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Teaching WordPress

Ben Dunkle

WordCamp Scranton, July 2015

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About this talk

everyone teaches
we need to understanding our students
we need structured learning resources
teaching makes better!

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Me

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I’m a student.

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I’m a teacher.

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I’m a user.

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I’m a builder.

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Teaching is about empathy

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WordPress is about empowerment

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Someone taught you WordPress.

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You’re interested in WP for a reason: someone, at some point in your life, mentioned WP to you. That person was a teacher. And how good you are at WP is, in significant part, the outcome of your relationship with that person.

Think back on that time: how did it go? Did they do a good job? Were you confused? [discussion, recall an experience when someone taught you something about WP] Who do you associate with your first WP experience? That was a teacher.

BAD: You may have left the experience with a bad taste in your mouth regarding WP. Why does it have to be so confusing, what is all this stuff, where did my site go?

GOOD: Holy cow, I can do this without hiring a programmer! No way I’m looking at WP! Where’s the comment box???

When we teach something, we gain a more fundamental understanding of what we’re teaching. We also become a foundation in the growth of the person we teach. That expands our network.

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Understand your student.

users

builders

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Users

site owners
bloggers
volunteers
big idea people
potential clients :)

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Site owners

Why enable them? Won’t it come out of my pocket?
They are entitled to training
Need mentorship
untapped opportunity

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--It’s fundamentally wrong thinking

--by using WP on their site, transferral of maintenance should be assumed

--this is new territory, and an opportunity to establish yourself as a mentor

--always put it a line item in estimates

Why do something that will take away from your services, when withholding information will make the client rely on you for support? After all, if the client knows how to manage her site, why will she ever need to enlist your services again? This is the main argument against training. But it’s flawed.

When you train your clients, you’re empowering them. You’re imparting real skills that make them more valuable to the organizations they represent. They’ll appreciate this, and see you as a positive connection. This will in turn yield more opportunities for continued engagement. They’ll want to review what you’ve shown them, and learn new ways to make their sites better using WP, and look to you for guidance.

By withholding information from your clients, you establish a spirit of distrust. You’re saying, “You don’t need to know this stuff–leave it to the pros. Just call me when you need updates,” but that kind of thinking has no place in a WP environment. WordPress people give back.

If philanthropy isn’t your thing, fine; but consider this: I’ve never had a client turn down the training line on any estimate I’ve submitted. It’s an easy way to add value to your contract, because you know the site better than anyone, and are in the perfect position to instruct them on the ins and outs, and it’s fun. Training can be a nice break from the endless coding and debugging.

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Bloggers

Post vs. page
taxonomy
theme auditing
more embracing of technology, advanced learning

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--I’ve heard a lot of people go into the post/page comparison when trying to explain WP, and it’s a good one. Bloggers in theory are more concerned with posts, so explain the idea of timestamping; content that can relate to a specific moment in time. News.

Bloggers probably don’t care what a page is, as long as it provides easy access to the precious article. Explain to them the value of an about page, and a contact page. Make them think about the blueprint of the house that holds the content.

--After that, focus should shift to taxonomy. How can their content be described? Categorized? Tagged? Most often, it’s all the same thing. Don’t go too hard on putting things in boxes.

--What theme should bloggers use? This is an endless discussion. Choosing a theme is a serious commitment, and as a teacher, it’s your responsibility to direct them to the right place. When in doubt, plug twentyx. These are the best of the generic themes, as they’re built by the core WP dev team. Endless hours have been devoted to their perfection. After that, I’m not sure. I guess I’d plug bones, skeleton, html5 boilerplate; something with little to no flare, just fundamentally good, content-focused styling that gets out of the way of what’s important: the content.

--bloggers like WP, and its sea of plugins and themes. explore these with them

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Volunteers

Open to new stuff
Flexible
Take an interest in their cause

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Big idea people

entrepreneurs
prototyping
plugins and APIs

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Builders

students
designer
developer
programmer
colleagues
IT

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Students

Demographic
Attitude
Need incentives
Often facing many conflicts

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--We encounter students in a variety of contexts. Higher level and high school courses, workshops and Students come in all forms, and need (or think they need) to focus on different parts of WP.

--Some end up loving it, some hate it.

--If you can convince them of the bottom line–that learning WP will make them substantially more attractive candidates for employers–you’ll have better success.

Whether they plan on making websites for a living, or working in an environment where WP will be a key component, there are basic places to begin.

--Students are often in very difficult times of their lives, and need nurturing. This isn’t to say they should get undue breaks, but it does demand extra patience on our part. They are likely getting advice from many different sources. I’ve always tried to avoid discrediting the things they learn in other web classes or from other sources, as I’ve been wrong too many times.

