#228 – Priscilla Collado Ramirez on Reducing WordPress Beginner Anxiety

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the themes, the blocks, and in this case, reducing WordPress beginner anxiety in a multitude of ways.

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So on the podcast today we have Priscilla Collado Ramirez. Priscilla travelled 14 hours from Costa Rica to attend WordCamp Europe, making her one of the furthest attendees at the event, and for good reason. She’s an educator, fashion designer and wellness coach, and has a unique perspective on a challenge many in the WordPress community face, how overwhelming WordPress can be for beginners.

Having once quit WordPress 17 years ago, due to information overload, and a lack of community support, Priscilla’s story comes full circle, as she now dedicates herself to helping entrepreneurs and creatives find their way in the WordPress ecosystem. Her work focuses on demystifying those first confusing moments, offering practical steps, and much needed reassurance for anyone who’s ever opened a fresh install and wondered, what on earth do I do next?

The conversation is focused on why newcomers often feel stuck, paralysed by too many choices, the classic it depends advice, and a fear of breaking something or everything. We get into the importance of understanding individual learning styles, whether linear or spiral, as Priscilla labels them, and meeting students where they are, sometimes with literal breathing exercises and wellness techniques to lower stress and unlock real learning.

Priscilla explains how confidence in WordPress is built through action, and why celebrating small wins, like successfully installing a single plugin, is essential. She also shares her approach to bringing holistic, calm, and patient mentorship into WordPress education, something that’s as relevant for agency leads as it is for first time bloggers.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by WordPress’ infinite possibilities, struggled to find your place in its community, or just want practical wisdom on making the path easier for beginners, this episode is for you.

If you’re interested in finding out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Priscilla Collado or Ramirez.

I am joined on the podcast by Priscilla Collado Ramirez. Although I know that’s not the correct way to say it, would you please say your name for me?

[00:03:44] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: It’s good, it’s good. I’m Priscilla Collado Ramirez, and I’m from Costa Rica.

[00:03:48] Nathan Wrigley: Well, I appreciate it. Thank you. You get the award without a doubt coming the furthest, I think, to WordCamp Europe this year. I don’t know how many miles it is, but you said, I think it was 13 hours.

[00:03:59] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, 14 hours on the plane. Today is travelling. But it’s all worth it, because this country in Europe, it’s beautiful. So I can do it all the years, all the months. Yeah, I can do it.

[00:04:13] Nathan Wrigley: I have to ask though, why come all the way across, so many hours on a plane and what have you. Do you have a community where you are? Is there a thriving kind of Costa Rican WordPress scene? I don’t know anything about it.

[00:04:28] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Okay. Yeah, in Costa Rica is a big community. It’s the biggest community in whole Latin America, in Costa Rica. I have a friend, she works for GreenGeeks web hosting, so she empowered me to do this. And the WordCamp Europe, because being a speaker is one of my dreams come true.

I already do it in my country, but I want to get more knowledge and know more people. And when she told me about this, I said, yeah, I can do it. Yeah, I want to do it.

[00:05:06] Nathan Wrigley: That is remarkable. A 13 hour plane journey. That’s pretty impressive. And I confess, I didn’t know that Costa Rica was sort of the place to be if you’re in South America. But now I do. Thank you. And I know that you’ve basically just come out of the presentation room, you’ve just finished the subject that you were talking about.

And the subject that you were talking about is really interesting to me at least, because this casts me back. I’ve been in the WordPress space since about, I don’t know, 2015, something like that. So I’ve got a few years under my belt.

But I do remember at the time when I began using WordPress, turning up to events like this and feeling a bit like a fish out of water, not really knowing what to do. Not really knowing what to do with the software, either. Not really knowing what I should install, whether I should install anything, whether I was using the best thing, or the worst thing or what have you. And that kind of was the nature of your subject.

But rather than me telling everybody what you were talking about, do you just want to summarise what it was that you stood up and presented about?

[00:06:02] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, of course. And I feel the same way that you.

Well, my talk is about why WordPress feels overwhelming for beginners. I was that beginner that I don’t want to install. And WordPress, it’s great, but sometimes gives you too many options, right? So for beginners, sometimes that options feels paralysing because we need to start with one at the time.

