This course is ideal if you want to set up a new website for your own business, community group, hobby or other venture.

You may also find it useful if you’ve already got a WordPress website and want to learn more about how it works or reduce your reliance on the site designer.

You may be using Facebook as an alternative to a website and want a more permanent and secure web presence for your business, or perhaps you have a website in Wix, Squarespace, Weebly or some other similar service and want to see why WordPress is a better alternative.

No previous WordPress or web design experience is required – if you can use a computer then you can build a website using WordPress.

• Our WordPress training is hands on – you will be building your own website during the course of the day so please bring a laptop (Mac, PC or Chromebook) that is WiFi enabled.

• We run our training in small groups and there are always two trainers in every class, so you’ll get plenty of personal attention.

• At the end of the course you’ll get your own copy of the training slides as well as access to a series of training videos that cover all the content delivered during the course.

• During the course you’ll set up your own practice website to which you’ll have access for a year after the training.

If you wish we can set your practice website up on any UK domain of your choice, either a brand new one that you’ve purchased or one that you already own. A year’s hosting is included in the cost of the course, after which time you can move your site to any hosting provider you wish or we can continue to host it at a reasonable rate.

What's covered during the day?

Introduction to WordPress

• Installing WordPress
• Finding your way around the admin panel
• Controlling who can access your site

Adding content to your site

• Overview of the Gutenberg page editor
• The difference between posts and pages
• Creating new pages and posts
• Adding images, video and other content to your pages
• Setting up your home page

Making your site look nice

• Using WordPress themes to make a beautiful site
• Overview of different kinds of themes
• Choosing the right theme for your site
• Sourcing themes and switching between them

Structuring your site

• Adding menus and navigation to your site
• How menus work in WordPress
• Adding different kinds of items to your menu
• Categorising your content and using categories to add structure to your site

Adding functionality to your site

• Using widgets to add content to pages
• Using plugins to make WordPress do more
• Sourcing and installing new plugins
• Recommended plugins

Getting found on Google

• An introduction to search engine optimisation
• Ensuring your site runs quickly

Adding more functionality

• Setting up contact forms
• Embedding a Google map
• Adding video
• Social media sharing
• Setting up an ecommerce store using WooCommerce

Privacy and security

• Making sure your site is secure
• Implications of GDPR
• Setting up a privacy policy
• Cookies
• Installing a secure certificate
• Putting your site behind a ‘coming soon’ page