The Glass Mountains WordPress Program – an early taste

Today I’m giving an early taste for the structure of the upcoming WordPress Program we will be putting on. Some of you may already know about this as I did previously ask for input when I was running market research.

The Idea

The WordPress Program (not its final name) will be a paid, members-only program aimed at people who look after a WordPress site for their organisation or business.

You may be the business owner, or you may be someone within an organisation who is tasked with looking after the company’s WordPress site. You are not a designer or a developer (nor do you want to be); you are just someone who needs to get better at the management and strategy of using WordPress from a users perspective

The aim is to deliver a steady, structured stream of content allowing you to significantly improve your WordPress skills and your website.

Members will start the program with a wide range of existing WordPress skills; from very basic, to more advanced – the aim it to easily cater to this wide variety of needs – people learn at their own pace.

How will the program work?

Here are some general concepts:

  • Members will be able to set their own pace (weekly/every 2 weeks/monthly) for their learning period. E.g. some will want weekly, some monthly.
  • Each learning period (e.g. each week, or each fortnight – up to you), members will receive a new lesson resource (e.g. email/pre-recorded video etc).
  • Members will take on board the content, and can ask questions in a private group area, and hopefully act on it (but this isn’t school!).
  • Members can skip lessons if they are not relevant to them and move ahead.
  • There will be a private group where members can ask questions and discuss topics with other members.
  • Members can change the pace of their learning if they so wish (or even pause or re-take).
  • Lessons aren’t marked etc – this isn’t a shaming exercise! This is about personal growth & website growth.
  • There will be an online portal where people can easily access their lessons/resources etc.

Initially, there will be one curriculum to cover all the key aspects of WordPress. Over time, for members who have completed that curriculum, there may be additional learning trees for specific topics (e.g. SEO etc).

There will be other benefits to the membership of the program including discounts on other premium events which we may run outside of the program.

Examples of topics/curriculum

The exact steps of the curriculum will be unveiled with the program but it suffices to say that we’ll go from the basics to more advanced topics. Members can choose to go into more depth if they want to, they can choose their own path.

Example topics:

  • A tour of the WP-ADMIN area
  • The basics of editing pages
  • Inserting images
  • Inserting links / internal links / SEO
  • How to format your pages
  • Website structure
  • Menus & navigation
  • Theme choice
  • Setting up a staging site
  • Managing plugins
  • Getting into blogging
  • Managing multiple users
  • Securing your site
  • Analysing website speed
  • Yoast SEO plugin basics
  • Yoast SEO plugin advanced
  • Measuring your SEO
  • Using Google Search Consol
  • Adding ‘events’ to your website
  • etc etc

Live Q&A Session

Each fortnight or month there will be a live , members-only Q&A session for all members to ask questions about their current lesson, and to ask for feedback etc.

As part of this session (or perhaps during a different one) I may also discuss:

  • changes/additions to lessons/new topics
  • New WordPress news which is valid/relevant to members
  • Share member success stories

Q&A sessions are recorded so that if people cannot attend live, they can review at their leisure.

Is this for a set number of weeks? Or is it ongoing?

It will be ongoing and people will be able to pay on a monthly basis. People can leave when they want or can pause their subscription etc and then pick up where they left off.

How does this relate to the existing Glass Mountains WordPress Q&A Facebook group & live events?

The existing free Glass Mountains Facebook Q&A group and live events will carry on as before, that does not change. We are discussing here is a separate, paid program.

Why are you doing this?

Because it feels fun to me and I’m lucky enough to be at a stage in my business where I can get to chose what I work on. I really like helping people with their websites, I like showing how things work, I like teaching complex topics where I can translate it to people who haven’t got (and don’t want!) a degree in computing science.

My company will carry on creating and maintaining WordPress sites for clients in the UK and the US, though my intention is to grow this WordPress Program as well. Both streams of the business will feed into each other – e.g. lessons we learn on new WordPress website projects will be fed back into the WordPress program for others to share.

Will it be called ’WordPress Program’?

Probably not, that name is as dull as ditchwater. The name will come later when I properly unveil this.

How much will this cost?

I don’t know! I need your help here!

Please give me your thoughts below in this anonymous form (yes, it’s anonymous).

 

To be amongst the first to hear when this is released, sign up for updates here. Please also feel free to join the existing free Facebook group.

 

Thanks

 

Joel

p.s. you may wonder about the choice of image at the top. Well, some of you may know that I’m a massive Space Nut – the photo is of President Kennedy in 1962 talking in front of an early mockup of what would go on to become the Lunar Lander. As you can see, this early prototype evolved drastically from the original concept on its way to becoming a successful design which landed on the Moon in June 1969. The fact that things do not always end up as we originally envisaged them seemed fitting in terms of my WordPress Program :)

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