Intermediate WordPress Websites

Discover how to add features to and customize websites built with WordPress, the world's most popular website building platform. This course will help you build interactive sites where visitors can comment on your articles, fill out forms and applications, buy your products, and even make appointments.

6 Weeks / 24 Course Hrs

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Offered in partnership with your preferred school

Fairfax County Public Schools Adult and Community Education (FCPS ACE)

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Learning method

Self-Guided

$190USD

No instructor. Study on your own schedule

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Instructor-Moderated

$165USD

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Starting October 14 | November 11

Details + Objectives

Course code: cw2

Take your WordPress site to the next level! This online course will teach you how to optimize your site for a great user experience. You'll learn how to easily add CSS—without writing any code—to fine-tune your site's appearance. You'll also find out how to add important functionality with the best WordPress plugins. Master the tools and skills needed to get the most out of WordPress in six weeks with Intermediate WordPress Websites.

What you will learn

Building, updating, and improving your WordPress site from the online administrative area
Using CSS to customize a website's appearance-no coding required!
Installing and managing the best plugins for everything from great analytics to SEO
Installing themes and customizing tools to create a compelling design

How you will benefit

Confidently use WordPress to create a professional-looking personal, business, or organizational website
Open the door to more career opportunities as a WordPress designer for small businesses
Create your own personal website to brand yourself and your business services online
Includes 90-days of free hosting on SiteGround

How the course is taught

Instructor-Moderated or Self-Guided online course
6 Weeks or 3 Months access
24 course hours

Outline

In this first lesson, you'll create a practice website by finding the best hosting service for your site, then installing a free version of WordPress.org. You'll understand the concept of domains and subdomains, then you'll learn how to work with utilities in the host's cPanel. You'll also tour the WordPress dashboard to get an overview of the administrative tools WordPress offers. Then you'll install the classic WordPress editor where you'll build and modify your practice site's pages.

Now that you've set up your brand-new WordPress practice site, you're ready to dive in and explore the WordPress back end, and also to begin building and modifying your site. You'll start by doing some pre-planning, creating an outline of your site before adding text or images. This can help you build an organic website, where the components harmonize and serve the site's overall purpose. Then you'll conclude by touring the WordPress administrative area (back end), where you'll configure your website and add content.

This lesson covers every aspect of WordPress themes—how they work, where to find them, what to look for, and how to install them. You'll then begin working on your practice website! You will look at various themes in order to pick one that will complement your site's topic. You'll install a theme, then explore it down in the engine room where its support files reside.

This lesson is all about creating and organizing written content! It explores 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 an effective menu to guide your guests around the site. Quality content and efficient navigation are the cornerstones of a successful website.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to use plugins—the features and tools that you can add to WordPress with a single mouse click. You'll learn where to find thousands of these free mini-programs and how to choose the best. What themes are to site design, plugins are to functionality.

This lesson covers how to add media to your pages. The WordPress Media Library helps you upload and edit your media files to create an engaging experience for visitors. You can also embed video, audio, PDF files, and maps from other sites into your site. The lesson will focus on media and all the ways it can enrich your website.

Themes are fine, but if you're interested in really fine-tuning your site's design, you'll want to go beyond accepting everything the theme designer came up with. This lesson will cover HTML and CSS coding, tools that you'll use to seriously refine your site's appearance. You'll learn the basics of each language and quickly discover how to change font styles, sizes, and colors, as well as create lists and work with margins. You'll also practice using some tools that can make working with CSS very easy. No coding required!

In this lesson, you'll work with a handy tool called the Inspector, which will help you make a few more design changes to your project website. You'll also look at two excellent plugins that can do some of the heavy lifting when you're modifying a website's layout and design.

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 employ pay-per-click, advertising, and affiliate marketing programs. The lesson will also discuss PayPal and credit card processing and end by setting up a shopping cart system. While monetization may not be your primary goal, as long as you've put in the time and effort to create an online presence, there's no reason you shouldn't benefit from all that work if you wish. Even if your site isn't commercial, there may come a time when you want to solicit donations, include some ads, or sell promotional goods.

What if you launch your site and nobody visits? When you do get visitors, how can you know if you're giving them the information they came for? This lesson will answer those questions by showing you how to attract an online audience and satisfy their needs. You'll also examine some unique WordPress tools designed to help achieve these goals. Since 90% of a website's first visits result from online searches, it's important that you know what Google wants. Once you know this, you can use a set of strategies known as search engine optimization (SEO) to get your site in front of your audience.

For many years, WordPress used a page (and post) editor named TinyMCE, which is the editor that you work with throughout this course. It includes a textbox, accompanied by a set of formatting icons, an Add Media button, and a code view where you can see and work with HTML and CSS code embedded within your text.

