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 Access / 24 Course Hrs

Details
Syllabus
Requirements
Instructor
Reviews

Enrollment Options

Details

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. And you’ll 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.

Enrollment Options:

Instructor-Led

6 Weeks Access Course Code: cw2

Start Dates*Mar 17 | Apr 14 | May 12 | Jun 16

*Choose start date in cart

$115.00 USD

Add to Cart

Self-Paced

3 Months Access Course Code: T9220

No Instructor, Start Anytime

$115.00 USD

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Syllabus

Lesson 1 - Setting Up Your WordPress Website

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.

Lesson 2 - Planning and Organizing Your Website

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.

Lesson 3 - Working with Themes

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.

Lesson 4 - Building Your WordPress Website

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.

Lesson 5 - Exploring Plugins

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.

Lesson 6 - Adding Images, Video, and Other Digital Media

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.

Lesson 7 - Customizing Themes

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!

Lesson 8 - Mastering the Inspector

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.

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 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.

Lesson 10 - Maximizing Your Audience

What if you launch your site and nobody visits? And if 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.

Lesson 11 - Introduction to Block Editing

For many years, WordPress used a page (and post) editor named TinyMCE, which is the editor that you work with throughout this course. It resembles a word process--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.

Lesson 12 - Polishing Your Website for Launch

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.

Requirements

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

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

Software Requirements:

PC: Windows 8 or newer operating systems.
Mac: OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 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). Lesson 1 explains how to choose and sign up with a host. Many hosts offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you decide this isn’t for you.
Download the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

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.

Instructional Material Requirements:

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

Instructor

Richard Mansfield is a best-selling author and widely recognized expert on computer programming. He holds a master's degree in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has written numerous articles and columns on computer topics, and was the editor of Compute! Magazine. In addition, he has authored or co-authored 44 books, including the best sellers Machine Language for Beginners (Compute!) and The Visual Guide to Visual Basic (Ventana). His more recent titles include Creating Web Pages for Dummies (co-authored, Wiley), XML for Dummies: All-in-One Desktop Reference (co-authored, Wiley), Mastering VBA for Office 2019 (Sybex), and Programming: A Beginner's Guide (McGraw-Hill). Richard's books have sold more than 600,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into 12 languages.

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.