Meeting Recap – September 9 2014 – Make WordPress Training

Welcome

The WordPress Training Team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through learn.wordpress.org.

Are you new to the team?

Getting Started – Join the team through this self-guided onboarding program

Current Focus Areas – What we’re currently focusing on

Already onboarded and ready to get involved?

See How we use GitHub to get started on one of our 6 project boards

Meetings (Calendar)

You can join these meetings from the #training Slack channel:

Weekly meeting: Thursdays 00:00 UTC

Dev-squad GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ triage: Thursdays 07:00 UTC

See Meeting Details for more information.

This week @courtneydawn had to leave at the last minute and ~~foolishly~~ wisely left me in charge of the meeting. Henceforth I shall refer to myself in the 3rd person, just to make writing this post extra awkward. 🙂

Template Hierarchy: @coachbirgit has had trouble getting to this, but will be able to devote some time to it next week
Intro to CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.: @jerrysarcastic has added the quiz, sample XML import file, and made a few edits, and @meaganhanes has also edited the module. This is now READY TO TEST but @jerrysarcastic will not be able to pick it up until October. To keep things moving along, anyone is welcome to do a test run at their local meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. and offer feedback on how things went.
Widgeted Spaces @bethsoderberg created a stub for this new module in progress, yay! \o/
Post Formats: @courane01 reports that she is close to done with this module, but has run into a small issue where “post format video code interferes with the post format chat code, resulting in [the] sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. on the chat layout not being where they should.” and is working to resolve this issue before finalizing.

Opening up Testing to Meetups

Some time was spent talking about ways of letting local WordPress Meetups know that there are modules available for testing as a way to jump start this part of finalizing our curricula for these workshops. One thought that needs to be followed up on is possible connecting with Meetups that are on the Foundation Meetup account.

You can read all the fascinating details in the logs and anything if you would like to add anything, the comment form awaits!

#feedback

Thanks for putting this together, Jerry! We only had a couple people attend, but the module provided a good base to work from. I ended up following it pretty closely for the first half, then going into some other things based on the attendee’s interest. We did record a screencast of it, so I’ll let you know if/when we get that published somewhere.

Overall it went well, a few notes:

There is a lot of set up time involved, may be worth providing detailed instructions for attendees beforehand so that they can follow along. This could potentially be standardized/official somewhere. We ended up having attendees install Desktop Server, but also importing the sample data, etc. didn’t run very seamlessly. Also forgot to ask attendees to have Chrome. We would not have had any attendees if we had said that they were expected to have an existing test site, given our audience (we also called it “Advanced Theme Customization” for that reason).
The images can’t be imported from the test data xml file since they were local – maybe hot-link some online images there?
Couldn’t find the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. image background you used anywhere, so we skipped that part.
After the setup time, we ended up only having about 30 minutes for the workshop. That was enough time to cover the basics, but given that we only had a few attendees, it would probably be a good idea to provide some recommended timings for scheduling purposes.
We used the Modular Custom CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party instead of Jetpack, since we didn’t have time to explain how Jetpack works and because the Jetpack CSS ins’t in the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.. Being able to see the preview of the CSS instantly in the Customizer preview, just like when first adding it using the browser’s inspector tools, helped reinforce the concepts, and made it really easy to see whether or not it worked (there was some confusion about the use of braces, which this clarified). That particular plugin was written more as a demo for developing with the Customizer, but it worked well for this purpose too.
I ended up throwing some of the graphics into slides for the beginning part, although most of the time it was live demo and people following along on their laptops. It may make sense to provide slides with those graphics, to supplement the script format that’s provided for the instructor.

It’s a really good start, I’m excited to see where all of this goes!

