I chose to work with WordPress since its inception and that choice afforded me the opportunity to benefit from the growth of WordPress. First, as a web design and SEO agency owner. And now, as a coach, trainer, and consultant.
From individuals and small business to education and Fortune 1000 corporations, I have trained hundreds of people on WordPress concepts. From installation, maintenance, and security to search engine optimization, social media integration, and content marketing, my workshops and trainings have helped so many utilize WordPress for their web sites, Ecommerce portals, learning management systems, social networks, and marketing web sites.
WordPress Training Program Details
Scheduling
WordPress Trainings can be scheduled individually or in groups online or off. For online WordPress trainings, I use Citrix GoToTraining. For one-on-one trainings, I use Zoom, Google Hangouts, or Team Viewer, which can be downloaded from the Team Viewer website.
Due to the length of the training, I usually schedule them over 1.5 days for groups in a reserved space or online over three days either consecutively or staggered.
WordPress Trainings
WordPress 101
Training time: 12 hours total
WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS. It comes in two flavors:
- the free and open source software installed at the web host of your choice, or
- the cloud-based WordPress.com, a freemium service operated by Matt Mullenweg’s WordPress professional services company, Automattic.
This training focuses on WordPress as a CMS, which:
- you may have installed on a web host yourself.
- was installed for you at at web host through a one-click install process, or
- was installed for you upon signup with a managed WordPress service like WPEngine.com or GetFlywheel.com
Note: This training may reference new features from WordPress.com that may benefit how you manage your WordPress installation, but is more focused on WordPress as an installed open source package at a web host and not WordPress.com specifically. But their are similarities and overlap.
The modules are as follows.
Internet Basics – 2 Hours
I have always found it necessary and important to provide a brief overview of how the Internet itself works. When we publish content on the web for desktop and mobile browsers, we should have a basic understanding of where the content we created is stored, retrieved, and displayed to our intended audiences.
We’ll cover:
- Domain names and how to register and manage one.
- Hosting and the difference between “shared” (cheap) and VPS (higher price, but more secure)
- IP Addresses and why we need to know what ours is.
- Caching and Content Delivery Networks and how these two technologies help us improve the speed of our websites and blogs
- WordPress Security: Keeping WordPress safe from hackers and spam bots
WordPress Basics – 7 Hours
WordPress is a set of files and folders whose sole purpose is to provide a framework for publishing content to a website viewed by anyone with a modern web browser (i.s. Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Opera). I liken this to a car engine that, when the key is turned, ignites a process to make the car run. The car transports you to your destination and once you arrive, you are at the intended experience you want to engage with (i.e. a store, a school, etc.)
When the key for the WordPress engine is turned, a process begins to run through the WordPress “loop.” WordPress pulls the data you added to a connected database (sort of like an Excel spreadsheet) and then builds website pages on the fly, per request by each site visitor, and displays that data in an organized manner according to the theme you have chosen to build, buy, or get for free. WordPress pulls data and publishes that data into the layout defined by the theme’s foundational HTML and CSS code.
- Demystify what WordPress actually is, what it looks like, and what it does.
- Review the front-end (what your site visitor sees), the back-end (your administration area), your MySQL database (where your text content is stored) and the “wp-content” folder, where your plugins, themes, and media uploads are stored.
- Review of the following:
- WordPress Dashboard view and configuration.
- WordPress Settings (General, Reading, Writing, Discussion, and Permalinks).
- WordPress Page/Post editor, including taxonomy and associated meta data.
- WordPress Media Library, including importing and editing/resizing images, as well as creating galleries.
- WordPress Widgets for sidebars, footers and other widget-enabled areas
- WordPress Menu system to create navigation menus for headers, footers, and other menu-enabled areas.
- WordPress Tools for import, export of all of your content.
- WordPress Themes, including installation, upgrades, and configuring using the WordPress Customizer (if adoptd by the theme developer).
- WordPress Plugins, including installation, configuration, and upgrades.
- WordPress Users, including creating users, assigning user role permissions, and author bios and avatars (using Gravatar.com).
- WordPress Comments, including how to moderate and send comments to spam.
Note: I will also cover FREE vs PAID themes and plugins. There is some risk to buying themes from theme aggregators like ThemeForest or downloading free themes through a Google search.
Content Publishing – 2 Hours
In this module, I will cover publishing content with WordPress. I’ll walk through publishing a basic post and page and discuss the different ways to display content. We’ll also look at custom post formats some theme developers include to display content in posts and pages styled differently than your run of the mill blog post or website page.
- Publish, Schedule, Edit, Draft, Trash posts and pages.
- Creating Page or Post Titles.
- Permalinks, what they do, and how to configure or edit them.
- The difference between categories and tags and how to manage them.
- Assigning and switching authors for a post or page.
- Turning on/off comments for pages and posts.
- Using post Excerpts.
- Using post or page Featured Image
JetPack for WordPress by Automattic – 1 Hour
In this module, we will add JetPack, a very powerful plugin from Automattic, which enables additional functionality for your website. JetPack is a master plugin containing over over 30 plugins to enhance your website or blog. While there are other third party plugins that emulate many of the included plugins in JetPack–and those plugins may have additional features–JetPack offers an easy to use suite of plugins that are cleanly integrated into your WordPress site.
WordPress SEO and Social Media
Search Engine Basics – 1 Hour
- Understanding Search Engines – We will review various types of search engines and go over the various ways Google returns our sites in search. It’s critical to understand how search engines work in order to effectively optimize for search.
- What is SEO? – We will discuss the key components of SEO. What it does and how it differs from traditional advertising, pay per click advertising, and social media marketing.
- How to Measure and Track SEO Performance – We’ll go over various free tools to measure and analyze SEO performance, including Google Search Console, Google Analytics, MOZ, and other tools and websites.
- SEO Management – To be effective, we must manage our SEO with a variety of tools, some providing by Google themselves, some from 3rd parties, and of course, managing your on site SEO with the powerful All in One SEO Pack, the most popular plugin used by beginners and professionals alike for WordPress SEO.
On Site, Off Site, and Technical SEO – 1 Hour
- On Site SEO – The most immediate aspect of your SEO, we’ll go over what your onsite SEO strategy should look like, what Google is looking for in terms of content, and what you should be doing on your site to drive organic search traffic.
- Technical SEO – Most beginner SEOs have little understanding of the technical aspects of SEO. Page Speed Optimization is a critical component of your overall SEO strategy. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a developer to implement page speed enhancements. We’ll go over the most immediate enhancements to speed up your site, like image optimization with plugins, and some more technical issues that are resolved by a commonly used plugin, Autoptimize.
- Backlinks – One of the most important metrics that helps Google identify your sites quality and reputation, we’ll talk about how to get back links to your site.
Sitemaps, Optimizing, and All in One SEO Pack – 1 Hour
In this section, we’ll work through how to submit your sitemap to Google, Bing, and other search engines. We’ll show you how to set up the Autoptimize plugin and identify Critical Path CSS that should load above the fold to help speed things up. And, we’ll walk through setup of All in One SEO Pack for your onsite SEO and for social meta optimization, because some websites that act as both aggregators and search engines are going to pull content using OpenGraph for your pages and posts, and you want to make sure that content is optimized for those online spaces.
Schedule a FREE 30 Minute Call
Please use my Calend.ly calendar below to schedule a free, 30-min call with me to discuss the WordPress training program you would like to activate for you or your organization.