The Hope IT WordPress course has been taught 7 different times, attended by 19 students. We have taught this course in June 2020, October 2020, October 2021, Feb. 2023, and Feb. 2024, as well as with Stars in Oct/Nov 2020, and Jan/Feb 2021.
Why WordPress? Well first, it is a good platform to learn in an on-line, remote setting due to COVID concerns, as students can save their work on-line. Secondly (and most importantly), WordPress allows you to create websites quickly, and a lot of professionals use this platform; in fact, over 30% of websites use WordPress, so if you know some of the basics, you could maintain and change many websites out there. To learn more, you can visit the WordPress site here.
Hope IT was so glad to see two students use their WordPress skills in a paid opportunity. In 2021, one student got a paid position using WordPress. Another student finished the Hope IT paid internship in 2023. Both of these students were so good at WordPress, they co-taught the next upcoming WordPress course for other students to learn. Wow!
In the Hope IT WordPress course, we were able to cover both Themes (Astra) and Plugins, the 2 key concepts to know using using WordPress. Our course allowed students to use Plugins, as each student gets their own website to work on. The normal free WordPress.org website does not allow Plugins to be used. We spend a lot of time using the Elementor page builder, allowing one to easily edit web pages. WP Power Stats was brought in to show one way to track users visiting our site. We introduced students to Yoast SEO, showing how to get more users to your website via the search engines. In time allows, we also included an eCommerce plugin in our most recent course, Easy Digital Download.
Below are our teaching notes, as well as an instructor guide:
Hope IT – WordPress – Instructor Guide (updated on 11/18/2021)