5 ukulele chords for a beginner to learn

This will be a two part-er specifically geared at all you beginners that are just picking up the ukulele.  In this first part, we'll cover 5 basic chords that I consider to be the most vital "first" chords to learn. Here's part two where we cover 5 beginner songs that use these 5 chords.

I sometimes contemplate what I would do differently if I had a Delorean and I could travel back in time to when I first started playing the ukulele....of course, I would also need a flux capacitor, but anyway....

One of things that I keep coming back to is what chords I would have chosen to learn at the beginning of my ukulele journey.  As I thought about this, I narrowed it down to 5 chords that I believe are most important and essential for a beginner to build around.  It's my hope that these 5 basic chords will be a good foundation

Ukulele E chord tips and tricks

Does this chord look familiar?  Perhaps it's because it shows up in your nightmares....the terrible terrible E chord.
Coming from a guitar playing background, this chord type wasn't all that uncommon to me when I started to play the uke...but just like with the guitar, it was and continues to be very unpleasant to play for me.  Not impossible, just difficult and unpleasant.  It's best to keep practicing with this chord and train your fingers to form it...but in case you're a bit more impatient like me, here are some ideas on how you can produce this chord and avoid this exact structure.

You can try reproducing it by playing 1-4-0-2 (that's from the G string to the A string).  With this you'll be producing the notes Ab, E, E, B.  This has a neat chorus type of effect since you are producing that same middle E with