include an overview of how to contribute to GitHub-hosted open source projects as well as tips for incorporating WP Pusher into your workflow. WP Pusher is 100% free for open source projects that are hosted in a public repository, so students of the course can easily follow along and practice with their own projects.