Five sustainable ways to build habits for learning Wagtail in 2026
Want to learn more about Wagtail this year? Here's what we recommend.
Welcome to 2026! Maybe you're somebody who loves New Year's resolutions or maybe you're somebody who hates them and has resolved never to do New Year's resolutions ever. Either way, we tend to get a lot of questions (particularly from aspiring Google Summer of Code applicants) around this time of year about what are the best ways to learn more about Wagtail. So, whether you have a resolution to keep or not, here are some of our recommended ways to learn more about Wagtail without burning yourself out.
Explore the user guide or the documentation a little bit at a time
You wouldn't try to learn French by reading a textbook from front to back. Learning a new language or learning a new piece of software is not usually a linear process. Some days you'll have a lot of time to learn and some days you'll have none. Also, even if you do manage to magically learn everything there is about a subject in one sitting, you most likely aren't going to get a chance to apply that knowledge at a practical level until a particular problem or a particular business need comes up in your work.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared! You never know when understanding the Wagtail Slash Command or knowing the difference between different StreamField block types will come in handy. What it does mean is that you should totally pace yourself and not expect yourself to learn everything there is about Wagtail on your very first day.
If you're an editor, writer, or general user of Wagtail, then aim to read one page from the Wagtail User Guide every day or one section per week until you get through it all. Similarly, if you're interested in learning how to write Wagtail code, then we suggest spending a little bit of time each day or a bigger chunk of time each week exploring one page or one section of the developer documentation.
Break video tutorials up into smaller chunks
You might be tempted to binge coding tutorials like you would binge the newest season of your favorite television show. But if you really want to absorb the material, you should consider breaking up the material and learning a little bit each day or each week instead.
A lot of video courses already are broken up into chapters and many YouTube videos include chapter markers these days so you can identify a good stopping and starting points.
There are great coding tutorials on YouTube or other learning websites for Wagtail and Django, the web framework that Wagtail is built on top of. Don't know which tutorials to start with? Here are just a few to check out:
Watch one conference talk each week
Attending conferences in person can be pretty expensive. A lot of them, however, will share their content online for free a few months after the conference is over.
There are loads of great conference talks out on the Internet about Wagtail and about Django, the software framework that Wagtail is built on. Those talks don't have to be completely brand new to be helpful. A great talk from the early 2000s could still have some things that are relevant today. There's also a pretty good mix of talks available for people who don't code and people who do.
A great place to start building your personal playlist are all the YouTube playlists from our Wagtail Space conferences. Talks from all of the DjangoCon conferences are also a great resource for people who want to learn more about the inner workings of Wagtail and all the neat things you could build with it.
You don't have to do this alone either. Similar to a book club, you could organize a regular meet up at your favorite café or online to enjoy a conference talk with your friends and talk about it afterwards. Book clubs are always better with drinks and snacks, why wouldn't watching conference talks be the same? 🤣
The Wagtail YouTube Channel is also a great general resource for videos on Wagtail. If you haven't subscribed already, then go ahead and do it.
Conduct weekly or monthly AI experiments with Wagtail
Whether you're a huge AI booster, or you can't quite wait for all the excitement to die down, AI coding tools, like Claude and ChatGTP can be useful for helping you find ways to make your publishing more efficient or to help you get started with coding Wagtail projects.
If coding is not your thing, then have a chat with your developer about installing the Wagtail AI package on a test version of your website. The newest version of the package provides a lot more tools for editors and writers when it comes to writing summaries, adding captions and other little tasks that tend to take up your time. You might not be ready to deploy it to your live website or to make it available to your entire team, but adding it to a test version gives you a chance to experiment when you have time and see whether the new AI tools can help save you time or make your publishing process smoother.
If coding is your thing, most AI coding tools provide decent suggestions for Wagtail and Django, and if you have the tokens to spare, and you should totally try using AI to learn how to build different projects.
However, it's important to be aware that these tools have limitations and the code they provide is not always right or using the best approach. That's fine when you're learning. Learning is a messy process and sometimes you can learn valuable troubleshooting skills from trying to fix things that the AI tools have broken. But if you want to deploy your AI-coded Wagtail project to production, make sure you're aware of some of the common issues that can come up in applications created with AI.
Mix in some fun test content 🎉
Don't make learning a new piece of software or trying out a new publishing process more boring that it has to be. Remember that testing things out and learning new things can be an opportunity to be silly and goofy and to do things that just plain amuse you.
You're going to need some test content for building Wagtail projects. So maybe you could collect a bunch of your favorite Internet memes or the weirdest photos you have on your phone or sound samples from obscure musical instruments. Incorporating things that make you smile definitely makes learning a new skill or process a lot easier. That's one reason why this author tends to include badger photos and this ridiculous badger video in most of her test projects. (Sorry, not sorry for the earworm.)
Kickstart your learning with our experts in February
If you have questions about Wagtail, come ask our experts at What's New in Wagtail? This one-hour webinar is a great chance for you to see the latest and greatest features that Wagtail has to offer and connect with members of the Wagtail core team. We'll be offering the same webinar on 10 February at 17:00 GMT and 11 February at 10:00 GMT. Pick the day and time that works best for wherever you are in the world.
Stay tuned to this space for the registration links! We hope to see you there!
