WordPress Starter & Advanced Courses

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR PLACE AND DATE OF THE NEXT GROUP COURSE
learn how to create your wp website

All our courses are held at The Open College in Dublin 18, taught by Julie Sebode and are limited to 8 participants. We have a choice of rooms but experience has shown us that most people prefer to bring and use their own laptops for the courses, therefore we will offer all our courses from now on in a meeting room with Ethernet internet connections and wifi option – please note all participants will need to bring a laptop that they are familiar with on the day!

By special request we can also run any course in a computer room, using PC desktop computers, or organise courses on specific dates outside our schedule. Please contact us for more information.

Customised training for your WordPress based website

Our customised training is built around your existing WordPress based website, whether it uses WordPress.com or WordPress.org, and can take place on-site in your offices.

We provide training for individuals or groups of up to 8 people, and will provide detailed notes on all the topics covered for future reference. Our training will cover everything your staff will need to know to update your website independently, and will be specific to your theme and functionality. Advice on search engine optimisation (SEO) is included, and the course complexity is designed around your staffs’ existing website knowledge.

Read more about customised training for your WordPress based website and please have a look at our feedback page to see what former participants say about our customised training.

WordPress.com Starter Course – Create your own website and blog

We offer WordPress Starter Courses for anybody who is interested in creating their own blog or interactive website. In this course you will set up your own free WordPress.com account, learn how to change themes and widgets in your sidebar, create posts on your blog and static pages like on a normal website. You will learn how to upload photos to your posts and pages, create galleries and slide shows with them and create a navigation bar, categories and tags. You will also learn  how to change your personal settings, allow or disallow comments and how to fight spam.

This course is tailored to people who use a computer as a normal user – browsing the internet, checking e-mails and using simple applications such as Word. Read more about the WordPress Starter Courses and please have a look at our feedback page to see what former participants say about our Starter Courses.

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR PLACE AND DATE OF THE NEXT COURSE

WordPress.com Advanced Course – connect to social media for online marketing

The Starter course is followed by the WordPress Advanced Course. When you feel comfortable using everything we’ve done in the Starter Course, you are welcome to join the Advanced Course – that might be a couple of weeks later, or half a year – it really doesn’t matter. What is important is that you have a good knowledge of all the topics from the Starter Course and ideally you will have a personal Facebook account. Here you will learn a little more about spam, uploading a blog icon, synchronise your WordPress website with social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and insert the ‘Follow us on Facebook’, ‘Follow me on Twitter’ and ‘My LinkedIn Profile’ button in your WordPress site for online marketing. You will also learn how to embed YouTube videos, how to create a navigation bar using pages & categories, specify a new front page, how to create a contact form without publishing your private e-mail address and how to get rid of the ‘wordpress’ in your domain name if you choose to do so. Read more about the WordPress Advanced Course and please have a look at our feedback page to see what former participants say about our Advanced Courses.

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR PLACE AND DATE OF THE NEXT COURSE

WordPress.com ‘Build your own site’ – workshop to put your own site together – from concept to reality

This WordPress.com Build your own site will be quite flexible, it’s all about your ideas, finding the right WordPress.com theme for your site and then setting it up together. We’ll look at different WordPress.com themes (layouts) and discuss different features you’d like for your site such as a portfolio, a front page slider, darkened featured images to display headlines, scrollable image panels, columns with images on the front page to click through to your most relevant content, social media icons display etc. We will brainstorm on the navigation setup and will be able to use the group for invaluable user feedback, once we have a plan for each website you will set up your site with my help. We will also look into different sources of royalty-free images.

Read more about the WordPress.com Build your own site and have a look at our package price discounts.

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR PLACE AND DATE OF THE NEXT COURSE

WordPress.org – the self-hosted version

And then there is the self-hosted version WordPress.org – your options will be endless, but for that you will need to take more responsibility for your site. It’s a bit more complicated to set up and run than a WordPress.com site, and you will need to sign up and pay for a domain and host, and take care of backups and updates – if you’re comfortable doing that, you will love it and your site will be almost without limits! Read more about websites built in WordPress.org.

Differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org.

17 Responses

  1. Joe Dunne

    Hi there. This sounds very interesting – I’ve been wanting to try out WordPress for ages now but wasn’t sure where to start. Please let me know when the courses will be and I’d be very interested to sign up.

    Thanks for your help.