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Designers

Baggage
Little knowledge of code
High aesthetic standards
impatient

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�--Be sensitive to the demo here. Many designers come with an enormous amount of print experience, and may be feeling the effects of irrelevance. Print design requires a very different set of technical skills that web, including a heavy reliance on WYSIWYG. I have yet to see WYSIWYG systems work on the web and find that teaching code is the only way to go.�--html+css is hard enough, but if you’re teaching a designer about WP, they’re already sold here. But even the most hands-off web designer needs to know some programming code. Show them how WP is a great platform for learning it. (maybe bring in some programmers topics)

--Designers know what looks good, and take pride in optimized imagery and good typography. Expose WP’s excellent management of these design facets.

--If something doesn’t work, they panic. Not much you can do here.

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Programmers

skeptics
smarter than you
Need to be teachers

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I’m not a developer, and I don’t pretend to have thorough understanding of computer science concepts that many programmers have devoted their careers toward mastering.

--I’ve always found a strange confrontation happen when pure programmers encounter the web, and especially WordPress. It’s like a professional food critic being forced to review Mighty Taco. Sure, everyone loves it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not garbage.

I believe there’s an elegance to how plugins can be built, and how custom template files can be constructed, and how WP Query with all its arguments is laid out, that can tap into the creative minds of programming purists.

----They usually know a ton more about a part of what you’re trying to teach then you do. Respect that

Encourage them to teach, they make good ones

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Colleague

Skype etc.
Cooperative/give and take
In a hurry
Unstructured

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IT

The user’s dark side
Skeptics
Keymasters
Security is a top priority
Not as much as keeping their job

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Teaching topics

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Potential user topics

Getting started with WordPress
Users and access
Managing content
Managing format
Managing accessibility

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Getting started with WP

What is content management?
WP vs. other CMS
wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org
hosting

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Users and access

What’s an admin?
Understanding users and their roles
Where’s my back end?
Safety first: plugins and best practices

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Managing content

Pages vs. posts
The content editor
Visual vs. text
Excerpts and <more>
point out these guys

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Managing format

Theme audit workshop
Basic CSS and HTML editing with Appearance>Editor and Chrome inspector
Basic image editing with the media manager
Don’t break it! Plugins and best practices

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Managing accessibility

You are not your visitor
Taxonomy
Permalinks
Hierarchy
SEO

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More philo: what is accessibility? taxonomy? etc.

--Explain that as a site owner, it’s your resp. to make your site connect with the maximum amount of eyeballs, in a variety of contexts.

--Audit users’ sites: are they mobile friendly? Browser agnostic? Can disabled users exerience the content?

--Taxonomy: The codex is a fun read here. Explain the difference between categories and tags. Talk about how those can sometimes be not enough.

--Permalinks can be a more technical discussion, which may turn some off and others may enjoy a break from the basics. Focus on what a URL is; users have to become keenly aware of the importance of this term and its understanding.

--Hierarchy: how can you impart a better structure on your content? Are you using <hx> tags properly? Can some pages be combined or eliminated? Can others be created to summarize?

--SEO: at wpbuffalo.com, we don’t allow talks that focus exclusively on SEO. It’s a hot topic and easily slides off into the deep end. I’ve never taught about it exclusively, and what I have shown clients entails a thorough examination of the Yoast plugin.

If there’s one thing you can get through to people who are nervous about SEO, it’s that SEO is 60% dependent upon them. Explain that fresh content is everything when it comes to SEO, and teach them how easy WP makes it to keep it fresh.

The rest is on the site builder. Explain that lean, optimized code and media helps, as does good hosting.

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Potential topics

Programming with WordPress
Theming from scratch
Media Mastery
WP admin mastery
Plugin development
WordPress workflow showcase

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Programming with WordPress

functions
includes
loops
managing resources

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Theming from scratch

Understanding local and remote server envs.
Granular to general
Essential functions
The loop

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Media Mastery

WPs image size creation
Custom image sizes
oEmbed
galleries
plugins

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WP Admin mastery

Menus
Plugins
Importing and exporting
Content management optimization
This guy

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Plugin development

Hello Dolly teardown
Hooks
Defining your problem
Submitting plugins to WP.org

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WordPress workflow showcase

Starter themes
Task managers
Favorite editors
Version control

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Teaching approach

start the general, �end with the specific

start the specific, �end with the general

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Tools

join.me

Camtasia

A good mic

Cloud storage

cpanel/phpmyadmin

mamp

editor/brackets

github/codepen/pastebin

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Getting help

Join a meetup group
Spend an hour at the happiness bar
Ask on wordpress.org

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Learning websites

https://codex.wordpress.org/

http://wordpress.tv

http://wpbeginner.com

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/wordpress/

https://www.wp101.com/

http://code.tutsplus.com/categories/wordpress

https://css-tricks.com/designing-for-wordpress-complete-series-downloads/

https://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/learn-wordpress

My intro course

My advanced course

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Thanks for listening

@empireoflight

bendunkle@gmail.com

bendunkle.com

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