I saw all the topics for this event, and I think, yeah, maybe I can share a little bit of my story with WordPress. And I talk about, I quit WordPress 17 years ago.

[00:06:47] Nathan Wrigley: You quit it?

[00:06:48] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. I’m a quitter.

[00:06:50] Nathan Wrigley: My story going back, oh, 12 years or whatever it was, that’s nothing. You got 17 years. That was when you quit. Okay, carry on. Sorry.

[00:06:58] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, no, 17 years ago, I was at university, and I was studying advertising and web design. I saw the options, too many options, too many things, I don’t know. And I feel overwhelmed. And I said, this is not for me. I’m so dumb. I’m slow. No, no.

And 17 years later, I’m here as an educator, and I help entrepreneurs and beginners to understand the WordPress environment.

[00:07:29] Nathan Wrigley: What brought you back then? After all that period of time away, what was the catalyst that brought you back? Why did you explore it again?

[00:07:36] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Because I have a fashion school, and I saw my students deal with web designers and sometimes they charging so much money. I see it in the beginners, in my students, I saw that we have a problem with understanding that sometimes the things are not too difficult. We can learn about new tools and new WordPress.

[00:08:06] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so this was all about your students then. So this was an idea of, I guess the world is kind of an expensive place to be, and one expense that you can get rid of is the cost of your website. There’s tools out there. You can, if you wish to, build it yourself. And then you found WordPress again. How is it the second time? Did you ever go through, I’m going to quit it for a second time, or was it better the next time you came across it?

[00:08:29] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, and my brother is an engineer and I’m in like a category of non-technical people because I’m a fashion designer. I’m an educator, and I’m a wellness coach. And I think, yeah, maybe I can study a little bit, and if I use my education tools to understand how the brains for the creative people works and try to, out of the box, that sometimes the engineers have, and the creative people. It’s like a disorder, a disorder brain. I can help to these people to understand this environment in this community. And they can do it like I do.

[00:09:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. So we’ll get into the bits that you think are problematic with beginning with WordPress in a minute. But just going back to your students and what have you. How’s it been for them? When you are looking at what they’re able to do, has it been a road of success, or has there been quite a lot of failure for them? Basically sum up how your students have coped.

[00:09:43] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Okay. I don’t know, there’s two types of students, right? So we have the students that have a linear path learning. Some students learned like A, B, and C. Okay, you understand things easily. But some of them don’t understand the things like that.

So I try to create a platform, or we can call it like a type of education, and helps to understand, first how their brain works, and later understand the type of learning that I can teach.

[00:10:24] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, let me just make sure I understood that. So you try to figure out what their brain accepts most readily? And then once you figure that bit out, then you begin the WordPress education from there. Okay, that’s interesting.

And you say there’s kind of two types that you’ve kind of determined. And what are those two types?

[00:10:40] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Lineal.

[00:10:41] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, so I think probably linear, like straight lines.

[00:10:46] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, we have the straight lines and the spiral.

[00:10:49] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, yeah.

[00:10:51] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: So my mind is on the spiral. And that’s why I feel dumb in these technical environments. But I learned that if you learn some topic at the time and without the stress, you can do it and you can follow this community.

[00:11:10] Nathan Wrigley: So you just used an interesting word there. You said that you have felt, maybe you don’t feel it here, I don’t know if you do or not. But you said you’ve felt dumb in the past. You know, you’ve turned up to the events and you felt like a fish out of water, we might say that. Just. What the heck am I doing here? Where do I fit into this jigsaw puzzle?

And obviously you felt it long and hard enough that, firstly you left, and then come back, given it a second shot. So what are the things that you have felt dumb about? What are the things that have perplexed you in the past? What are the things that have drawn you to making this presentation?

[00:11:47] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: I felt in that time overwhelmed for the too many options. I feel that in that time in my country, WordPress wasn’t so popular and was a men’s environment. There’s no women. So I feel like, I don’t know, I’m not from, I don’t know what to be here. And now, four years ago, I’ve been talking with the women community on WordPress and I feel like, I don’t know, confident and they believe in my knowledge.

