Troubleshooting WordPress Training
Following my discussion earlier this week with Jen and to clarify what was mentioned in her post, I’ve been thinking of ideas for what a “Troubleshooting WordPress Workshop” could look like.
Two years ago at WordCamp Toronto, Kathryn Presner led a 3 hour workshop and gave beginners a primer about WordPress walking them through the dashboard, etc… Myself and Ruth Maude were on hand to help people with questions.
Perhaps 3 hours is too long for a troubleshooting workshop, but having a longer session would be useful for folks to ask question, play with code, etc…
A very rough outline of what could be covered would be:
- Installation Issues ( localhost and self hosting )
- I can’t find/reset my password what do I do?
- Overview of FTP and phpMyAdmin – why these are great troubleshooting tools
- Ack! White screen of death
- Theme/Plugin errors
- Incompatibility with themes/plugin
- Media Images are not showing up, how can I fix this?
- I’ve upgraded my site and now it’s borked
- My site is slow
- I’m making changes and nothing happens
- I change the site url and now I can login to my admin
- Help me change the width/colour/font???? How do I do this?
These are just off the top of my head right now. Before doing anything, I would want to go through the troubleshooting info on the codex, but having been on the forums for a while, I’ve answered a combination of these questions, once or twice. 
I would also like to give the participants the opportunity to submit their specific issues before they come. Hopefully once they’ve been through this, they would be more comfortable coming to the forum and offering help.
Let me know if you have any suggestions, comments.
Kirk Wight 3:49 am on January 17, 2013 Permalink |
It sounds like a great idea, and three hours wouldn’t be too long (it could even let participants lead the last hour through questions).
I would keep it solidly in userspace if you just want a three hour workshop (no need to get in to localhost installs or direct database stuff).
Christine Rondeau 4:58 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink |
I agree with localhost install. In Toronto, there was a workshop prior to Kathryn’s led by someone who’s name I forget now and he led the group through the localhost install and then Kathryn did her workshop and there were some interesting issues specially with folks on PCs.
This workshop would be ideal for folks who already have an install either on a server or localhost, but new beginners could join of course and just listen.
Kathy Drewien 6:21 am on January 17, 2013 Permalink |
Three hours is very short when you are talking about training!
Jen Mylo 12:54 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink |
Yeah, I was thinking of a full-day workshop.
Christine Rondeau 4:53 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink |
Full day might be a bit draining for both student and teacher though. I do a lot of teaching and three hours is pretty intense. The other thing to consider is the room allocation. I’ve never planned a WordCamp, but I’m guessing getting a venue (after sponsors) is the toughest part.
Anyhow, I’m sure that we can come up with a curriculum and then do as see fit.
I forgot to mention in the post above too, that we also need to leave time to work on issues that participants have and thus if we did 3 hours, had lunch, then came back, did an hour and then it’s questions/individual troubleshooting time. That could be a potential scenario.
Jen Mylo 7:21 pm on January 17, 2013 Permalink |
Full-day workshops are pretty standard (with breaks throughout), as is having multiple teachers. Getting a venue for 350 people is hard, but getting a venue for 30-50 for one day isn’t usually a big deal. A training that is just 3 hours could be done in a regular meetup, and isn’t really the intensive level-up special event I was thinking of. There’s room and a need for both, but once we start thinking about people making travel plans to attend or teach at one of these, it really isn’t worth the expense for 3 hours.
Kathryn Presner 2:39 pm on January 26, 2013 Permalink |
What about having more than one instructor?
christine 9:22 pm on January 26, 2013 Permalink |
Indeed you’re right. Having more than one instructor and breaking the class into group work and smaller chunks would work.
Kathryn Presner 2:37 pm on January 26, 2013 Permalink |
Really looking forward to seeing how this develops – terrific idea. Would love to be part of it somehow.
Very good idea.
In terms of localhost installs – one idea to consider could be what I believe the Ladies Learning Code folks ended up doing for their WordPress workshops; they give folks instructions on setting up localhost install before the workshop happens, and make sure that everyone is set up ahead of time so no time is spent on getting that up and running during the actual workshop. Plus there’s no relying on Wifi, which so often can’t handle that many people at once.
Eric Flamm 2:18 pm on March 16, 2013 Permalink |
I would suggest including Backup and Restore practice (especially Restore) as part of the training. Even though many users have a backup strategy, most have probably never tested it or don’t test it often enough.
Ipstenu (Mika Epstein) 3:26 am on March 17, 2013 Permalink |
Not so much a troubleshooting topic, though