    Joe

    • Julie Sarah

      Hi Joe,

      Thanks for your comment and your interest in the course. I’ll send you an e-mail as soon as I have all details regarding our first WordPress.com course in Dublin.

      Kind Regards,
      Julie

  2. Anne O'Shea

    Hi Julie,
    this course is very interesting and a good idea. Teachers should be
    interested in this as blogs can be used to display students’ project
    work. Let me know when you are giving the course.

    Regards,
    Anne.

    • Julie Sarah

      Thanks Anne,
      You’re right and lots of applications are free for educational institutions! I will give a presentation tomorrow at Worksearch2.0 about the course and will try to confirm time & place beginning of next week.

      Kind Regards,

      Julie

  3. caroline

    HI Julie
    I have been interested in doing a wordpress course in a while and I just came across this course this morning. I see you have a course arranged for next week but I am only free on Thursday 7th oct. Do you have any other sessions coming up as I could plan better in advance?
    Would the course cover the actual set up of a hosted blogging site including the FPT part which i need help on, template upload, use of widgets?
    I look forward to hearing from you soon
    caroline

    • Julie Sarah

      Hi Caroline,

      Thanks for your comment and your interest in WordPress.
      Unfortunately this will be the last Starter Course for 2010 as I will be out of the country for a number of weeks during November and December and am very unlikely to be able to schedule a course during those months.

      This particular course on Wednesday October 6th will cover how to create a free blog or website using the WordPress.com platform. We will all set up our own accounts using WordPress.com as our host, which means you don’t need your own website, a hoster or any technical web master skills (such as uploading files using an FTP programme etc.) and you don’t have to pay for an account, host or anything else – we will use only free features. The course is aimed at people to become familiar with the basics, create a site you can use and practise with, write posts, upload photos, create galleries and slide shows, change the blog’s appearance, use different themes and widgets, and see for yourself just how much WordPress.com can do for you – and then decide what you want to do with it – so it does not include the set up of a hosted blog or any use of FTP programmes, but is using the same features as the self-hosted version. You can find detailed information about the course at http://wp-courses-ireland.com/wordpress-courses-and-customised-training/wordpress-com-starter-course/.

      The next follow-up course will then cover synchronising your WordPress.com blog with social media (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), embed YouTube videos, remove WordPress from your domain name and a few more technical bits and bobs, and is scheduled as the last course for 2010 on November 9th.

      Depending on what you actually want to do with your site, WordPress.com may do everything you need it to, without having to pay a hosting service etc. or for a domain name. Forgive me if you know all this already – I just want to make sure you have all the information. You might want to take a quick look at this link also which explains the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org http://wp-courses-ireland.com/2010/06/30/wordpress-com-vs-wordpress-org/

      If you do still think that .org is what you need, I am planning to offer WordPress.org courses in 2011 which will include setting up your own hosted blog, uploading new themes and plugins. Either way, the Starter Course could be a good starting point for you, depending on how much you already know.

      If you do find the time to join our Starter Course next week, where you will create your own site and get blogging, you’re welcome to participate, please just let me know as soon as possible. If you’re already blogging and familiar with WordPress then the Advanced Course in November might be the best next step for you, and takes place on November 9th.

      I hope the above covers everything you need to know, but if you have any other questions please let me know, and I look forward to hearing from you about what courses might suit you.

      Julie

  4. Eoin Scott

    Hi Julie,
    Your starter course was very well put together yesterday and very clearly presented. I found it very worthwhile with much food for thought – and for work to do!
    I would recommend your course to anybody looking at starting a website or blog and will do so if anyone asks me!
    I am intending to do the advanced course in November if I am free…

    Eoin

    • Julie Sarah

      Hi Eoin,

      Thank you very much for your comment, it’s great to hear that you enjoyed the course so much. I will keep an eye on your blog and look forward to seeing lots happening ;-).
      See you next Friday at LinkThink hopefully with new questions and ideas to discuss.

      Julie

  5. Fran Byrne

    Hi Julie
    Myself and a friend would be interested in attending your next course for beginners.
    Could you please forward me the details.
    Thanks
    Fran

    • Julie Sarah

      Thanks Roland,

      It was very nice having you on the Starter Course and I look forward to seeing you at the Advanced Course in a couple of weeks.

      Julie

  6. Ciaran

    Hi,

    When is your next advanced course? and do you have an outline of the areas you are going to cover?

    tks,

    Ciaran

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