WordPress 101

This WordPress course runs on Saturday, February 8th from 10am to 5pm with a one-hour lunch break at 1pm.

The first hour of the first class will be a "Happiness Bar" dedicated to installing WordPress on students' hosting accounts. If you already have WordPress installed on a hosting account, or locally on your computer, feel free to arrive at 10:45.

This class is for beginners wanting to learn about using WordPress as a framework and content management system for a blog or website. You can arrive knowing nothing about WordPress and will leave knowing how to start up, build and manage a site.

We will cover the following:

• Intro to Wordpress, Installation, Security, Administration & Management: You'll learn how to install WordPress, gain an understanding of the admin interface and learn of how to manage site content.

• Widgets, Plugins, Themes & Customizing Themes: You'll learn how to install plugins and themes to add functionality and change the look of your site. You will also learn how to customize themes and theme frameworks.

Prerequisites:

All students MUST come to class with at least a WordPress compatible hosting account, preferably with WordPress already installed. If you do not already have WordPress up and running on your hosting account we will install it for you. Bluehost is a WordPress-recommended host (http://www.bluehost.com/track/gdiphilly) and costs $4.95/month. WPEngine is another reputable host (http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=398787&u=540324&m=41388&urllink=&afftrack=) and offers GDI students 1 month of free hosting, after that hosting costs $29/month.

A basic understanding of HTML/CSS, and FTP is helpful, but it is NOT necessary. A follow-up WordPress theming class is currently being scheduled for late March.

About Tracy Levesque, our Instructor:

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Tracy Levesque is a co-owner of YIKES, Inc., a Philadelphia web design and development company located in Fishtown. She has been designing websites since 1996 and working with WordPress since 2007. She spends her days building custom themes for WordPress. When not wrangling HTML and CSS, Tracy drinks coffee, chases her 7 year old daughter, plays drums and takes pictures of abandoned buildings.

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About WPEngine: WPEngine (http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=398787&u=540324&m=41388&urllink=&afftrack=) is the premium managed hosting platform for websites and applications built with WordPress. WP Engine powers tens of thousands of websites and apps built with WordPress, delivering the fastest, most reliable, and most secure web experience possible.