In reply to Keith Davis.

Ditto. I started back in '06/07 with one of the 2.x.x releases. At that time there weren't a whole lot of videos floating around. There were no WordCamps or even Meetups all over the place like there are now.

Like Keith & Jeff, my education came from pouring through the Codex, trolling through Google for any nibbles I could find and a whole lot of trial and error. I can't even remember how many times I blew up my various sites.

Shortly after that I began to help out in the forums and interestingly enough I picked up a lot of knowledge by reading through threads I wasn't personally involved with.