WordPress Intermediate Skills - The Next Ste…

Unlock Your WordPress Potential: A Personal Journey to Mastery

If you’re like me, you’ve probably spent countless hours learning WordPress, tweaking sites, and making things work just right. After teaching WordPress for over 20 years, I’ve met hundreds of passionate learners just like you. Along the way, I kept asking my students one simple question:

"What do you think is missing from most WordPress courses—something every WordPress user really needs to know?"

The answers were enlightening, and this course is the result of that feedback. It’s designed for people who already know their way around WordPress but are looking to take their skills to the next level. This isn’t a beginner’s guide—it’s for those who want to deepen their understanding and really unlock the potential of WordPress.

Here’s what we’ll explore together:

Going Beyond the Basics: Learn how to access WordPress files on your server using FTP or cPanel. Discover the power of child themes—how to create and customize them to make your site truly your own.
Mastering Pages and Templates: Dive into parent-child relationships, template hierarchy, conditional statements, and creating custom page and post templates.
Site Structure & Optimization: Improve your site’s speed, mobile friendliness, and user experience. Learn why redirects matter and how to convert HTTP to HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt.
Design & Media Tips: Uncover the secrets of dynamic widgets, custom sidebars, page builders, and favicons. Plus, make the most of the Media Library and image galleries.
User Roles & Compliance: Understand WordPress users, roles, and even how to create custom roles. Plus, make sure your site is GDPR-compliant.
Marketing Essentials: Use autoresponders effectively, build a strong site structure, and enhance CTR and time on site through thoughtful adjustments.
Problem-Solving & Staging Sites: Learn to troubleshoot issues quickly and create staging sites for safe testing before going live.
Developer Insights: Discover the built-in tools in Chrome and Firefox that let you inspect and adjust your site’s code on the fly.

By the end of this course, you won’t just know how to use WordPress—you’ll understand how to make it work for you in powerful, practical ways. You’ll gain the confidence to build websites that are not only functional but optimized, secure, and designed to impress.

I’m excited to take this journey with you. Let’s turn your good WordPress skills into great ones. Ready to get started?

What's inside

Learning objectives

Intermediate skills to take your wordpress skills to the next level.
About the wordpress files installed on your server
The importance of child themes and how to create them.
More information about wordpress pages, including parent-child relationship, page templates, template hierarchy, conditional statements, custom page templates and custom post templates.
Why redirects are important and how to implement them.
Quickly converting your site to https if supported by your web host (most do).
How to speed up your site, and how to check if it is mobile friendly.
Design stuff like dynamic widgets and sidebars, page builders, google maps without plugins and much more.
Better media library control and image galleries.

Wordpress users and roles, plus how to create your own roles.
Gdpr - everyone needs to be compliant.
How autoresponders work and why you should use them.
Creating different site structures using wordpress.
Why time-on-site & ctr are important and how to monitor them and tweak elements on your page to improve these metrics.
How to create a staging platform to work on your site behind the scenes until you want to push changes to the live site.
Wordpress developers tools built into google chrome, and how to use them to tweak your page design.
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Intermediate skills to take your wordpress skills to the next level.
About the wordpress files installed on your server
The importance of child themes and how to create them.
More information about wordpress pages, including parent-child relationship, page templates, template hierarchy, conditional statements, custom page templates and custom post templates.
Why redirects are important and how to implement them.
Quickly converting your site to https if supported by your web host (most do).
How to speed up your site, and how to check if it is mobile friendly.
Design stuff like dynamic widgets and sidebars, page builders, google maps without plugins and much more.
Better media library control and image galleries.
Wordpress users and roles, plus how to create your own roles.
Gdpr - everyone needs to be compliant.
How autoresponders work and why you should use them.
Creating different site structures using wordpress.
Why time-on-site & ctr are important and how to monitor them and tweak elements on your page to improve these metrics.
How to create a staging platform to work on your site behind the scenes until you want to push changes to the live site.
Wordpress developers tools built into google chrome, and how to use them to tweak your page design.
Show more
Show less

Syllabus

Introduction

This lecture introduces your instructor, and what you will learn in the course.

Understand how WordPress files are organized on the server, and what they all do.

