No worries! It took us a while to get our Workbench working, but it prints like a champ now! Not that we don't have any problems with it, ours still can't print perfect circles, but there are several fixes I have yet to try for that.
I would recommend working with ABS first then moving to PLA. But there are pluses and minuses to both. After getting great results with ABS we moved to PLA because our students like to design big, flat models and warping on those models just became too big of an issue for us.
It sounds like you've narrowed down the cause of the shifting to the edges of your ABS prints warping. You mentioned putting on some ABS glue after the fact to stop it, are you using ABS glue on the bed before you start printing? Also what bed temps are you using? For ABS I print on glass with hairspray @ 115C and have an enclosure on, but ABS glue should work just as well, if not better.
A picture is worth a thousand words you know 
FuseBox 1.5 CoreXY - e3dv6 - Graphic Smart Display
Solidoodle 2 - e3dv6 - Hobb Goblin - e3d Titan - lawsy carriages - Direct Drive Y Axis - T8 Z axis - OctoPi