WordPress recently switched its default editor to a block editor. However, the classic editor will still be available for many years to come. In this lesson, you'll give the block editor a try to help you decide which editor you prefer.

In the final lesson, you'll take a last look at ways to improve the practice site prior to launch. You'll examine a popular animated feature called a slider, add a widget to the sidebar, refine several elements of your site's visual design, and consider some different options for web hosting services.

Instructors & Support

Chad Walker

Chad Walker is the conceptual designer and artist of several award-winning games, including "Age Of Empires, "Age of Kings," and "Age of Conquerors." He attended the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Arts Inc. and has worked as a computer game artist, comic book illustrator, and instructor. He teaches both traditional art courses and courses in 3D modeling for computer games. Walker co-wrote the popular gaming book "Game Modeling Using Low Polygon Techniques" with his twin brother Eric. They are the co-founders of Walker Boys Studio, which produced the highly acclaimed "Civil War: War Between the States."

Instructor Interaction: The instructor looks forward to interacting with learners in the online moderated discussion area to share their expertise and answer any questions you may have on the course content.

Requirements

Prerequisites:

There are no perquisites for this course, but you should have some blog or website experience and basic computer skills. Otherwise, it is recommended that you first take the introductory course, Creating WordPress Websites.

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course can be taken on either a PC, Mac, or Chromebook.

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 8 or later.
Mac: macOS 12 or later.
Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge are preferred. Mozilla Firefox and Safari are also compatible.
WordPress.org software is free, but to use it, you must install it on a paid account with a hosting service, which costs approximately $5 to $20 a month (usually quite a bit less for the first year's "introductory" price). The course will explain how to choose a host. Many hosts offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you decide this isn't for you.
Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

FAQ

Instructor-Moderated: A new session of each course begins each month. Please refer to the session start dates for scheduling.

Self-Guided: Your course begins immediately after you enroll.

Instructor-Moderated: Once a course session starts, two lessons will be released each week for the 6 week duration of your course. You will have access to all previously released lessons until the course ends. You will interact with the instructor through the online discussion area. There are no live sessions or online meetings with the instructor.

Self-Guided: You have 3 months of access to the course. After enrolling, you can learn and complete the course at your own pace, within the allotted access period. You will have the opportunity to interact with other students in the online discussion area.

Instructor-Moderated: The interactive discussion area for each lesson automatically closes two weeks after each lesson is released, so you're encouraged to complete each lesson within two weeks of its release. However, you will have access to all lessons from the time they are released until the course ends.

Self-Guided: There is no time limit to complete each lesson, other than completing all lessons within the allotted access period. Discussion areas for each lesson are open for the entire duration of the course.

Instructor-Moderated: Students enrolled in a six-week online class benefit from a one-time, 10-day extension for each course. No further extensions can be provided beyond these 10 days.

Self-Guided: Because this course is self-guided, no extensions will be granted after the start of your enrollment.

Reviews

This course is extremely well written, step-by-step, with visual examples of before and after so the student knows what the change should look like. Questions were answered quickly and concisely. The course content gave a solid understanding of setting up and running a WordPress website which is exactly what I wanted from this class. I already have a four year undergraduate degree and took many classes, most in classrooms but several online. Therefore, probably the highest praise that I can give is to say that "I could hardly wait for each lesson to be released.” I looked forward to learning more about the subject and knew that the information would be presented in a way that it would be a pleasure to learn!

This was an excellent course and I would recommend it to anyone. It has helped me become confident and able to manage my own professional website. The discussion area was very important and helpful. Even if I didn’t experience the issues and questions raised by another classmate, their issues and questions helped me think ahead and anticipate issues I might confront. The instructor was incredibly helpful and always around to answer questions quickly…Thank you for this course and thank you to the instructor for his excellence, patience, input and timely help to all of us.

This course was fantastic! The instructor is obviously an expert on the subject, and his teaching style is superb. I will definitely recommend this course to others and I look forward to other courses that he might teach in the future. Thanks!

This was an excellent class, very much up-to-date, and it contained information I'll be able to refer to again and again when working on my own WordPress based sites. I would recommend this class to anyone who wants to get more out of WordPress and take their sites to the next level.

Outstanding course and outstanding teacher! I am extremely satisfied and grateful. The curriculum taught me far more than I ever thought I could learn in six weeks. The professor is amazing--unfailingly respectful, kind, and willing to go the extra mile to answer our questions and help us with our website projects. Every aspect was so thoroughly handled. I have already recommended this class to a friend.

Intermediate WordPress Websites

Fairfax County Public Schools Adult and Community Education (FCPS ACE)