Advanced WordPress Course

A hands-on advanced course for fine-tuning and enhancing your WordPress skills.

This two-day training course led by WordPress co-founder Mike Little will consolidate your WordPress knowledge allowing you to build sophisticated, branded and customised web sites.

WordPress is the publishing platform of choice for almost 100 million websites and blogs – including some of the most high-profile sites in the world. It has a Content Management System (CMS) market share of 58%. WordPress is quick to install and simple to get started on, with little configuration and setup.

The advanced course takes your WordPress skills to the next level. You will learn:

• how to build advanced websites for yourself and your clients
• how to customise and brand administration screens
• how to build an e-commerce site
• how to create events booking and membership sites
• how to build a truly unique theme using WordPress child theme capabilities
• how to choose the right production and marketing tools for your needs

Who will benefit from this class?

This course is aimed at those who’ve already got to grips with the WordPress CMS. You will need to have some programming know-how, but in-depth expertise isn’t essential.

This advanced course is ideal for those who are already comfortable building WordPress sites but are looking to work in the field professionally – perhaps wanting to make a living building WordPress sites or creating more advanced WordPress sites. It will help those wanting to take control of their current WordPress site and fully understand its capabilities. Marketing and promotional companies looking to take their clients’ sites further will also benefit, as well as those who want to bring their website creation and maintenance in-house.

What you need to be familiar with

You don’t need any programming experience, but a little CSS knowledge is useful. You need to know how to use a text editor and a FTP programme.

If you think this course is too advanced, please take a look at the Intermediate WordPress course.

Course syllabus

Day one

1. Introduction
2. Overview of theme: Theme frameworks, child themes, and vertical themes
3. Advanced theming: Anatomy of a child theme
4. Exercise: Let’s create a child theme
5. Functions.php: Media sizes and some useful snippets of PHP code
6. Exercise: Beefing up Twenty Eleven
7. E-commerce in-depth: Eshop and WooCommerce
8. Event Management: Events, calendars and tickets
9. Advanced content plugins: Types and views

Day two

1. Multiple users in-depth: Adding workflow and responsibilities
2. Multi-site and BuddyPress: Building a community or social network
3. Third-party authentication: Logging-in with Facebook and Twitter
4. Building a membership site: Overview and some useful plugins
5. Production tools: Branding the admin screens
6. Marketing tools: Stats, mailing lists, and more
7. Enhancing the admin for your clients: Some useful tools and plugins
8. Free for all, Q&A, show & tell

Equipment you’ll need

• Please bring a laptop computer with Windows, Linux or Mac OS installed. You will not need to install any software, but you should have a modern web browser. Our preference is for the latest version of Firefox or Google Chrome, but the latest Internet Explorer or Opera will be fine too
• You will need a text editor. We suggest
  1. Windows: Notepad++(free), EditPad Lite (free)
  2. Mac: Text Wrangler (free), Textmate (£), Coda (££), Expresso (££)
  3. Linux: Bluefish (free), KompoZer (free)
• You will need a FTP program. We suggest – FileZilla
• You may want to bring some sample images that you will be able to upload to your website as the course progresses
• If you feel more comfortable using an external mouse, please bring one with you

Learning outcomes

After completing the class, you will have:

• The ability to install and configure WordPress on a hosting account
• Built an e-commerce site
• Customise administration themes, and built a child theme
• Learnt how to configure a WordPress multi-site
• Learnt how to choose the right marketing and monitoring tools

By the end of this course you will have the insight and skills to build sophisticated, branded and customised web sites for yourself and/or your clients.

This is a very practical hands-on course where you will complete exercises, ask questions and engage in discussions to make the most of the time.

Note: This course does not teach WordPress development (PHP coding). There is a small amount of copy and paste PHP in the child theme module.

Extras

Those attending the course will receive an electronic copy of the teaching materials. You will also receive one month’s free hosting courtesy of Mike Little to test and refine your site.

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