Create Your Own Website –
6 Week Evening Class

Web interface for make your own website course

This hands-on 6-week evening class of 2 ½ hours per week is aimed at non-technical people who want to learn the skills needed to create, customise and operate your own website.

Make your own website using the renowned WordPress platform you will plan and build your website to a near completion stage ready to launch while learning key skills in web design and development.

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Pre Course Requirements
Learning Outcomes
Course Outline
Related Courses
Course Info

Pre Course Requirements

There are no pre-course knowledge requirements except everyday PC or Mac skills.

Learning Outcomes

You will get a well-rounded introduction to web publishing and web technology.
You will formally plan and organise your site and have time to gather assets and prepare content.
You will learn some fundamental coding skills in HTML and CSS (don’t be scared – its pretty easy).
You will learn all the key concepts involved in operating a WordPress website.
You will understand how to organise, and present your content in the most powerful way.
You will learn how to administer and update a WordPress site.
You’ll be able to customise the look of your site and add important features and functions to make your site truly professional and unique.
You will learn about hosting, domains and email set up.

Course Outline

Week 1:

Web publishing basics

What exactly is a website anyway?
What coding is involved?
Hosting and how domain names work.
The difference between static and dynamic web.
What is a content management system (CMS)

About WordPress

What is WordPress?
What can WordPress do?
About WordPress themes.
WordPress support and help.

Making a content plan

About Pages and Posts in WordPress
Categories, sub-categories and tags
Identifying key content types
Making a site plan
Mockups of key pages
Writing content with a content template
Defining custom page names
Planning your URLs

Planning your images

Identifying images for your content
Sourcing images
About image sizing
The basics of a graphics package
Optimising images for web use
Planning descriptions, captions and titles

Questions, Answers and Homework

Week 2:

Digging into WordPress

The WordPress interface
The admin bar and previewing your site
Working with the dashboard
Customising the screens

Setting up your site

Changing site structure and URLs
Completing other site settings
Adding a coming soon page
Setting up a backup solution

Adding some text content

Pages vs Posts
The Classic editor vs The Block editor
Adding and structuring pages
Adding and structuring posts
Adding hyperlinks
Applying categories and tags to posts
Importing other content
Defining custom slug names

Questions, Answers and Homework

Week 3:

Adding images and videos

Uploading items to the media library
Managing the media library
Inserting images into posts and pages
Controlling image position
Setting featured images
Advanced image settings
Adding a photo gallery
Adding and embedding videos
Adding document downloads

Plug-ins

What is a plug-in?
Installing and managing plug-ins
Adding a lightbox plugin for photo galleries
Adding a contact form plugin
Adding a testimonial plugin
Adding image control with Imsanity
Adding categories to the media library

Questions, Answers and Homework

Week 4:

Customising the look of your site
What is a theme?
Adding a theme and/or child theme
Changing theme settings
Adding a logo and favicon
Adding a custom banner
Assigning a theme template to a page
Working with Widgets and sidebars
Adding and customising menu bars
Adding social media features

Digging into code

What code is useful to know in WordPress
Why you shouldn’t use the theme code editor
HTML and CSS Basics
Identifying page elements with Dev tools
Adding your first custom CSS

Questions, Answers and Homework

Week 5:

More visual control

About webpage layout
Working within a code framework
Adding code directly to page content
Using a page builder plugin

Adding SEO to your site

About SEO in general
Adding an SEO plugin
Setting up SEO features
Optimising your pages for SEO

Questions, Answers and Homework

Week 6:

Adding other features

About Jetpack
Setting up a simple contact form
Working with Email
Adding testimonials
Adding Google Analytics to your site
Other integration options to consider

Additional admin tasks

Adding other users and user roles
Managing post and page comments
About updates
Running updates
Keeping your site safe and secure

Making it live

About your hosting agreement
Removing the coming soon page
If you need help

Questions and Answers

Related Courses

Course Info

Please note that to get the best out of this program you will be expected to undertake some key homework tasks and activities between classes.

This course will take you from the basics of the web itself to planning a site and putting it all together and includes the technical set up of your site, a UK domain name* and 3 months of hosting** and support***.

All courses are live instructor-led classes conducted remotely using Zoom.

You will be sent class joining and Zoom details after booking confirmation is complete.

*Other domains may be available for an additional cost and can be agreed on pre-course.

**Hosting is purchased and billed through simonpointer.com against a hosting agreement (supplied prior to the course start date ) after your initial 3-month free period and is currently priced at £10 per month without technical support. Hosting is offered on a super-fast VPS system using Digital Ocean web servers.

***There is an option for hosting with basic maintenance at £20 per month with updates and technical assistance if you prefer.

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