Creating WordPress Websites

About This Course

Want to build an attractive, sophisticated blog or website—without having to learn any special coding? WordPress is the answer you're looking for! WordPress is one of the world's most popular Web design tools because it's free, it's easy to use, and it produces professional results.

In these lessons, you'll get hands-on experience with this powerful tool as you create your own WordPress site and blog. As you walk through the process from start to finish, you'll find out how to use WordPress to create pages and posts, add images and videos, change a site's look and feel, and include user-friendly features. You'll discover the ease of using WordPress design themes to express your creativity, and you'll see how much fun it is to be part of the vibrant WordPress online community.

In addition to mastering the technical elements of WordPress, you'll learn how to organize a blog or website, create appealing content, and achieve better positions on search engine results pages. By the end of this course, you'll be able to confidently use WordPress to create a blog or a personal, business, or organizational website.

About The Instructor

This course includes a knowledgeable and caring instructor who will guide you through your lessons, facilitate discussions, and answer your questions. The instructor for this course will be John Agress.

John Agress has been active in the computer world since the 1980s and has been developing and designing websites for more than a decade. He was among the first designers to recognize that WordPress, which was originally created as blogging software, can also produce content management websites that can be updated as easily as sending an email. He loves helping his Web design clients take control of their WordPress blogs and websites. John graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Communication Studies and spent many years as a radio and television news anchor, writer, and producer.

Syllabus

A new section of each course starts monthly. If enrolling in a series of two or more courses, please be sure to space the start date for each course at least two months apart.

Week 1

Wednesday - Lesson 01

In this first lesson, we'll explore the magic of WordPress! You'll discover how to use this free software to create an attractive, dynamic blog or website—without learning any special code. You'll find out what the two "flavors" of WordPress are and why we'll use the hosted WordPress.com version. Then you'll go online, sign up, and tour the WordPress Dashboard. You'll also plan your project and set goals for yourself.

Friday - Lesson 02

What can a blog do that a website can't? Blogging's become a popular way to establish an online presence. We'll discuss how adding a blog can make a traditional website more effective. Then you'll build a blog with WordPress—by creating, refining, and categorizing posts. You'll also find out how to encourage and control visitor feedback.

Week 2

Wednesday - Lesson 03

Get the best of both worlds by combining a blog with a traditional website. In this lesson, you'll use WordPress to create and organize Web pages. And I'll show you how to convert your blog to a traditional website—or vice versa—with the click of a button.

Friday - Lesson 04

This lesson's all about WordPress themes—the templates that give your website its look and feel. You'll discover how to choose a theme, install it, and tweak it.

Week 3

Wednesday - Lesson 05

Photos, drawings, charts, videos, and audio clips can make your website more appealing and understandable. In this lesson, I'll show you how to use WordPress to upload and insert images and multimedia files.

Friday - Lesson 06

Make your website or blog more informative and easier to navigate with some special WordPress tools. You'll learn how to use sidebar widgets, forms, maps, and syndicated newsfeeds to make your site more useful and usable.

Week 4

Wednesday - Lesson 07

If your online visitors have trouble understanding or navigating your website, they'll go somewhere else. This lesson helps you pinpoint and eliminate usability problems.

Friday - Lesson 08

In this lesson, we'll take a long, hard look at our class project and decide how to make it better. You'll create a front page featuring both static and dynamic content; add links to pages, documents, email, and other sites; and repair typos, grammatical errors, and other mistakes.

Week 5

Wednesday - Lesson 09

What if you launched a website and nobody came? This lesson will show you how to keep that from happening. You'll find out what makes search engines tick and how to get them to visit your pages.

Friday - Lesson 10

Statistics are just a bunch of numbers if you don’t know how to use them. We’ll focus on how to analyze stats so you can improve your site. You’ll also find out how to tie your WordPress pages into social sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Week 6

Wednesday - Lesson 11

It's time to put the finishing touches on your site. This lesson includes a prelaunch checklist, so your online guests won't find any mistakes. I'll also show you how to promote the site and manage contributors.

Friday - Lesson 12

In our final lesson, you’ll learn how to build a sophisticated form, and I’ll review all the optional upgrades WordPress offers. You’ll discover how to personalize your domain name, use your mobile phone to update Web pages, and access the files that control your site’s appearance. I’ll also examine the pros and cons of moving to the self-hosted version of WordPress.

Requirements

No software purchase or installation is necessary. You’ll receive instructions for registering for and accessing your free online account at WordPress.com, where your site will be created and hosted. WordPress runs on any Windows operating system from Windows 98 to Windows 7 and on all versions of Mac OS X. You’ll need to have Internet access; e-mail; the Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, or Mozilla Firefox Web browser; and the Adobe Flash and PDF plug-ins (two free and simple downloads you obtain at http://www.adobe.com/downloads by clicking Get Adobe Flash Player and Get Adobe Reader). No specific knowledge or skills are required, just a general familiarity with the Internet.