Wordpress is made up of a bunch of files, connected and talking to a database. This lecture shows you the main files and folders that are downloadable from the Wordpress website.

This lecture shows how to setup FTP software to access your web server and the files and folders that power WordPress.

cPanel has a useful File Manager which can be used to manipulate files and folders on the server. This lecture gives you a brief overview of using this tool.

This lecture looks at the files and folders that WordPress installs on your server. I'll give you an overview of what these files and folders are for, and tell you why you should care.

If you get serious about customizing your WordPress site, chances are you will come across the functions.php file. This lecture looks at what it is.

Child themes are a great idea if you plan on editing your theme files. That way, when you update the parent theme, your customizations wont be over-written.

In the last lecture we used a plugin to manually create a child theme. However, you can manually create one if you prefer. Let's see how that is done.

WordPress posts are often misunderstood and misused. This lecture summarizes the features of Pages and when you should use them.

Although pages cannot be assigned to categories or be tagged, they can be organized into a hierarchy. This lecture shows you how.

Creating full width pages can be as easy as selecting an option in your themes settings, or it can be more complicated than that.

This lecture introduces the idea of page templates, what they are for and how we can create custom page templates.

Before we can create a custom template, we need to know what to call it so that Wordpress will use the template instead of the default. We also need to know which of the default templates we should use as the starting point of our new template. This lecture covers all this.

Conditional statements allow us to make quick edits to templates without having to create entirely new templates. This lecture looks at these statements, and how boolean operators can modify them.

This lecture looks at how you can create custom page templates. Using the example of removing a sidebar from a specific page, you'll create the desired effect in three different ways.

In this lecture we'll see how easy it i to create templates that can be used, and re-used, across multiple posts (and pages) in the dashboard.

This lecture looks at why redirects are so important to webmasters.

301 redirects are really useful, and easy to implement. This lecture takes you through the process of adding a redirect to your htaccess file.

There is a very good free WordPress plugin that you might want to use to manage your 301 redirects. This lecture shows you the basics of the Redirection plugin.

Short Links Plugin was previously known as Pretty Links, and is a great little plugin for creating redirects.

This lecture introduces SSL and the HTTPS secure connection.

Let's Encrypt is a free SSL certificate that many web hosts are compatible with. This lecture shows you how to set this up.

Once you have set up your SSL certificate, you need to check that you are getting the green padlock in a web browser. This lecture looks at what can go wrong and how to fix it.

Mobile-friendly websites have the advantage in Google. This lecture explains why, and how to check that your site is mobile-friendly.

The length of time it takes to load a web page is very important if you want to retain visitors on your site. No one likes sitting around waiting for a web page to load. This lecture introduces the issue which we will explore in this section of the course.

GTMetrix is a great tool to tell us why we may have slow loading pages. This lecture shows you how to use this tool.

Image optimization is a badly understood part of making your site faster. This lecture looks at what you should be doing before you even upload your images to your wordpress website.

This lecture introduces the idea of caching.

If you are hosting your site on a Litespeed server, use the Litespeed caching plugin. This lecture shows how to set that up.

If you are not hosting your site on a Litespeed server, use the W3 Total Cache plugin. This lecture shows how to set that up.

This lecture looks at a plugin that will allow you to selectively switch off JS and CSS on some or all pages. This can speed up the loading of your pages even more.

This lecture introduces the idea of Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and the benefits they provide for your website.

I recommend you consider Cloudflare as the CDN for your own site. This lecture looks in a little more detail what Cloudflare can do for you.

There are different ways you can enable Cloudflare on your own site. This lecture shows my recommended way of adding a domain to Cloudflare.

This lecture gives you a quick tour of the Cloudflare interface. I'll point out the main areas you need to be aware of.

This video introduces the Design Stuff section of the course, and tells you what we'll be covering.

This lecture looks at what you need to look for when choosing a theme, and gives a little advice on finding a theme that is right for your site.

In this lecture I want to talk about dynamic widgets, which give you the power to add widgets to specific parts of your site, instead of globally.

Custom sidebars is another great plugin for customizing the sidebars used throughout your site, allowing you to create unique sidebars to be used in specific areas of your website.

Jump links are great tools for moving visitors around your pages quickly. They are really easy to implement in WordPress.

