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
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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