Professions allow you to forge a trade for yourself in the game. They allow for greater customisation within the classes but are not necessary in order to the play the game and are another aspect to role playing within the world.
What Professions are there?

Most if not all the Professions come with supportive skills such as Herbalism having 'Find Herbs' to help you locate plants in the wilderness or 'Find Ore' coming with Mining.

• Primary
• Secondary

and within each of those categories three sub categories:

• Gathering
• Production
• Services

You may learn only two from the Primary category in addition to all three from the Secondary category.

Where do I get these plans, recipes, formulas you keep ranting on about?

• Can learn from the appropriate Trainer
• Can buy from vendors
• Can find them as loot from MoBs
• Can get them as quest rewards
• Can trade for them. Generally recipes with white titles are vendor bought and green or blue are drops/quest rewards.

I made a Boo Boo, can I change Professions?

You can unlearn professions for free any number of times. Go to your skills panel (press K). Click on the Profession you wish to unlearn and a small icon will appear next to it and clicking on this will unlearn the skill. Be aware you will lose all associated recipes and support skills too and if you wish you hadn't unlearnt it (eek!) you will have to start your training again at Apprentice level and work you way up again. Click the image on the right for a fully captioned shot. Use this feature with caution, Blizzard will not undo a mistake of this nature.

Secondary professions can't be unlearnt but there's really no need to unlearn them anyway.

To recap on some essential points:

• Costs money to train all Professions
• Need to be character level five before you can begin training in Professions other than the Gathering group.
• Can learn only two Primary Professions per character in addition to all 3 Secondary Professions.
• Learnt at specialized Trainers {teachers} dotted around towns and cities
• Can train to four levels of proficiency; Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert and Artisan, some specialise too.
• Professions are not class specific.
• Training costs will decrease by 10% if your have an honoured reputation in the area the trainer is located.
• Recipes to use with the Profession cost money, again reduced in cost if you're honoredin region purchased.
• Reagents {ingredients} can be found with gathering Professions, as drops traded from other players and in some cases bought from merchants.
• Following a recipe never fails
• Gathering/mining can fail. Simply try again.
• Will only rise in skill level when following orange or yellow and occasionally green recipes
• The higher your proficiency, the better the items you can create.
• You can unlearn your Primary Professions.
• Items found as drops that have a grey name are not used as reagents in any Professions.