Google reCaptcha is a free tool that you can use to cut down on spam submissions on your website. This video shows how to setup Google's reCaptcha, ready for integration with plugins.

What are page builders and how do they differ from what we had before? This lecture looks at Page Builders.

Gutenberg is the block editor built into WordPress. This video gives you a quick demonstration of how it works to build a simple page.

This video will show you how to build a simple page using Elementor. This is my page builder of choice, and the free version is really powerful.

Elementor Pro is a paid upgrade, but it does add in features to allow you to create your own Wordpress themes. This video shows a basic overview of that.

Google maps can help your visitors locate (and navigate to) a location that is important to your web page. This lecture shows how you can add Google maps without needing to use a plugin.

It can be really useful sometimes to re-order the posts. This can be done in a couple of ways. This lecture shows when it is a good idea, and how to do it.

All websites need this page. This lecture explains why, and how you should go about crafting one that speaks to your visitors.

Favicons are easy to add to your site, but make sure they are the correct dimension of they will look distorted.

There are a lot of free favicon generators out there. Let me show you my favourite, and how to use it.

Finally, let's install the Favicon on our site and check it out.

This lecture looks at a few little tricks to using the media library to its full potential.

This lecture looks at image galleries. How to create them and how to edit them.

Users that have access to the dashboard have a role assigned to them. These roles define their privileges inside the dashboard. This video introduces this idea.

This lecture goes through the WordPress default roles to highlight their capabilities.

WordPress plugins give us the power to create and edit our own roles. This lecture shows you one such plugin.

Most webmasters have heard (and worried about) GDPR. This section of the course looks at GDPR and how to implement it on your site. We'll start off with an overview of GDPR.

There are six main principles of GDPR. This lecture goes through them to help you better understand what GDPR is all about.

GDPR is all about protecting an individual's rights. This lecture goes through the 8 main rights that GDPR is designed to protect.

The question I get asked most about GDPR, "Does it affect me?". This lecture explores that question.

WordPress plugins are there to extend the basic features of this great content management system, but in terms of GDPR, they can cause you problems. This lecture covers what you need to know.

There are some plugins out there that claim to make your site compliant with GDPR. This lecture looks at the most popular one.

The privacy policy is the main document you have to ensure compliance with GDPR. This lecture looks at the main points to consider in your Privacy Policy.

This lecture gives you a short GDPR checklist to ensure you are compliant.

In this section of the course I want to look at autoresponders and how you can use them on your website.

In this lecture I'll show you how to set up the simple autoresponder on your web host to reply to emails when you are out-of-office.

This video looks at the options you have for autoresponders.

This video is an introduction to the site structure section of the course.

This lecture looks at the tools you have when setting up a site structure.

Tags are often abused. This lecture explains what they are and how you should be using them.

This lecture builds on the last one which explored the tools available to structure a site, to create a typical WordPress website structure.

This video shows how to setup WordPress as a typical blog website.

In this video, we'll set WordPress up as a typical business website.

This lecture discusses what a sitemap is, who it is for, and why it is important.

Yoast SEO is a plugin that has many uses. Creating and managing a sitemap is one of them. This video shows how you can customize what is included on your sitemap.

Click-Through Rates (CTR) are incredibly important if you want to maximize your traffic coming from the search engines. This video shows you how you can check CTR for any page on your site, and how to go about trying to improve that CTR.

Time on site can be a good indicator of problems with a page. This tutorial shows you where you can find the relevant data inside Google Analytics to help identify these pages.

Plugins are usually the cause of a problem suddenly appearing. Let's look in a little more detail.

WordPress does put your site into maintenance mode whenever it updates itself, plugins, or themes. Occasionally your site can be stuck in this mode. This lecture shows how to fix this, and how to put your site into maintenance mode yourself.

Website staging is where you have a copy of your site that you can work on, without affecting your live site. When you have made changes that you want to make live, you can push those changes to the live site.

Many web hosts offer staging as an option in cPanel (and Softaculous). This lecture shows how you can implement this.

Is your web host does not offer staging, you can use a plugin instead.

Chrome developer tools can help us look at the code behind our website, and allows us to tweak design. This lecture introduces the tools.