And I think that, yeah, I can do it again. I can approach to the community and I can learn, and I can be like a mentor too, and help beginners to understand that it’s not the technical environment. It’s how the community engage with your goals and can be used, and how can help with your goals.

[00:12:50] Nathan Wrigley: So I’m just going to dig into something you said a moment ago, which was about the community where you are. I don’t know if it’s still the same, but you implied that it was mostly men.

Have you found female WordPressers where you are? Or have you had to get on Zoom calls or something like that in order to find that community? Or has it grown so that it’s not just men where you are now?

[00:13:14] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. I assist to the first women speakers in 2023. And I saw like, okay, this is a WordPress group for women. And that group was for speakers from WordPress, but women. So I was like, okay, WordPress is not only men’s, WordPress is not only technical people. And, well, I can approach to that community. 17 years ago wasn’t like that.

All men and square men. Because I know there is a lot of spiral men, but in that age, yeah, was like square men and my brother is a little bit like a square. And I was like, no, I’m funny and I want to talk, and I want to be a speaker and what. Now I feel that I can approach to my goals with WordPress because I changed my mind and my feeling about the community and WordPress.

[00:14:20] Nathan Wrigley: So just moving away from the community side and all of that kind of stuff, just dealing with the, actual software that you download from the internet and you put on a server somewhere, and then you begin to build a website. I presume that that’s part of this as well, that it’s difficult to begin because when you install a version of WordPress, you’re kind of left to your own. You know, there’s not really much in the way of assistance. You have to find the assistance somewhere. You have to a YouTube channel or some friendly person that will stand over your shoulder and help you out.

What are the sort of impediments, the problems that you think we have for people beginning with WordPress that you would like to be solved?

[00:14:58] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. First of all that everybody thinks that WordPress is only a website. And I want to share this. WordPress is not only a website, right? It is a community. And you can approach and say, I wanted to learn about how to do a blog and how to do a website. But the community is more than that. I think that people don’t understand yet that what is WordPress?

[00:15:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. well I went for, I probably used WordPress for four years, maybe three and a half, four years, something like that, before I knew there was any kind of community. I mean I realised that there was something because the software got made. So I realised somewhere behind the curtain, there must be people doing this. And I’m getting it for free, so they probably are not getting paid mostly to do it.

But I didn’t attend because I didn’t know there was anything to attend. And then I showed up to an event in London, which was probably my closest larger event at that time. I was quite surprised. I was thinking, okay, so there were about 600 people there, I really wasn’t expecting that. I thought maybe there’ll be like 12 or 15 or something. Showed up, 600 people. And for me that was kind of the moment WordPress became a little bit more interesting, because I realised that, okay, it isn’t just pixels on pages, it’s not just the websites. There’s actually a whole community of people behind it.

And one of the things that I discovered fairly quickly was that those people shared, there was a lot of overlap between them and me. You know, just a lot of things in their lives seemed to sync with a lot of things in my life. We had broad agreement on a lot of things. We all wanted the project to be successful. And so discovering the community, like you said, was a really important thing.

But nevertheless, I still think I would’ve carried on using it even if I hadn’t of discovered that community, because by that point I’d got over the problem of what plugins to install and how to actually use the software.

Yeah. So let’s move on to that. In terms of the actual software, so we’ve got the community, we know that exists. What are some of the problems that you’ve seen, I guess with your students, or maybe personal experience? Some of the problems with the actual software. What are some of the things that you’ve encountered?

[00:17:21] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. I encountered that there’s too many options, and the people do not know how to install. And that’s a beginner’s questions. Why should I install plugins, themes? And for technical people it is like, okay, it depends.

[00:17:39] Nathan Wrigley: Oh always it depends.

[00:17:41] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Always, it depends. And, for beginnings, that feels paralysing.

[00:17:45] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? So when you mean paralysing? So we say it depends, meaning, oh, try everything. See what works. Where you are saying that in your experience, it depends means don’t do anything, we don’t know, not sure.

