Advanced WordPress

Over two days Mike will teach you advanced techniques that will give you a competitive edge. You’ll learn insider tips and tricks for managing sites, both for yourself and your clients: from customising your admin screens to e-commerce via event management, building membership sites, utilising the power of child themes, and picking the perfect production and marketing tools.

The course is aimed at those who’ve already got to grips with the WordPress CMS. You’ll need to have some programming know-how, but in-depth expertise isn’t essential, however, a little CSS knowledge and how to use a text editor and an FTP program is desirable.

This advanced course is ideal for those who are already comfortable building WordPress sites but are looking to work in the field professionally – perhaps wanting to make a living building or creating more sophisticated WordPress sites. It will also benefit marketing and promotional companies looking to take their clients’ sites further, as well as those who want to bring their website creation and maintenance in-house.

Sounds a bit scary? Take a look at our Intermediate or Build your first website with WordPress courses instead.

• Laptop computer with Windows, Linux or OS X installed.
• Web browser: our preference is the latest version of Firefox or Google Chrome, but the latest Internet Explorer or Opera will be fine too.
• Text editor (see below)
• FTP client: we suggest FileZilla

You may also wish to consider bringing:

• Sample images that you will be able to upload to your website as the course progresses.
• An external mouse if you prefer using one.

We suggest these text editors:

Windows: Notepad++ (free), EditPad Lite (free)
OSX: Text Wrangler (free), Textmate (£), Coda (££), Espresso (££)
Linux: Bluefish (free), KompoZer (free)

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. 

The course is £400 (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, to test and refine your site

•  Book via Eventbrite
•  Invoice or PayPal – by phoning 0161 839 6324 or emailing [email protected]
•  Payment by cheque – made out to MadLab CIC, and sent to MadLab 36-40 Edge Street, Manchester M4 1HN
• We also accept card payments in person

This course starts at 10:00am and finishes at 4:30pm. Lunch is served at 12:30pm.

1. Introduction
2. Overview of theme: Theme frameworks, child themes, and vertical themes
3. Advanced theming: Anatomy of a child theme
4. Exercise: Let’s create a child theme
5. Functions.php: Media sizes and some useful snippets of PHP code
6. Exercise: Beefing up Twenty Eleven
7. E-commerce in depth: Eshop and WooCommerce
8. Event Management: Events, calendars and tickets
9. Advanced content plugins: Types and views

1. Multiple users in depth: Adding workflow and responsibilities
2. Multi-site and BuddyPress: Building a community or social network
3. Third-party authentication: Logging-in with Facebook and Twitter
4. Building a membership site: Overview and some useful plugins
5. Production tools: Branding the admin screens
6. Marketing tools: Stats, mailing lists, and more
7. Enhancing the admin for your clients: Some useful tools and plugins
8. Free for all, Q&A, show & tell

Please note: This course does not teach WordPress development (PHP coding). There is a small amount of copy and paste PHP in the child theme module.

Your Tutor

Mike is the co-founder of WordPress. He’s also the founder and CEO of WordPress consultancy zed1.com, has a portfolio including prominent government sites, is a published author, technical editor and member of the Usability Professionals Association… but let’s face it, we had you at ‘co-founder of WordPress’.