Career center

Learners who complete WordPress Intermediate Skills - The Next Steps will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:

WordPress Developer

As a WordPress Developer, you build and customize websites, often diving into core files and theme structures. This course is specifically designed for you, elevating your skills beyond basic page building. It meticulously covers how to access server files via FTP or cPanel, create robust child themes for sustainable customization, and master custom page and post templates using template hierarchy and conditional statements. You will also learn to utilize built-in browser developer tools to inspect and adjust code on the fly, create staging sites for safe development, and troubleshoot issues, ensuring you can build functional, optimized, and secure websites. This course provides practical insights for a WordPress Developer to confidently handle complex site architecture and advanced customization.

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Freelance Web Creator

A Freelance Web Creator builds and manages websites for various clients, requiring a versatile skill set. This course is invaluable for a Freelance Web Creator, as it covers the breadth of advanced WordPress skills needed to deliver high-quality, customized projects. From accessing server files and creating child themes for unique designs to mastering custom page templates and optimizing site performance, you will gain practical expertise. The course also addresses critical aspects like implementing HTTPS, ensuring GDPR compliance, setting up staging sites for safe development, and troubleshooting common issues, enabling you to build functional, optimized, secure, and impressive websites for any client.

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Website Manager

A Website Manager oversees the overall health, performance, and functionality of an organization's web presence. This course directly enhances the skills needed for a Website Manager by exploring site structure, optimizing for speed and mobile-friendliness, and implementing crucial security measures like HTTPS conversion. You will gain proficiency in managing WordPress user roles, including creating custom roles, and ensuring GDPR compliance, which is vital for any modern website. The course also equips you with problem-solving techniques and the ability to set up staging sites, allowing you to maintain a secure, efficient, and well-managed online platform. It’s an ideal step to make sites work for you in powerful, practical ways.

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Search Engine Optimization Specialist

A Search Engine Optimization Specialist works to improve a website's visibility and ranking in search results. This course provides significant value for a Search Engine Optimization Specialist by delving into critical on-page and technical SEO factors. You will gain expertise in making sites mobile-friendly, speeding up page load times using caching and CDNs, and implementing essential 301 redirects. Converting to HTTPS with Let's Encrypt, structuring sites effectively with pages and templates, and understanding how to monitor and improve Click-Through Rates and time on site through thoughtful adjustments are also covered. This knowledge helps you unlock potential to build optimized and high-ranking websites.

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Web Designer

As a Web Designer, you focus on the visual aesthetics and user experience of websites. This course helps you elevate your design capabilities with WordPress, covering advanced customization techniques. You will learn to create and customize child themes, master dynamic widgets and custom sidebars to tailor layouts, and effectively utilize popular page builders like Gutenberg and Elementor. The course also explores media management, image galleries, and favicon creation, all crucial for visual appeal. Furthermore, understanding the built-in developer tools in browsers allows a Web Designer to inspect and adjust site code on the fly, ensuring designs are not only impressive but also optimized and functional.

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Digital Marketing Specialist

A Digital Marketing Specialist develops and implements online strategies to promote products or services. This course may be useful for a Digital Marketing Specialist as it explores critical website elements that impact marketing efforts. You will learn to effectively use autoresponders for engagement, build strong site structures that support marketing funnels, and enhance key performance indicators like Click-Through Rate and time on site through thoughtful page adjustments. The insights into site optimization, mobile-friendliness, and user experience directly contribute to more effective marketing campaigns, helping to build websites designed to impress and convert visitors into leads or customers.

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E-commerce Store Manager

An E-commerce Store Manager is responsible for the operational success of an online retail business. For those managing a store built on WordPress (such as with WooCommerce), this course may be useful by providing crucial site management and optimization skills. You will learn to improve site speed and mobile-friendliness, which are vital for sales and customer experience. Understanding site structure, page templates for product displays, and media management can enhance product presentation. Gaining knowledge of user roles for staff, GDPR compliance for customer data, and troubleshooting common issues will help an E-commerce Store Manager maintain a functional, secure, and high-performing online store.