[00:18:00] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. And the beginners don’t know what to do, right?

[00:18:03] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, yeah, that’s not helpful, is it, it depends, really when you say it like that?

Okay, so how do we overcome that? I don’t know what we do apart from keep saying, it depends. I guess we’ve got to try and encourage people to try this.

Okay, let me rewind a bit. So my parents, when I put the phone in their hand for the first time, the mobile phone, I had it all set up for them, you know everything was working, and I gave it to them and assumed that they would have the same approach as me. Which was, just play around with it and then you’ll figure it out.

Oh, no. No touching anything was, will I break it? Is this going to destroy it? If I press delete here, does that mean the whole thing’s going to like be, does this app going to disappear at this point?

So, I think that’s what you’re saying, is basically there’s this fear that if I install something and then I don’t need it, or I don’t like it, well then what do I do? Is it kind of that? This fear of it.

[00:18:59] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, because you feel overwhelmed, and you feel paralysing. And you feel like, okay, there’s a learning path, right? So we have the excitement. So, yeah, I’m going to do WordPress. Then confusing. What is this? And then it is like, no, I don’t know, maybe this is not for me because there’s so many options.

I try with my students to go one step at a time, and understand, first, what is a plugin? Right? Do you need a plugin or not? Do you need a theme or not? Do you need SEO plugin or, I don’t know?

So I am trying to, first of all, work with entrepreneurs because some entrepreneurs sometimes doesn’t get it. I don’t know, what is an email? How to send an email. They are so intelligent, and so capable to learn things, but sometimes, like as educators or mentors, we have in our minds that people learn easily. And sometimes it’s not. So you have to teach like a child. And not because the people was stupid, right? It is like because that people, the learning process is different.

[00:20:30] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, I suppose you’ve got to just get to the point where you’re comfortable. So for some people who are, I don’t know, let’s go for the word technical. Technical people who’ve got a background in using computers, they do it all day, every day. And they experiment with new things. I suppose if you put them in front of WordPress, they’re off. They’re just going to do that kind of thing. But I totally get what you mean.

So for me, technology, I will experiment and I’ll play, because I know that nothing can basically actually break. If something goes wrong, I can just delete it. So I’m thinking about apps on my phone, on my computer, and WordPress, and plugins, and themes and all of this. I fully understand that nothing will kill it. Well, hopefully nothing will kill it, and I can just remove what I don’t understand.

But then again, you pick me up and put me into a different industry, I’ll be that person. I’ll be the person that needs the baby steps, I think you said that needs the child steps, because I’m not in familiar territory. So I can’t think an example off the top of my head, but pick me up, basically put me anywhere there’s no technology, and I will feel that same anxiety. What do I do? can you check that what I’ve done is safe? Okay. Can you double check? And will you triple check just to make sure that everything is safe. And I suppose that’s what you’re saying, is just little baby steps. get people into it. And once they’ve gone through the baby steps, hopefully they can act on their own.

[00:21:54] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: This is a phrase that I been thinking too much in this talk, because it is some word that you said, and you said about confidence. And I wrote that confidence does not come before action. Confidence is built through action.

[00:22:14] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s true, isn’t it? And so everybody at some point has to go through that barrier. Some people seem to be full of confidence, regardless of what is, but there’s a lot of people who are not. And if you walk them through the baby steps I suppose, as you said, and tell them, do you need a plugin? What is a plugin? This is a plugin. How do you get a plugin to be put on your website? Can you delete a plugin? And then same thing with themes and custom code and all of those kind of things. And does that work? Do you notice that people go from like, ah, fear, to oh, this is all right.

[00:22:47] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: They think, this is not so hard that I was the, I will be. I don’t know, I have all types of students and all types of socioeconomic types. And I have students like 50 to 60 years old. And they think, no, I’m too old to think learning website, and learning design things. And I’ve been creative. The constructivist system is a strategy in education, the constructivist, and the principle idea is you learn by doing.

[00:23:27] Nathan Wrigley: Confidence through action, like you said, basically.

[00:23:29] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Exactly, exactly. And so you can be on the learning path, making little mistakes and getting more confidence to feel safe in the learning environment.

