Technology · Beginner
WordPress Website Design & Development Essentials
WordPress powers more than two in every five websites on the internet — including a large share of the small-business sites across Greater Geelong and the Surf Coast. Yet most owners and aspiring web professionals only ever scratch the surface of what the platform can do, and many pay agency prices for changes they could make themselves in minutes.
Helena MarshFormer COO, Tidewater Group
Outcomes
What you’ll be able to do.
- • Register an Australian domain, choose appropriate hosting, and install and configure WordPress from scratch — locally and on a live server.
- • Build complete, mobile-responsive business websites using the Gutenberg block editor, block patterns and the Site Editor.
- • Select, evaluate and configure plugins for forms, SEO, caching, security and backups with a professional decision framework.
- • Set up a GST-compliant WooCommerce store with Australian payment gateways and Australia Post shipping.
- • Diagnose and fix slow sites using a repeatable performance workflow built on Core Web Vitals.
- • Harden a site against the most common attacks and run a tested backup-and-restore routine.
- • Create child themes, write safe custom PHP using hooks, and build custom post types with custom fields.
- • Migrate a site from local to live, manage DNS, and execute a professional launch checklist.
- • Keep a site compliant with the Privacy Act 1988, the APPs and WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility expectations.
Outline
3 sections, 15 lessons.
Lessons run 8 to 15 minutes. Each section ends with a short piece of work.
-
01 WEEK 1 — FOUNDATIONS 5 lessons
- 01 The WordPress Ecosystem · SCORM package · 10 min
- 02 Setting Up Your First Site · SCORM package · 10 min
- 03 Mastering the Dashboard · SCORM package · 10 min
- 04 Content Done Right · SCORM package · 10 min
- 05 Themes & Site Identity · SCORM package · 10 min
-
02 WEEK 2 — BUILD & CUSTOMISE 5 lessons
- 06 Page Building Mastery · SCORM package · 10 min
- 07 Plugins & Functionality · SCORM package · 10 min
- 08 Selling Online with WooCommerce · SCORM package · 10 min
- 09 Performance & Optimisation · SCORM package · 10 min
- 10 Security, Backups & Maintenance · SCORM package · 10 min
-
03 WEEK 3 — DEVELOP & LAUNCH 5 lessons
- 11 Introduction to Theme Development · SCORM package · 10 min
- 12 PHP for WordPress · SCORM package · 10 min
- 13 Custom Post Types & Custom Fields · SCORM package · 10 min
- 14 Going Live · SCORM package · 10 min
- 15 Maintenance, Compliance & Earning · SCORM package · 10 min
Your instructor
Helena Marsh
Former COO, Tidewater Group
Helena ran operations for a 2,000-person company for eleven years before moving into teaching and advisory work. She teaches strategy the way it happens in the room: with incomplete information, real constraints and people who disagree.
Keep going