Key details

WordPress training course for beginners, teaching everything you need to know to start creating professional-standard, responsive websites.

WordPress is the world’s most popular website and blogging content management system and blog, powering over 30% of the world’s websites. WordPress is easy-to-use and flexible, allowing you to create and manage websites and blogs without any programming knowledge.

Introduction to WordPress training introduces the powerful capabilities of WordPress. You learn everything you need to create a WordPress site from scratch, and maintain existing sites. Sessions include:

• Introduction to WordPress and website development
• Hosting, installation and setup
• Getting around WordPress
• Planning your site
• Posts
• Pages
• Images, audio, video
• Using themes to change your site’s appearance
• Customising your page
• Menus, categories and navigation
• Plugins
• Coding essentials: HTML
• Coding essentials: CSS
• Users
• Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• User Experience (UX)
• Finishing touches
• Analytics

This course is ideal for new and novice website designers.

Introduction to WordPress training is arranged on-request, i.e. one-to-one training or a ‘closed course’ for your group. Your training can be tailored to take into account any existing knowledge you have, and the work you’re going to be doing.

In-class or online

This course is available in-class at eight centres or live online.

Expert trainers

WordPress courses are hosted by highly experienced trainers with expert knowledge of web development using WordPress. For details, see Expert trainers.

How will I learn?

Our WordPress training is hands-on and practical. You learn by creating your own fully-functioning website from scratch, covering all related topics along the way.

There is plenty of time to ask questions, and you can take away all the files you create.

Training guide and certificate

Course delegates receive an e-certificate confirming successful completion of a WordPress training course. Click here to see an example of the certificate you receive.

After course support

Following WordPress training, delegates are entitled to 30 days’ email support from their WordPress trainer to help with any post-course issues. For further details, see Support.

Prerequisites

No prior WordPress, HTML, CSS or other coding knowledge is necessary. Everything you need to know is taught in this course.

WordPress version

Training can be based on any version of WordPress to suit you.

General information

Course times

Standard course times are 9.30am–4.30pm.

As we’d be hosting this as a ‘closed course’ for you/your group, there’s usually flexibility to change these times to suit you, e.g. start or end 30 minutes earlier or later.

Payment

Payment for WordPress training can be made by:

• Bank transfer. Please call 01527 834783 for our bank details.
• Card. All major credit and debit cards accepted. Payment can be made securely online or over the phone. Card payments are processed by Stripe. Armada doesn’t record or store your card details.

Purchase orders

We accept purchase orders from UK-registered companies and public sector organisations.

Accommodation

See Accommodation local to our training centres.

Cancellations and postponements

If an on-request Introduction to WordPress course booking is cancelled giving less than 20 working days’ notice, a cancellation fee is payable. View cancellation terms.

If an on-request Introduction to WordPress course booking is postponed giving less than 20 working days’ notice, a postponement fee is payable. View postponement terms.

Terms and conditions

Expert trainers

Introduction to WordPress training courses are hosted by:

• Andrew Moreton
• Dan Foster

Andrew Moreton

Andrew is a highly-experienced instructor with expert knowledge of InDesign and Photoshop.

He’s also a practicing web developer with expert knowledge of Dreamweaver, WordPress and HTML5 and CSS3 coding.

Andrew has 25+ years’ experience in graphic design, electronic publishing and website design and development, and he’s been hosting courses in these topics for 20+ years.

Dan Foster

Dan has been designing and building digital experiences for over 15 years, working with clients including HSBC, Boots and Shell to create modern apps and websites for their customers.

A mentor to junior designers, Dan has been training people in user experience (UX/UI) design, website design and app prototyping since 2016, on platforms like WordPress, Adobe XD and Figma.

When he’s not training or designing, Dan loves to travel, eat, and learn new languages.

Course content

Introduction to WordPress and website development

• What is WordPress and its history?
• Why mobile matter more and more
• Responsive website design in WordPress
• The pros and cons of WordPress

Hosting, installation and setup

• Local vs. remote servers
• Hosting considerations
• Self-hosting vs. WordPress.com
• Setting up a local server
• Keeping your site safe and secure
• SSL (https) certificates

Getting around WordPress

• Logging in and out
• Navigating WordPress and the admin bar
• The Dashboard

Planning your site

• Case study project
• Selecting content for our website
• Read-only vs. interactive website features
• Sitemaps

Posts

• Understanding posts – the difference between a post and a page
• Creating a post in the classic editor
• Categories and tags
• Drafts, previews and publishing

Pages

• Creating and editing pages
• Page hierarchy – parent/child
• Page templates

Images, audio, video

• Introducing the Media Library
• Preparing content for upload
• Uploading and labelling content for Accessibility and SEO

Using themes to change your site’s appearance

• Understanding themes
• Free vs. premium themes
• Find, preview and install a theme
• Choosing the homepage
• Changing banner images
• Adding logos and text elements
• Changing colours

Customising your page

• Headers
• Sidebars
• Footers
• Widgets

Menus, categories and navigation

• Understanding menus
• Adding pages, posts and categories to menus
• Menus and theme options

Plugins

• What’s a plugin and why do we use them?
• Paid vs. free plugins
• Popular plugins

Coding essentials: HTML

• Understanding HTML
• The Text editor
• Block tags
• Inline tags
• Linking

Coding essentials: CSS

• Understanding CSS
• Tag selectors
• Class and ID selectors
• Making tweaks to your theme

Users

• Understanding users
• User profiles and privileges
• Restricting access based on user role with Adminimize

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

• Understanding SEO
• Marketing your website
• WordPress and social media
• How to work with Google

User Experience (UX)

• Understanding UX
• Why UX matters, and will matter even more in the future
• Essential UX patterns and trends

Finishing touches

• Contact forms
• Google Maps
• Additional embedded content
• Dealing with orphan pages and broken links

Analytics

• Why use analytics
• Adding analytics tools to your website
• Google Analytics, Simple Analytics and Hotjar

Live online training

Online training lets you participate in a live WordPress course from your place of work or home.

We do everything possible to make your online training experience as close as possible to actually being in the classroom. You can:

• See and hear our trainer, and the other delegates participating in the course…
  
• Watch our trainer demonstrate techniques in WordPress.
• Interact by speaking, using chat, or raising your ‘virtual hand’ if you need assistance.
• Share your screen with our trainer, and allow them to take control to explain something.

Like our in-class courses, online Introduction to WordPress courses…

• Are presented by expert instructors.
• Give you plenty of opportunity to carry out assisted, practical exercises using WordPress.
• Offer 30 days’ email support from your trainer.

All you need is an Internet-connected computer with…

• WordPress installed.
• A webcam and audio capability. If your computer running WordPress doesn’t have these, you can use a second device, such as another computer or tablet. See Hardware recommendations for live online training for further details.

If there’s anything you’re not sure about we’ll do our best to help you. We won’t, however, be able to assist with your WordPress installation.

We provide everything else…

• Links to download the files, resources, etc. you’ll use in your course.
• A training guide. For most courses, you can choose from a printed copy that we post to you, or a PDF.

In the week before your course, we’ll send you an email containing everything you need to prepare for and participate in the training. Then, a couple of days before your course, we’ll give you a courtesy call to make sure you have everything in place and answer any questions you may have.

Please note that we are not able to record scheduled online courses for privacy reasons.

When you attend live online training, you’re participating in a real course, hosted by a real trainer, in real time