[00:23:42] Nathan Wrigley: Are you a patient person?

[00:23:45] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Sometimes.

[00:23:45] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. Because when I was earlier describing my parents and the phone, there’s kind of a bit of me, which when I’ve demonstrated the same thing nine times, and every time the output of those, okay, do it this way, do it this, okay, now do this, now this. And on the 10th go, it’s still the wrong thing in the exact same way. I just wondered if there was a bit of that? If there is just some impediments which, I don’t know, some people just never get over. If WordPress is just generally too hard for some people. Or do you always pursue it and succeed? Do you always get people through, and get them to that confident stage?

[00:24:23] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Every day. Yeah. Like every day. And I think that the mentor and the educator has to feel love with that work, and teaching with love, first of all.

And then, understand that people doesn’t learn in the same way. I can say older people because I’m older, and you saw an older people, and you think, this is older than me, but it isn’t.

[00:24:55] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. and some people are kind of, what, we would describe as kinesthetic learners. So they doing is the way. Some people are kind of auditory, and they hear the solution and they learn from hearing. And other people it’s visual. You know, they see the, watch a video and, oh, I’ve got that now. And I guess you’ve got to figure out which ones, how they fit in. If I show you once, you’re fine. If I show you once, well that’s not going to work. You’ve got to actually do it and copy me. And once you’ve figured out what kind of learners they are. You must have a lot of time for these people by the sounds of it.

[00:25:25] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, of course.

[00:25:27] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, and do you literally have an endless amount of time to educate them or do you have like a, I don’t know, you’ve got 10 hours or whatever it is and after 10 hours we’re going to get new people in? Or do you just stick with them throughout the whole journey?

[00:25:38] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, yeah. And most beginners and most entrepreneurs isn’t that way, right? And they’re so excited to understand the process. And when I explain how the brain works, they think, oh, yeah, it’s not the system, it’s me.

[00:25:59] Nathan Wrigley: But also I can do something about it.

[00:26:00] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah.

[00:26:01] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, okay. That’s interesting. Okay.

I’m going to give you superpowers for a minute. I’m going to say that you are in charge of WordPress entirely. It’s up to you what we do to improve this experience. What would you change? that could be the software. It could be education that you suddenly provide, you know, you would whip up many, many courses or whatever. I don’t know. I’m just curious to know what you think.

So again, superhero powers. You get to decide the future of WordPress. What little changes would you make here and there?

[00:26:32] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: I’m going a little bit too far off WordPress, and I’m going to bring wellness tools first.

[00:26:41] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. So it gets bigger.

[00:26:42] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, it’s bigger. I’m a wellness coach first of all, and first you have to try to understand the stress, and your mind. And then you can learn. I feel like my superpower will be an educator in wellness first, because we have to manage the stress of learning.

[00:27:04] Nathan Wrigley: So you have to approach the computer, but calmly. You have to get there and arrive in an equanimous state. Nice and calm.

[00:27:14] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, and understand that the delete button doesn’t exist. Because you are going to learn that, yeah, you can delete it, but you are going to breathe, and stay calm, and you won’t be delete anything because you, on the learning process of your mind understanding that everything is a process.

After that, I have an idea, I don’t know my superpower, I would like to do the mentor of the mentors first.

[00:27:49] Nathan Wrigley: Oh, teach the teachers.

[00:27:51] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, yeah. Because we have mentors in WordPress, but the mentors sometimes doesn’t study at the university education, right? Is an engineer trying to teach another engineer, or an engineer teach to entrepreneur or a beginner, so their minds works different.

[00:28:14] Nathan Wrigley: Yes. I’ve encountered this in the real world. You know the educator who gets really angry with you and tuts, sort of goes tut tut, because you’re not doing what the way they would do it. It just turns out that, if you just ask me in a different way, I’ll probably figure it out.

[00:28:29] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, exactly.

[00:28:30] Nathan Wrigley: Sorry I interrupted, carry on. So educating the educators.

[00:28:33] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: And in all the fields is the same way, because I’m a fashion designer too, but I have to learn how to be an educator, and how to try to explain some things to my students and try to get off to my mind box.

