This is a two-day course, starting Thursday 16th to Friday 17th of February. Course starts at 10:00am and finishes at 4:30pm both days.

Please note: This course does not teach WordPress development (PHP coding).

If you’ve never had a website or blog, or never been happy with the one you have, start here.

Over two days you’ll learn everything you need:

• planning and setting up a site
• publishing content
• getting a polished look with themes
• adding functionality with plugins
• how to make conversations with your readers effortless

WordPress is the publishing platform of choice for more than 73 million websites and blogs – including some of the most high-profile sites in the world. It’s quick to install, and simple to get started on, with little configuration and setup. But, as an incredibly powerful web publishing platform, it takes some knowledge to truly get the best out of it.

This course will give you a great start. Over two days Mike will guide you through installing WordPress, adding content (including multimedia), and interacting with your readers, as well as beginning to customise the look and enhance the functionality of your site.

The course includes a month’s free hosting for your site so you can practice your skills. After completing the course, you’ll have a website, and you’ll know how to look after it.

Who is this for?

Total beginners, no prior knowledge required. This class is ideal for someone who wants to set up their first website, whether you have heard of WordPress or not. If you have heard about blogging and want to start your own blog, this course will get you started.

If you have a small business, or are involved with a charity, or social enterprise (for example a scout group or a local church) this course will be ideal for you. You might be a freelance journalist wanting to show off some of your writing, an acupuncturist hoping to attract more clients, or a gardener finding small ads in the free paper less and less effective. You may have already tried to set up WordPress but got lost in the technical stuff. This course will set you back on the right track.

Course syllabus

Day one

1. Introduction To WordPress: What is WordPress? A little history
2. Installing WordPress: Demonstration
3. Anatomy of a website: Headers, footers and sidebars
4. Exercise: Sketch your site layout
5. The WordPress Dashboard: Logging in and looking around
6. Content types: Posts, pages and more
7. Publishing your first content: It’s that easy!
8. Exercise: Adding content to your site
9. The look of your site
10. Exercise: Changing things around

Day two

1. Settings: Configuring WordPress just how you want it
2. Comments: Engaging with your readers
3. Exercise: Commenting and moderation
4. Plugins: Playing with plugins
5. Exercise: Logging in and looking around
6. Installing themes
7. Exercise: Trying some themes
8. Multiple users: Let someone else do some work
9. Exercise: Co-authoring, editing, and workflow
10. Free for all, Q&A, show & tell

Equipment you’ll need

Please bring a laptop computer with Windows, Linux or OS X installed. You will not need to install any software, but you should have a modern web browser. Our preference is the latest version of Firefox or Google Chrome, but the latest Internet Explorer or Opera will be fine too. If you don’t have access to a computer please let us know in advance of the course so we can arrange one for you. If you feel more comfortable using an external mouse, please bring one too.

You may want to bring some sample images that you will be able to upload to your website as you follow along on the course.

Costs

The full course costs £300 (inclusive of VAT). This covers

• two days tuition
• lunch and refreshments on both days
• an electronic copy of the teaching materials
• one month’s free hosting courtesy of MadLab, to test and refine your site

We have a limited number of bursary places available on this course for a reduced rate of £220 (inclusive of VAT). These are open to people who are self employed (and on low income), unemployed or full time students. Please contact us on 0161 839 6324 or via email (office@madlab.org.uk) to book your place.