How these guides are made

Every guide here starts with a job somebody is trying to do, not with a product somebody is trying to sell.

Where the instructions come from

Each guide is researched against the primary sources for the task — the official documentation, the developer handbook, the release notes, and the support threads where the same problem keeps coming up. Where a step relies on a documented behaviour, the source is listed at the foot of the guide so you can check it yourself.

What we do not do is describe a task we have only read a marketing page about. If the research does not support a step, the step does not go in.

The manual route comes first

Where a job can be done without installing anything, the guide says so and shows you how — including the parts that make it annoying. A guide that jumps straight to “install this plugin” is an advert wearing a tutorial’s clothes, and it is no use to somebody who wants to understand what they are changing.

Sometimes the honest answer really is that you need a plugin. When that is the case we say it plainly and explain why, because knowing a shortcut does not exist is also useful.

Why guides gain tools over time

A guide is about a job, and several products usually do the same job. Rather than publish a near-identical page for each one, we keep a single guide and add each tool to it as we cover it. That is why a guide may list one tool today and four next month — and why the comparison at the bottom gets more useful the longer a guide has been here.

The tool listed first is the one we would reach for. The others are there because they are genuine alternatives, not filler.

Corrections

WordPress moves. A setting gets renamed, a hook is deprecated, a plugin changes how it behaves. If a step here no longer matches what you see on screen, tell us and we will re-check it.