So I want to make some changes too, and add some of these tools on WordPress. I don’t know, maybe this is my superpower, like be a spiral mind.

[00:29:07] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, yeah. But I think teaching the teachers. So I think we would use the word pedagogy for that. Meaning, how to teach basically. The science, if you like, of imparting knowledge. And maybe there is nothing like that at the moment. And if there isn’t something like that, it would be interesting to explore how different people with different minds and different approaches. Maybe your first idea of everybody approach the computer in a calm way. Maybe that gets rid of some of that problem. At least we’re approaching and we’re not getting we begin.

But I think you’re onto something there, in that I know that I don’t learn in the same way as my children do. I don’t learn in the same way as my parents do. And so having that in the background, and educating the educators so that they’re aware that those kind of things exist.

Okay, you’ve still got the superpowers. Is there anything else that you would do before I take them away?

[00:29:56] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Okay, okay. I think that understand the brain is a supercomputer. It’s also a big topic because you can programming your mind. I would love to teach that people can programming itself. I don’t know what other superpower.

[00:30:17] Nathan Wrigley: Well that’s okay. You’ve had it for probably about five minutes now. That’s more than most people get.

So yeah. So in your experience, I know that you are obviously trying to overcome this problem, and it sounds like you get most people through it, and people manage to come out the other side and are, you know using WordPress successfully. But despite that, do you still think out there in the wider community, not where you are, do you still think that people are being turned off by the problem at the beginning of, I don’t know what to do. I think that I should be able to figure this out, but I can’t. I’m frustrated. It’s annoying me. Ah, move on, or forget the whole thing altogether.

[00:30:53] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Okay. I give you some tools. I wrote it. Limit the choices. Yeah, because one plugin at a time. Yeah, understand one topic at a time.

[00:31:05] Nathan Wrigley: When you say that, are you, meaning, let’s say for example, that we’re getting into the, oh, I don’t know, the realm of SEO, we’ve managed to get into that subject. We know that there’s like 500 SEO plugins. Just show them one, just pick one, concentrate on that one and figure out how that works. And then maybe reveal that there’s others or something like that.

[00:31:25] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. But sometimes, maybe I have to understand your world first, and maybe you don’t need SEO tools? Because maybe you wanted to sell, I don’t know, plants. So do you really need a SEO plugin? Yeah, maybe not. So I have to understand your business first, or your purpose first, and then I can share you one plugin for that.

[00:31:56] Nathan Wrigley: Right, so, but at the end of the day, it’s still limit it rather than the plugin overwhelm. 78,000 plugins on the repo or whatever it is. One at a time is probably for a beginner more than enough. Learn how to install it. How to uninstall it. Learn the kind of things that you can do with it, whether that’s SEO or a form plugin or whatever. Okay, it looks like you’re ready for another one, yeah.

[00:32:15] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. I have, normalise confusion.

[00:32:19] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so be happy with being confused and muddled up.

[00:32:23] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, because it’s a new topic for you. So you have to understand that it is fine if you feel confusion, because your brain is adapting to that learning process.

[00:32:34] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, we’re not good at that, are we? We’re really good at being annoyed by confusion. Confusion’s the enemy in many ways, isn’t it? But it’s really not. I mean, who can expect to learn something new and immediately understand everything? No, but we don’t allow ourselves to do that, do we? We get annoyed with confusion.

That’s a good one. I like that. Carry on, sorry.

[00:32:54] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: And celebrate the small wins. I’m doing right now. I’m realise that I have to celebrate the small wins, because sometimes we overwhelm and have too many expectations. It is one step at a time, baby steps.

[00:33:11] Nathan Wrigley: So that one is basically when something goes right. So once you’ve got over your confusion and something’s gone right, sit back, examine it. Ah, well done. Pat on the back kind of thing. Yeah, okay. That’s nice.

[00:33:22] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. And emotional reset tools.

[00:33:26] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. You’re going to have to explain that one.

[00:33:29] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Okay. I’m going to explain you here, because I want to explain you pretty well, and sometimes I get I stuck in the language.

