0219 - Intermediate WordPress Websites

Course Description

Course Details 
 
Discover how to get the most from websites and blogs built with WordPress, the world's most popular Web page publisher. After reviewing the system's basic features, you'll learn to use an online administrative area that makes creating and updating content as simple as composing an email. Your online visitors will be able to comment on your articles, fill out forms and applications, buy your products, and even make appointments. While WordPress requires no coding, you'll find out how to use simple HTML and CSS to customize a website's appearance. You'll take advantage of the dynamic features known as plugins, which add every imaginable function to your website. And you'll explore how use plugins to turn a site into an ecommerce powerhouse and improve search engine page results. To take this course, you should have at least some blog or website publishing experience and good computer skills. WordPress also requires a paid hosting account, but the class includes 90-days of completely free hosting with SiteGround, one of only four hosting companies that WordPress recommends. If you want to build or maintain a professional WordPress website with all the bells and whistles, this course is for you.   
 
How It Works 
 
This course is fully online, you require internet access and an email account. The course duration is 6 weeks, followed by a 2-week period to complete the final exam (online, open book). Lessons are released on Wednesdays and Fridays of each week, for a total of 12.   You are not required to be online at any specific time. In addition to the specific lesson content, there is a discussion board with each lesson and often there is an optional assignment to apply the learning. Following each lesson,   there is a short multiple choice quiz. Your score on these quizzes does not count towards the final mark but completing these helps solidify your learning as well as prepare you for the final exam. The final exam is an open-book, multiple choice exam   and you need to achieve a minimum of 65% on the final exam to pass the course. There is only one opportunity to pass the exam. A certificate of completion from WatSPEED is available within four weeks of successful completion of each course and can be accessed in your student portal. Many of the Ed2Go courses are eligible towards the various online certificates offered by WatSPEED. 
 
Requirements 
 
WordPress software is free, but in order to use it, you must have a paid account with a hosting company, which costs approximately $100 a year. The course includes a free 90-day hosting account from SiteGround, which includes a temporary practice site. (This is not available for students who took advantage of this offer in the introductory WordPress class.) You'll need a computer with broadband Internet access, running any recent version of the Windows or Mac operating systems. We recommend using the Firefox, Chrome, or Safari browsers.  If you don't have prior experience with either WordPress or any other Web publishing tools, you should have a strong familiarity with the Internet and good computer skills. Otherwise, we recommend the introductory course, Creating WordPress Websites. 

Syllabus

Lesson 1 - Getting Started With WordPress. In this first lesson, you'll find out why WordPress is the world's most popular Web publishing platform and how it helps non-technical people create good-looking, dynamic websites. We'll discuss what it takes to set up a self-hosted WordPress site, and you'll learn how to choose a domain name, find a hosting company, and access your piece of the World Wide Web!

Lesson 2 - Setting Up Your WordPress Website. It's time to get your website set up! Today, you'll learn how to manage website files, and we'll tour the WordPress administrative area and configure some basic settings. I'll also show you how to organize your site so that your visitors will get the most out of it.

Lesson 3 - WordPress Themes: Bringing Your Website to Life. A WordPress theme gives your website a professionally designed look and installs with a single mouse click. In this lesson, you'll learn how themes work, where to find them, and how to install them. We'll compare free themes with those you have to pay for, and we'll also talk about the theme we're using for our class website project.

Lesson 4 - Creating Pages, Posts, and Menus. Today's lesson is all about organizing written content! We'll discuss how to enter and organize the information your visitors are looking for, and how to create pages and posts. You'll also find out how to put together a custom menu to guide your guests around the site. You want to arrange your articles so that they're easy to find, and that's just what we're going to discuss today.

Lesson 5 - Adding Images, Videos, and Other Digital Media. Now you're ready to start adding to your website, the details that will give it that extra-special touch! In today's lesson, you'll learn how to add photos, videos, and documents to your Web pages without leaving the WordPress application. And we'll also discuss how to manage these files and create an image gallery to display your photographs.

Lesson 6 - There's a Plugin for That. In this lesson, you'll learn how to use plugins, the features that you can add to WordPress with a single mouse click. I'll show you where to find thousands of these free mini-programs and how to use them.

Lesson 7 - Customizing Your Website, Part 1. You likely know a bit about HTML and CSS, but today we'll cover HTML and CSS coding in more detail. Don't worry if this is foreign to you. I'll introduce you to the basics of each language, and you'll quickly discover how to change font styles, sizes, and colors create lists and work with margins. With this knowledge, you can customize your website, so it'll look just how you want it to look!

Lesson 8 - Customizing Your Website, Part 2. As we continue exploring how to customize WordPress websites in this lesson, you'll discover an application that will spare you countless hours of drudgery. You'll also find out more ways to change the way your site looks, and you'll learn how to create a custom WordPress theme without learning the basic scripting language. Then you'll learn how to set up widgets, which fill your sidebars with information and features.

Lesson 9 - Monetizing Your Website. So how can you use your WordPress website to make money? That's what this lesson is all about. You'll learn ways to create pay-per-click, advertising, and affiliate marketing programs. And we'll also discuss PayPal and credit card processing and set up a shopping cart.

Lesson 10 - Site Work and Social Networking. Today, we'll focus on the details that'll make your website stand out. You'll find out how to create a consistent style and set up an eye-catching slide show on your home page. We'll also discuss how to market your site using social networking plugins designed for WordPress.

Lesson 11 - WordPress SEO, Statistics, and Analysis. Search engines love WordPress websites! In this lesson, we'll talk about how to get higher search page results, and we'll explore ways to collect and analyze data to ensure we're attracting and informing our target audience.

Lesson 12 - Digging Deeper Into WordPress: Tips, Tricks, and Hacks. In our final lesson, you'll learn to use the WordPress Loop to customize your website. We'll also discuss some time-saving tips and tricks about handling contributors, bolstering security, and making your pages look great in mobile browsers!