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Technical Support Specialist

A Technical Support Specialist often assists users with website issues, making deep knowledge of platforms and server environments essential. This course may be useful for a Technical Support Specialist, particularly those supporting WordPress users, by providing an in-depth understanding of the platform's backend. You will learn how WordPress files are organized on the server, how to access them via FTP or cPanel, and methods for troubleshooting common problems, including fixing sites stuck in maintenance mode. The ability to create staging sites for testing solutions and understanding site optimization for speed and mobile-friendliness would significantly enhance a Technical Support Specialist's problem-solving capabilities.

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Web Security Analyst

A Web Security Analyst identifies and mitigates vulnerabilities in web applications and systems. This course may be useful for a Web Security Analyst, as it covers fundamental aspects of WordPress security and compliance. You will learn the importance of SSL and how to implement HTTPS conversion using Let's Encrypt, a vital security measure. The course delves into GDPR compliance, which involves understanding data protection principles and user rights, and how WordPress plugins can impact this. Furthermore, understanding WordPress user roles, including creating custom roles, and knowledge of server files (FTP, cPanel) helps a Web Security Analyst in securing the site and troubleshooting potential security issues.

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Marketing Operations Specialist

A Marketing Operations Specialist optimizes marketing processes and technology. This course may be useful for a Marketing Operations Specialist, especially when the website is a core part of the marketing tech stack. You will gain a deeper understanding of WordPress site optimization for speed and mobile-friendliness, directly impacting campaign performance. The course covers marketing essentials like using autoresponders, building strong site structures, and improving Click-Through Rates and time on site, all critical for effective lead management and conversion funnels. This knowledge enables a Marketing Operations Specialist to better integrate, manage, and optimize the website as a powerful marketing asset.

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Content Manager

A Content Manager is responsible for the planning, creation, and publication of content on a website. This course may be useful for a Content Manager, as it provides a deeper understanding of how content is technically structured and presented in WordPress. You will learn about page parent-child relationships, template hierarchy, and creating custom post and page templates, which allows for more strategic content display. Mastering the Media Library and image galleries is also covered, ensuring visual content is optimized. Furthermore, insights into site structure, Click-Through Rates, and time on site help a Content Manager tweak elements on pages for improved engagement and user experience.

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Online Course Instructor

An Online Course Instructor leverages digital platforms to deliver educational content, often operating their own website. This course may be helpful for an Online Course Instructor who uses WordPress for their platform, enabling them to customize and optimize their learning environment. You'll learn to manage media, create custom page templates for course layouts, and structure your site for clear navigation. Understanding autoresponders can enhance student communication, while GDPR compliance is essential for data privacy. The course also covers site speed and mobile-friendliness, ensuring a seamless experience for learners, making your platform functional, optimized, and impressive.

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User Experience Designer

A User Experience Designer focuses on creating intuitive and satisfying user journeys on websites. This course may be helpful for a User Experience Designer by providing practical knowledge of how to implement design and optimization principles within WordPress. You will explore site speed and mobile-friendliness, which are crucial for positive user interactions. Learning about dynamic widgets, custom sidebars, and page builders empowers you to craft engaging layouts. Additionally, understanding how to use built-in browser developer tools to inspect and adjust page design helps a User Experience Designer refine interfaces and ensure the website is not only functional but also optimized and designed to impress users.

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Product Manager

A Product Manager guides the development of products, requiring a comprehensive understanding of their technical capabilities and user impact. This course may be helpful for a Product Manager involved with web-based products or platforms, particularly those utilizing WordPress. It offers insights into site optimization, performance (speed, mobile-friendliness), and technical architecture such as child themes and custom templates. Understanding user roles, GDPR compliance, and the ability to troubleshoot and utilize staging sites equips a Product Manager to make more informed decisions, communicate effectively with development teams, and ensure the product is functional, secure, and designed to impress users.

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Community Manager

A Community Manager fosters and manages online communities, often using dedicated platforms. If your community platform is built on WordPress, this course may be useful as it provides a deeper understanding of the system. You will learn about managing WordPress users and roles, including how to create custom roles, which is essential for governing community access and permissions. Insights into building effective site structures, optimizing for engagement metrics like time on site and Click-Through Rate, and troubleshooting typical website issues will help a Community Manager ensure a smooth and engaging experience for community members. GDPR compliance is also critical for user data protection.

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