Here’s the thing I learned creating the CMS book: at some fairly early point the workspace is going to be full screen, which means that jumping around between windows to see a video that you keep having to pause, or to go look up something in the on-line documentation, starts to be a giant windows shuffle, and for most people that not easy as they are unable to see context in the project they’re working on while referencing something else.
What’s happened with my CMS book is that people are printing it out and having it computerside as they work with Elements through my steps, and because I do everything as a complete from scratch step-by-step, they just follow along turning pages as they go. I actually learned that way, way back when I was doing some award-winning documentation for big software projects in Silicon Valley: having printed step-by-step on your desk while working on the screen works really well for people coming as virgins into a complex system.
So, the answer to your question is that you need a printed (or printable) step-by-step follow-along of building a full web site using Elements. Indeed, I’d probably follow the same pattern I did with the CMS book: take the Microblog site (but make it a Micro site with just a simple landing page to start), then build it out:
- Start with describing the Elements panels/workspace using the Micro site.
- Build out the Micro site landing page with pre-made components (including Essentials, whose name is a giveaway ;~).
- Add the CMS to make it Micro+Microblog.
- Show how to do the SEO work.
- Show how to publish.
- Build out additional pages (team, pricing, other common pages).
- Next add a contact form (too problematic to do too early, as you’ll run into host issues that need to be explained).
- Maybe show how to use the other add-ons (Password Protect, BeforeAfter, Card Flip, etc.).
The biggest issue I’m finding so far in working with others to learn Elements is that the have a big grepping problem with Container/Flex and all the ways of revealing, formatting, spacing, et.al. within those. So somewhere between Steps 2 and 3 above I’d make the aside into how Tailwind/CSS and components work together (just as I did with Markdown/YAML in the CMS book).
FWIW, I’d doing a major rework of the CMS book, adding even more things and explaining more, dealing with any and everything that people reported with the earlier versions. The 1.03 version when it appears will have a small price (US$10), as all the downloads so far are eating bandwidth costs, plus my time isn’t being compensated for. However, for the time being, version 1.02 is still free (with the potential to make a donation).