Nick Halsey 6:32 pm on September 10, 2014

I’m doing some workshops at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where we have a new department to promote digital literacy. The goal is to eventually provide all students with hosting and stand-alone WordPress installs, as well as workshops and a help desk to guide them along their way as they create things. Most of our students are just starting to learn WordPress but we have a few that are more advanced and we’re planning on offering a couple of “Advanced Theme Customization” workshops for them next week. I think the Intro to CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. module would be a good base for us, so we can report back on how it goes (and we’re also planning on recording it). Is there any place in particular that I should send feedback?
- Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 6:55 pm on September 11, 2014
  
  Howdy Nick, that would be awesome, and we would love your feedback, and a recording would be even better.
  
  You are welcome to drop in on our weekly chat in IRC to give us feedback directly, or as a comment on any of the meeting agenda/recap posts you see here. Thanks!
  - Nick Halsey 4:56 pm on September 22, 2014
    Thanks for putting this together, Jerry! We only had a couple people attend, but the module provided a good base to work from. I ended up following it pretty closely for the first half, then going into some other things based on the attendee’s interest. We did record a screencast of it, so I’ll let you know if/when we get that published somewhere.
    
    Overall it went well, a few notes:
    
    There is a lot of set up time involved, may be worth providing detailed instructions for attendees beforehand so that they can follow along. This could potentially be standardized/official somewhere. We ended up having attendees install Desktop Server, but also importing the sample data, etc. didn’t run very seamlessly. Also forgot to ask attendees to have Chrome. We would not have had any attendees if we had said that they were expected to have an existing test site, given our audience (we also called it “Advanced Theme Customization” for that reason).
    
    The images can’t be imported from the test data xml file since they were local – maybe hot-link some online images there?
    
    Couldn’t find the headerHeader The header of your site is typically the first thing people will experience. The masthead or header art located across the top of your page is part of the look and feel of your website. It can influence a visitor’s opinion about your content and you/ your organization’s brand. It may also look different on different screen sizes. image background you used anywhere, so we skipped that part.
    
    After the setup time, we ended up only having about 30 minutes for the workshop. That was enough time to cover the basics, but given that we only had a few attendees, it would probably be a good idea to provide some recommended timings for scheduling purposes.
    
    We used the Modular Custom CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party instead of Jetpack, since we didn’t have time to explain how Jetpack works and because the Jetpack CSS ins’t in the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.. Being able to see the preview of the CSS instantly in the Customizer preview, just like when first adding it using the browser’s inspector tools, helped reinforce the concepts, and made it really easy to see whether or not it worked (there was some confusion about the use of braces, which this clarified). That particular plugin was written more as a demo for developing with the Customizer, but it worked well for this purpose too.
    
    I ended up throwing some of the graphics into slides for the beginning part, although most of the time it was live demo and people following along on their laptops. It may make sense to provide slides with those graphics, to supplement the script format that’s provided for the instructor.
    
    It’s a really good start, I’m excited to see where all of this goes!
    - Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 9:35 pm on September 30, 2014
      
      Howdy Nick and thanks for the great feedback!
      
      There is a lot of set up time involved, may be worth providing detailed instructions for attendees beforehand so that they can follow along.
      
      Agreed, and what we’ve discussed in the past is moving setup resources to a teacher resources page but clearly there is a need to expand this sooner than later.
      
      The images can’t be imported from the test data xml file since they were local – maybe hot-link some online images there?
      
      Gah! So obvious I can’t believe I missed it. I’ll update the module to include those graphics so that they can be included in setup.
      
      it would probably be a good idea to provide some recommended timings for scheduling purposes.
      
      I think setup is the hardest thing to solve here, as it is pretty labor-intensive and can get technical, which is a barrier to novice attendees. Ideally setup would happen before the presentation itself (like the day before) but we have not formalized that.
      
      We used the Modular Custom CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party instead of Jetpack, since we didn’t have time to explain how Jetpack works and because the Jetpack CSS ins’t in the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.
      
      Cool. I had not thought of that, but settled on Jetpack just to standardize the lesson somewhat, as many hosting providers are starting to install it on default for newly created WordPress sites.
      
      But the curriculum should be flexible enough to use any custom CSS plugin, and seems that was not a barrier to you here. 🙂

Welcome

Meetings (Calendar)

Share this: