What does this guide cover? This is a basic guide that covers the introductory pieces of WeakAuras. There will not be any custom coding of WeakAuras and we're going to leave out the more complicated options alone for now, along with a couple of the most recently added features (stop motion/slants). Anything that's easy to use with drop downs or boxes to fill in will be explained and there will be a few examples along the way.
Auras, the things you're seeing
There are two categories of things that you can make in WeakAuras, with many options for each. Everything that WeakAuras can put on your screen is called an Aura. This is similar to player buffs and debuffs which are also known as Auras. You can make static, unchanging images or text or you can make ones that change and update based on something's value. For example, you can have a bar that fills up as you gain more insanity on your shadow priest or empties itself as your flame shock runs down.
Where to begin?
Before we talk about what goes into an Aura lets see what we're looking at. To open WeakAuras simply type '/wa' into your chat bar and hit enter. This pulls up everything you need for WeakAuras. This is split into two sections, the left is Auras you already have, and the right is the setting for those auras. Anywhere you see the weird dragon eye you can turn the visibility on or off temporarily while the options are opened. If you don't have any Auras already, you'll need to make a new one. At the top of the left panel, there's a 'New' button, which will show you all the kinds of Auras you can make. The first thing to do when you decide to make a new Aura is to figure out what display type (Icons/Bars/etc.) you want and what you want it to track for you, the thing you want to track is referred to as a trigger. You can learn more about each display type in the Auras sections, and more about the Triggers further down in the Triggers section, but you should already have a general idea of what it is you want to keep an eye on.