WordPress In A Day - Phoenix - Beginner's

WordPress Dominates The Web With Good Reason

It’s hard to imagine any business, large or small that doesn't have a website that can be managed in-house.  There is nothing out there that does a better job or is a widely used as WordPress. Every business needs a website but for many small businesses it’s hard to figure out how to get started. So how about this? Spend one day in a WordPress class and you will learn everything you need to know about building and maintaining a WordPress website.

This very hands-on class will not only cover building a website from scratch but also provide premium themes, plugins and tools to make your website become an invaluable marketing tool for your business.  And don't worry if you have no prior experience, this class is for you... you will have your website finished and published by the end of the class as we cover these topics:

• Choosing a domain name, registering it, and getting a web hosting service
• Selecting a professional WordPress themes.  All attendees get a free premium theme worth $99
• Using the WordPress content management system to build and update your site
• Creating Landing Pages for marketing campaigns
• Learning the basics of photoediting to crop and adjust your images
• Adding plug-ins and other enhancements to your site, such as rotating slideshows

This class is for anyone who has been dragging their feet in getting a professional website designed, built, and published to the web.  Any questions? Call 480-522-4892 or email chrisely@vtcrmservices.com

Complete the form below to register for the class:

Class Outline and Schedule

10:00 - 10:30 - Introductions

What do you hope to get out of this?

Have you any experience of WordPress or Content Management System websites and blogs?

10:30 – 10.45 - WordPress .com v WordPress.org

What is the difference between having a blog on WordPress.com and having the full installation on your own hosted domain?

10.45 – 11.15 - The Dashboard

The WordPress Dashboard.  Developing a traditional website can be a tricky business.  You need to learn a system like Dreamweaver or Frontpage.  You have to know how HTML and FTP works.  But the WordPress dashboard presents you with every tool you need to create an effective website and blog in a clean and intuitive manner without having to be a web developer.

This session discusses the following:

a.  Blog Posts.  Using the in-built text editor (essentially a word processor with full formatting) you can create posts and articles and allocate them to a sophisticated set of relational categories.

b.  Media.  WordPress makes it a breeze to upload images, brochures, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations and more to its media library.  It automatically files these away giving total access for inclusion in your websites and blogs.

c.  Links.  Here you can create links to all of your favorite sites or indeed pages within your own site.

d.  Pages.  WordPress Pages are created the same way as Posts but are more like traditional web pages; although they have the bonus of Parent/Child relationships and dynamic content.

e.  Comments.  Here you can monitor and moderate and respond to the comments visitors have made on your site.

f.  Appearance.  Comprises a set of tools to change, update and configure the appearance of your side including themes, widgets and more.

g.  Plugins.  There are thousands of plugins that have been developed to extend the features of WordPress.  These range from simple slide show presentations, contact forms, photo galleries, statistic packages right through to highly sophisticated eCommerce systems.

h.  Users.  WordPress is multi-user and here you can create new users with varying degrees of access and security.

i.  Tools.  A set of tools including the facility to import and export your whole WordPress site along with images, video and other content

j.  Settings.  A complete set of tools to configure your site for the outside world.

11.15 – 11.45 - Themes – Free vs. Premium / Creating Pages

11:45 – 12:00 - Break

12:00 – 1:00 - WordPress Pages and an Introduction to Plugins

WordPress creates 2 kinds of pages (Pages and Posts) for web content.  In many ways they are similar but in others, very different.  This session discusses Pages.

Pages hold the ‘static’ content for your website and blog much like traditional web pages except that they contain dynamic data.  Pages also create the ‘static page’ menu structure allowing for full Parent / Child relationships.

1:00 – 1:45 - Lunch

1:45 – 2:00 - Introduction to Posts and Categories

This session introduces the Posts and Categories which are integral to blogging.  These will be revisited in more detail after Themes and Customization.

2:00 – 3:00 - Themes, Configuration and Customization.

This session deals with personalizing your website and blog to make it uniquely yours.  We will move from using the WordPress default theme of the morning to a far more sophisticated Premium theme.  We will look at changing  graphics, color schemes as well as Cascading Style Sheets and various programs to assist in the process.  We will also cover FTP (File Transfer Protocol) whereby files and images can be uploaded to your website for Theme configuration.

3:00 – 3:10 - Break

3:10 – 4:30 - Posts, Categories, Plugins, Widgets, SEO and the Art of Blogging

- This session expands on structuring your posts and categories discussing organization, and dynamic updating.
- Plugins enhance WordPress in many ways.  We discuss plugins for slideshows, photo galleries, eCommerce and PayPal, Statistics and Anti Spam
- Widgets are tools for adding content to side panels, headers and footers.  Widgets are discussed in this session.
-  Search Engine Optimization is crucial to websites and blogs.  WordPress integrates many SEO features to help your site get found.  These are discussed in this session.
- Hints and Tips in the Art of Blogging.

 4:30 – 5:00 - Q+A

 Deal with unanswered or new questions that have cropped up during the day