Proposed User Lessons

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The WordPress training team creates downloadable lesson plans and related materials for instructors to use in live environments. If you enjoy teaching people how to use and build stuff for WordPress, immediately stop what you’re doing and join our team!

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End goal for WordPress user training: master the WordPress dashboard.

Introductory Topics

General history: Include what is open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., key facts/people, etc.
High level overview: This lesson is an introduction to WordPress for people who have heard of it but are not quite sure what it does or if it is the right tool for them. You’ll learn about the origins of WordPress and its evolution from a blogging platform to a full fledged content management system. We’ll also look at some of its components and how they are used to build a functional website. Finally, we’ll talk about the third party services you’ll need to operate a self-hosted WordPress site.
Basic WordPress concepts: What is a theme, 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, etc.? Difference between .org and .com?
What can you do with WordPress: What are pages, posts

Managing your Installation

How to install WordPress (standard): How do you get WordPress up and running online? This lesson walks through the tools and steps needed to setup WordPress on a live server.
Settings: What exists by default that you may want to turn off
User management
Choosing/installing a theme: There are close to 3000 free themes in the official WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ directory and at least as many in the commercial space. This lesson will give you the tools needed to thoroughly evaluate themes and choose the most appropriate for your site.
Choosing/installing plugins: There are more than 45,000 free plugins in the official WordPress.org Plugin Directory, as well as thousands more in the commercial space. This lesson will give you the tools needed to thoroughly evaluate, install, and choose most appropriate plugins for your sites along with resources on how to get help with plugins.
Managing menus
Managing widgets: Widgets provide a convenient means of adding content and features to a website and require no coding experience. This lesson will provide an introduction to finding and including widgets in your website. We will demonstrate how to use the widgets included in the theme installed on a website, add widgets from plugins and customize a widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. using simple HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites..
Backing up Your WordPress Site
Managing updates: Themes, plugins, WordPress
What to do when you forget your password
How to find help with WordPress
Troubleshooting basics

Content Management

Overview of the dashboard: The WordPress Dashboard is the first screen you see after logging in to WordPress. On it you’ll find both status information and links to all the administrative areas of the site. This lesson will show you how the Dashboard is organized and how to use it to access the various features of WordPress.
Overview of the WordPress Editor: Are you ready to start adding your content? This step-by-step walkthrough will give you an introduction to the content editor and how to use it.
Pages vs. posts: What is the difference between a page and a post? How do I know which to use and where to add and edit them. This lesson plan walks through the differences between posts and pages as well as covers how to work with them both in WordPress.
Categories vs. tags
Using Post Formats: This lesson guides users through creating post formats with the Twenty Thirteen theme.
Managing media: This lesson plan discusses the various ways the WordPress Media Manager handles media.
In this lesson plan you’ll learn how to upload and insert image files, document files, audio files and video files. You’ll learn how to resize, format, link and include these media files into your posts and pages.
Managing comments: In this lesson you will learn how your readers can communicate with through Comments and how to manage them
RSS feeds

Other

WordCamp/Meetup Speaker Training
Diversity Speaker Training: The focus of the workshop will be to help generate topics to give a talk on, boost your speaking confidence, and allow you to practice speaking in a safe space. At the end of the workshop you will have a few ideas for talks and a chance to practice speaking in a small group.

webtrainingwheels 6:51 pm on October 28, 2014

suggested addition – Ongoing Maintenance – updating themes, plugins & WP
bethsoderberg 7:00 pm on October 28, 2014

Great suggestion @webtrainingwheels! I’m adding ongoing maintenance to the “Managing Your Installation” section.
Courtney Engle Robertson 7:20 pm on October 28, 2014

Connecting to Jetpack, particularly site stats, but other features of Jetpack. This gives way to configuring gravatars and Jetpack using a .com account on your self-hosted site. A source of great confusion.
- bethsoderberg 7:26 pm on October 28, 2014
  
  Courtney – thanks for your suggestion! I talked to the other Courtney and confirmed that the .org trainings are not going to cover Jetpack, at least at this point, because Jetpack is a project of .com and has tons of training and resources around already.
  - Courtney Engle Robertson 8:40 pm on October 28, 2014
    
    That makes sense. It’d be nice to integrate their existing training perhaps – link to it?
    What about configuring GravatarGravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/. accounts? I’m thinking of some basic things that many just overlook.
    - Courtney O'Callaghan 10:01 pm on October 28, 2014
      
      We need to stick to only .org content. I will ask Jen about the policy of linking to the existing training.
webtrainingwheels 2:48 am on October 30, 2014

Another suggestion – Basic troubleshooting – testing for problematic 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 or theme by turning off plugins, turning them back on one by one, switching to default theme etc.
- bethsoderberg 5:57 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  We’ve got basic troubleshooting as a topic in the theme track right now, but I’m wondering if it might belong here OR if maybe we have two. An introductory version for users and a more advanced one for theme developers?
  - webtrainingwheels 2:57 am on November 2, 2014
    
    I would definitely think developers would need different and more advanced troubleshooting than users. My thought, which goes along with Bet’s point below, is that when users are trying to get help, the first thing they will be told to do is to make sure their issue is not due to a 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 or theme conflict. So it would be useful to teach users how to do these basic steps, not only because they may be able to solve their own problem, but also to relieve unnecessary support requests.
    - bethsoderberg 2:21 am on November 4, 2014
      
      Agreed – I added “troubleshooting basics” to the list.
Bet Hannon 6:10 pm on October 30, 2014

Beyond basic troubleshooting, how about something more generally about finding help with WP, along these lines: https://codex.wordpress.org/Finding_WordPress_Help. Yes, that page in the codex is there, but we know that people don’t read them…
- bethsoderberg 6:26 pm on October 30, 2014
  
  Bet, I’m adding this one to the list. A few of us who were at contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. in SF yesterday actually had a lengthy conversation about how we should be using the Codex as a resource for content where applicable and I think we could certainly do that in this instance.
ronnsys 3:52 am on March 22, 2017

I have two areas that I need assistance 1) Page layout and working with keeping content organize 2) WooCommerce

This is my url http://shedrickenterprises.com/wp/fubu please do not get caught up in the contents current events and thanks for suggestions!
Junior MOISE 3:56 am on August 3, 2019
As suggested, you should add a section like this
Maintenance & Troubleshooting
- Managing updates
– Themes, plugins, WordPress
- Backing up Your WordPress Site
Troubleshooting basics
- Testing for problematic 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 or theme
– Turning off plugins,
– Turning them back on one by one,
- switching to default theme

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Introductory Topics

Managing your Installation

Content Management

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