What are the best online resources and ways to learn guitar?

There are so many approaches to playing this instrument that “learn guitar” is too nebulous a goal. What do you want to learn, folk, rock, blues, country, R&B, pop, or perhaps even Serbo-Croatian hip hop? See the problem?

And you’ve actually asked two questions, because the best way to learn guitar is F2F with a teacher. There are good lessons online, but these are for players who can already play. These add vocabulary to the dictionary of the style you’ve chosen, and can already work in. But I know of no courses that build skills from the ground up, with lessons that build upon each other to give you a solid background, and give you the knowledge and skill to choose a specialty and get good at it.

If all you want to do is strum chords and sing pop songs, buy a songbook and learn a few chords. In my organized course for beginners, I’ve determined that if you learn these 12 chords, you’ll be able to play most pop songs in the pop songbooks. G, Am, Bm, C, D, Em, F, A, B, Dm E, F#m. Why those chords? The reasons are in an answer I posted previously. The URL is at the bottom of this post.

But if you want to actually get good at this, go to your local music store and find a good teacher. That, along with getting your instrument professionally set up, is the best investment you can make in learning fast, with a course that’s organized for success.