Okay, when beginners get frustrated, we must do simple pauses, like breathing. The process of breathing is called pranayama. In pranayama is the art of the breathing. When we born, the first thing that I will do is breathe. And when you are crying, the people say, no, no, breathe, breathe, right? And when you are, I don’t know, when you swimming, and you.

[00:34:09] Nathan Wrigley: Drowning maybe.

[00:34:11] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Drowning yeah, you want to breathe. So the breathing is so important.

[00:34:16] Nathan Wrigley: So this is part of the pausing thing. Just pausing, breathing, okay.

[00:34:20] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. They also reduce the cognitive overload. And help beginners continuing learning with more clarity, that regulates the brain and the stress.

[00:34:32] Nathan Wrigley: So I don’t think I do any of those things when I’m learning. I just sort of plough on and expect myself to do really well. And when I don’t, I get miserable and annoyed. And I don’t ever think about, okay, calm down, breathe, congratulate yourself. The thing is I mostly do learning by myself. You know, I’m in a room and I watch a video or I read something, and so there’s nobody there to tell me to breathe, calm down, relax, congratulate yourself. So I’m glad these people have got you in their lives to, make all of this happen.

Sorry, carry on.

[00:35:03] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: No, no. And one of the phrases that I want to the people understand is the learning doesn’t happen in stress. It happens when the mind feels safe enough to explore.

[00:35:19] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, well I can identify with that. That makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? When you’re uptight and worried about things, nothing sticks ever, does it? So back to calm, I suppose.

[00:35:30] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah yeah.

[00:35:31] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s all good advice. Yeah I wish I could do it.

[00:35:36] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. And sometimes, yeah, the people feel overwhelmed with the stress first. I have too many mentors that causing me stress and, I don’t know, they don’t give me confidence in anything of I been learning.

[00:35:55] Nathan Wrigley: It sounds to me like what you are proposing. We would probably call it holistic. So it’s treating the mind, the body. They’re the first bits. If you haven’t got those intact and working for you, it doesn’t matter how many times you read that book, you’re never going to learn anything.

[00:36:12] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: But sometimes the word for holistic for technical people is like you’re a hippie.

[00:36:17] Nathan Wrigley: Well, there is a bit of that, isn’t there? I think technical people often have an approach to this kind of stuff, which is fairly dismissive, sort of at arm’s length. Because it’s not science, if you know what I mean. It doesn’t sort of come under that umbrella. I wonder how much resistance actually, if I put you in, you know, had a chat with a thousand of the people out there at the moment.

[00:36:38] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Oh, the people go away.

[00:36:38] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, okay. Okay. But you know it works. And everybody knows this kind of stuff works. Because if you’re calm, I suppose the difficulty would be, you’ve got to allow yourself to accept that you need to be calm, and you need to be approaching it in this kind of way. And that’s difficult. I would find that quite difficult. You know, if I came to your educational institute, if you like, if you were teaching me WordPress, there would be a bit of me at the beginning, which would be thinking, okay, just tapping the watch, and thinking when does the WordPress begin?

And you are probably saying, we need to be calm now, you know? So I guess you’re going to have to fight that fight.

[00:37:13] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. Yeah. And last year I was a speaker in my country, and I’m talking about how manage the stress, the people that works like eight hours on the computer. You can use too many tools to release the back, the breathing. And everybody needs release the stress. Sometimes in technical environments, the people don’t engage with the holistic path because they think that.

[00:37:46] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah. I confess I’ve had years of doing that kind of stuff. Just expecting my body to be able to keep pace with whatever I’m doing, and expecting that if I sit in a chair for 12 hours, that everything’s going to be fine. I’m just going to stand up and walk away. And of course, it’s not.

Do you know, it’s really interesting, I don’t know that anybody’s doing this. Maybe you know a load of people that are carrying out this kind of a practice. But it feels like you’ve kind of, forgive me if I’ve got the wrong language here, but it feels like you’ve kind of bolted something close to meditation onto technology. Which is really curious, because I don’t know that anybody, maybe this is common where you are. I don’t know, but.

