WordPress 101 Hands-on Workshop (Beginner)
March 29, 2014, Saturday, 12-5pm
Early Bird $50 (Veterans $40) ends March 22
Regular $65
Veteran $55
Tickets Eventbrite

PHP Basics For WordPress
March 30, 2014, Sunday, 10am-4pm
Early Bird $99 (Veterans $85) ends March 22
Regular $125
Veterans $110
Tickets: EventBrite

 

Saturday March 29: WordPress 101 Hands-On /Workshop 
Daunted by the task of creating your own WordPress blog? Learn to create one from scratch during a HANDS-ON, half-day workshop. We have designed a comprehensive hands-on workshop, teaching the basics of building a WordPress blog, step-by-step. The workshop can also help prepare you to create a more robust and comprehensive website, using WordPress.  

In this workshop, you will learn to:

• create your initial blog structure, including choosing a theme
• upload and maintain text using the WP editing suite
• upload and simple-edit images
• embed videos
• learn how to organize and maintain the overall blog.

Be sure to bring you ideas or materials if you’d like to work on your actual blog (vs. a demo)
You must have a laptop to participate in the hands-on part of this event.
You are welcome to bring a lunch to class. Snacks and beverages provided!

Sunday March 30: PHP Basics for WordPress Workshop
Interested in learning more about PHP, the coding language used to power the backend of WordPress? This class will give you a basic introduction along with exercises on how it is used so that you can perform simple adjustments and additions. Be sure to bring your laptop and any passwords needed to access your existing server and WordPress accounts. Lunch and snacks will be provided. 

THE FIRST 2-HOURS Prerequisite and Preliminary Set up: setting up a working environment to edit PHP files on your computer.
You will need to have following to get the most out of the hands-on portion of the workshop:

1. A hosted WordPress account at Bluehost, Fatcow, GoDaddy (or something similar) to reach the source files. There are also free hosting alternatives such as Zymic, that you can use for the workshop.
2. A code editing program like Komodo, Aptana, etc. to manipulate the files on your site.
3. A FTP (File Transfer Protocol) system to upload the files into the server, such as Cyberduck, Filezilla. Both are free. For those already set up, you may use the time to review the PHP language tp prepare for the next part of the workshop.

SECOND PHASE:
Basic syntax of PHP Some WordPress specific functions

• A tour of the WordPress backend code and theme directory
• The plugin directory A brief overview of the core code
• Third Phase: A drilldown to the functions.php file and the theme template files
• Demonstrations of how to add functions to the functions.php file
• How to change a template and add a widget area to a theme
• Outline how to take advantage of the numerous free advice sites and enhancements that exist on the internet
• Last Phase:

We will: Visit the Codex and online resources

• See how to build a simple plugin to add a shortcode.
• Outline how to take advantage of the numerous free advice sites and enhancements that exist on the internet

Attendees will achieve:

• Computer will be set up to edit and ftp files in their WordPress website
• A basic introduction to PHP and some examples of code from WordPress
• An understanding of where the files that create WordPress are located and how they are used
• How to make changes to functions.php,
• Build a page template, and alter page templates
• What to look for in the Codex and how to use what you find
• A basic understanding of how a plugin is constructed (you will not necessarily build one)
• Strong recommendation for potential attendees:
• Begin courses at Codecademy. They provide excellent training tutorials in various computer languages for further advancement in the field of programming. http://www.codecademy.com/

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR: Karla Leibowitz is a WordPress website developer for small business and entrepreneurs. While she sometimes writes her own PHP for clients, she finds the assortment of WordPress plugins a great place to shop for functionality. With over twenty years of IT experience, a business degree, and five years experience consulting to small business, she is happy to be able to use WordPress to resolve her clients web marketing issues cost effectively and efficiently.

For more info, check out Karla’s website: http://www.karlakarla.com/