Starting the first weekend of May and continuing through the month of July BCIT is offering a one-of-a-kind intensive course in all things WordPress development called Advanced WordPress Development. The first block, “WordPress Advanced Theming”, will be taught by yours truly over three weekends in May. The next two blocks, WordPress eCommerce and WordPress Plugin Development will be taught by Curtis McHale.
This course will be a unique opportunity to learn the tricks of the trade from Curtis and myself and build a solid set of current WordPress and web design skills.
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Want more info? Read on. There is another sign up link at the bottom.
What will I learn?
So what will you learn by taking this wild ride? I can’t speak for Curtis but here’s an overview of the three first weekends with me:
- Understand the web design process – from napkin sketch to live site
- Learn to combine UX, IA, CM, design, and development to create informational web experiences
- A rational approach to Responsive Web Design
- Understand what WordPress is and how it works
- Become one with the WordPress Template Hierarchy
- Learn to build a WordPress theme from scratch using the _s theme
- Build a platform to become a full fledged web developer
This of course comes with the regular trimmings: Development techniques, security, content management, client interactions, SEO snake oil anti-venom, and a healthy dose of web standards and futuristic code and design practices.
That’s a lot for three weekends and you’ll walk out empowered and with a head full of ideas that just have to be built. And that’s just the first three weekends. This is immediately followed by three weekends of eCommerce and plugin development. The proverbial WordPress development smørgossbord is yours for the taking.
Requiritur
To get the most out of this course you need to beef up on your core skills. That means you should be up to snuff on HTML5, CSS3, basic JS, jQuery, and PHP. Understanding the box model is a must and knowing what clearings, collapsing margins, and actions on the DOM are is a big plus. You don’t have to be an expert but having the basics down pat will make for a vastly better learning experience.
You also need to have a solid understanding of how to use WordPress: Setting up a site, creating posts and pages, managing categories and tags, configuring menus, and installing themes and plugins.
The good folks at BCIT have made my lynda.com WordPress Essential Training course a requirement (I had no part in that decision). Even if you are already familiar with WordPress I urge you to check this course out to get a refresher. It was republished in January of this year and is fully up to date with the latest version of WordPress. If you don’t have a lynda.com account you can get 7 days of free access at this link.
While you’re at it you should check out some of the lynda.com courses on standards based web design, responsive design, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It’ll be well worth the investment and give you a major boost before class begins in May.
Get with the Programme!
I’m really excited to be teaching this class. I love the classroom environment and being able to exchange ideas with students and grow with them. This class will be a filtered and refined version of the understanding and skills I’ve accumulated over the last 10 years and will give you a wealth of insight into the creative, technical, and social processes involved in creating websites with WordPress. So now that you know what it’s all about click here to sign up right now and I’ll see you all in May!