[00:38:27] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: No, it’s not. It’s not because I’m a sound therapist, and I’m a sound healer. The sound can heal you. I am trying to people understand that you can’t live like a computer. You are not a computer. You can program in your brain like a computer, but you are not a robot. And you need to stop.

[00:38:51] Nathan Wrigley: I think, we’re too attached to our devices, aren’t we? I think whenever the mobile phone came along, we finally gave up free time. And email is there 24/7. Social media’s there 24/7. Technology’s there 24/7. Yeah, breathe is basically what you’re saying.

[00:39:10] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah. And in my country, no, it is not common. It is not common and it is a little rare. And maybe in another country it is normal to finish your labour at work and meditate one minute.

[00:39:26] Nathan Wrigley: Oh no. Nobody does that where I live, no.

[00:39:30] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: I don’t know if there is any country, doesn’t do it, right?

[00:39:32] Nathan Wrigley: That would be nice. Yeah you’d probably feel really good after that.

[00:39:35] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Maybe in China? Maybe Japan?

[00:39:38] Nathan Wrigley: Maybe where they a different approach to living. Do you want to roll your thing out? The way that you are doing this, do you want to roll that out to other people? Do you want people to kind of approach you and, I don’t know, study what you are doing, and then go off and do that kind of thing elsewhere? Is that part of why you’ve come to an event like this? To sort of preach the gospel of this idea, this way of learning?

[00:40:01] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Yeah, yeah. I would love to. I would love the people understanding maybe, I don’t know, create me a plugin about wellness. I don’t know.

[00:40:12] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so anybody listening to this, Priscilla wants communication with people who think they might be able to step in. I know of several people who have, let’s say things like meditation as part of their daily ritual and things. In which case, anybody who’s listening to this, where’s the best place to find you online? If people want to get in touch and talk about these wider problems, education, learning, calming down, meditation, those kind of things, where would we find you?

[00:40:37] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: On Gravatar. On WordPress page, and Instagram too.

[00:40:42] Nathan Wrigley: I think I’ve got the details of most of those, but if I don’t, I will get them from you, and I will put them on the WP Tavern website. So if you search for the episode, dear listener, with Priscilla in it, I don’t know the number of that episode just yet, but if you search for the episode with Priscilla in it, if you’ve got intuitions that you’d like to help out, go and find this episode and you can reach out. And you never know, maybe something will come of that.

So Priscilla, thank you for chatting to me today.

[00:41:07] Priscilla Collado Ramirez: Oh, thank you too. And remember to breathe.

On the podcast today we have Priscilla Collado Ramirez.

Priscilla traveled 14 hours from Costa Rica to attend WordCamp Europe, making her one of the furthest attendees at the event, and for good reason. She’s an educator, fashion designer, and wellness coach, and has a unique perspective on a challenge many in the WordPress community face: how overwhelming WordPress can be for beginners.

Having once quit WordPress 17 years ago due to information overload and lack of community support, Priscilla’s story comes full circle as she now dedicates herself to helping entrepreneurs and creatives find their way in the WordPress ecosystem. Her work focuses on demystifying those first confusing moments, offering practical steps and much-needed reassurance for anyone who’s ever opened a fresh install and wondered, “What on earth do I do next?”

The conversation is focused on why newcomers often feel stuck, paralysed by too many choices, the classic “it depends” advice, and a fear of breaking something (or everything). We get into the importance of understanding individual learning styles, whether linear or spiral (as Priscilla labels them), and meeting students where they are, sometimes with literal breathing exercises and wellness techniques to lower stress and unlock real learning.

Priscilla explains why confidence in WordPress is built through action, and why celebrating small wins, like successfully installing a single plugin, is essential. She also shares her approach to bringing holistic, calm, and patient mentorship into WordPress education, something that’s as relevant for agency leads as it is for first-time bloggers.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by WordPress’s infinite possibilities, struggled to find your place in its community, or just want practical wisdom on making the path easier for beginners, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Why WordPress feels overwhelming for beginners – Priscilla’s presentation at WordCamp Europe 2026

Priscilla on WordPress.org