WordPress for Beginners 2023: No-Code WordPress Masterclass

In this lecture, I start off my WordPress course by defining the all-important question: What is WordPress? Get an introduction to the free and open source CMS for designing and managing websites!

The next step in your WordPress journey is deciding where you'd like to install the WordPress CMS. I cover the three main locations for a website installation: your personal computer, a third-party host, and a third-party server. I also discuss which one I recommend based on your level of technical expertise and other factors like cost and convenience.

This lecture contains terms I used throughout this first section of the course, which you can view at any time for your own reference.

If you decide to self-host your WordPress installation on your personal computer, you'll need to set some things up to make sure everything works properly. In this lecture, I walk you through everything you need to know, step-by-step, to accomplish setting up your domain and database.

Now that you have your domain and database set up, you can install the WordPress CMS on your personal computer. I walk you through the process in this lecture, showing you a detailed step-by-step guide to ensure everything runs smoothly.

A domain name is one of the most important features of your website as it's how everyone finds your site. Choosing a domain name requires some thought and important decision making. In this lecture, I cover some important question to ask yourself and answer to ensure you choose a domain name that's right for your site.

In this lecture, I cover the process for finding a third-party host to host your WordPress website. I discuss companies I've used in the past as third-party hosts, plus talk about costs and installation.

If you have hosting purchased through one provider, and a domain name through another provider, this video will show you how to connect the two services to properly display your site. I use Siteground and GoDaddy as the service providers for this video.

Before you dive in to the process of building your website, it's important to do a little planning ahead of time to make sure you know what it is you want out of your site. Planning will make the overall design process smoother while helping you produce a better website. In this lecture I introduce the 5 questions you should be asking yourself when planning your WordPress site.

When designing a WordPress website, it's important to understand the people that will be visiting your site. You can then gear your content towards this audience, which will help improve your site's performance and thus the performance of your business. In this lecture, we answer the important question: Who is my target audience?

What is the main goal you'd like your site to accomplish when visitors land on it? Do you want them to purchase a product? View blog posts? Sign up for a newsletter or contact your business? In this lecture, I explore the important planning question: What is the main goal of my site?

Now that you understand the main goals you want your site to accomplish, you'll need to consider what features your site needs to accomplish these goals. In this lecture, I walk you through the brainstorming process for determining the best features for your WordPress website.

Now that you know the main goals of your site and the features you'll need to accomplish those goals, it's time to figure out what pages you'll need on your site. The right pages can ensure users find the information their looking for, while simultaneously ensuring your business conveys the information it wants to convey. I discuss common pages found on WordPress websites and how to figure out what pages are right for your site.

Perhaps the most important planning question of all is, "What do I want my site to look like?" In this lecture, I help you determine the best fonts, colors, and other visual styling elements for your WordPress site to ensure you create a great looking site that matches your branding or vision.

In this lecture, I review the best practices we covered throughout the planning section to help you create better websites.

Test your knowledge of the best practices and common terminology for planning a WordPress website.

In this lecture, I dive into the all-important process of drawing your website wireframes to give you a rough outline of your website design. I start this series of with the "Home" page, showing you various techniques for laying out your page and linking to other pages of your site. This is part 1 of 2 for the Home page.

In this lecture, I dive into the all-important process of drawing your website wireframes to give you a rough outline of your website design. I start this series of with the "Home" page, showing you various techniques for laying out your page and linking to other pages of your site. This is part 2 of 2 for the Home page.

In this lecture I show you how to log in to the back-end of WordPress, which is where you'll be making edits to your site and creating custom designs.

The very first element you'll notice when you login to the backend of your WordPress site is the Admin Toolbar. This feature, located along the top of the WordPress interface, contains several important features for navigating the backend of your site, creating new content, and more.

In this WordPress customization lecture, which is a continuation of the WordPress Admin Toolbar lecture, I show you how to change your Gravatar image - which is associated with your WordPress admin account.

In this lecture I cover WordPress's "Main Navigation" for the Admin Area. This feature will be your primary means for navigating around the backend of your site. It allows you to access the various work areas for making general changes to your site (like adding pages, adjusting plugin settings, or customizing your theme). Let's explore this important feature!

In this lecture I explain the "work areas" in WordPress. Each page in the backend of the WordPress Admin Area has a work area for performing various functions. For example, the "Pages" work area allows you to view all your site's webpages in a list view, add or remove pages, and edit existing pages. The "Themes" work area lets you view all the downloaded themes for your WordPress CMS. and finally the "Users" work area lets you view user accounts created for your site and edit their settings.

Test your knowledge of the different areas and features of the WordPress admin area layout!

In this lecture I show you how to create your first webpage inside of WordPress, plus provide an introduction to the Block Editor. The Block Editor is important because it allows you to add elements to your webpage and style your pages without needing to code.

In this lecture, I discuss the updates made to the Block Editor's Sidebar Settings in WordPress 6.1 or newer.

In this lecture I discuss the "Settings Sidebar" for the WordPress Block Editor, which contains various settings that allow you to customize your blocks when designing your site. In Part 1, I discuss the discuss the more design-focused features of this sidebar using the Cover block as an example.

In this lecture I discuss the "Settings Sidebar" for the WordPress Block Editor, which contains various settings that allow you to customize your blocks when designing your site. In Part 2, I discuss adding padding to your blogs, as well as setting up alt tags for SEO and anchors for in-page linking.

Put your knowledge of the Block Editor to the test with this quiz!

In this lecture I provide an introduction to Template Parts. Common examples of Template Parts include the Header and Footer found in your site's Templates.

Now that you've been introduced to Template Parts, lest dive in to customizing your template parts! I'll show you how to create a custom design for your site's header to match your branding and improve the functionality of this important section of your site.

Next up, we'll discuss the "Styles" feature found inside the Site Editor. Styles allow you to set common fonts, colors, and layout characteristics across your site. I'll cover the "Typography" section of Styles for this lecture.

In this lecture, I cover the latest updates made to the Typography Styles section for WordPress 6.1!

The next features for Styles inside the Site Editor are the "Colors" and "Layout" features. Colors allow you to set site-wide color schemes for easy access while designing your site. You can use colors from your branding guidelines, or simply select colors you like from the available color tools. I then cover the "Layout" section of the site editor.

Learn about the latest updates to the Colors Styles in WordPress 6.1!

In this lecture, I cover the new features found in the "Layout" section of the Style Editor for WordPress 6.1 (released in 2023).

The last area I'll discuss for the Site Editor is the "Blocks" area for customizing the styles or settings of blocks. Blocks are used to design all the elements of your site and site pages, so this feature is really handy for saving the settings you want to use for commonly used blocks. I then recap the Site Editor to reinforce what you've learned in this lecture.

Test your knowledge of the Site Editor's features with this quiz!

A Homepage is arguably a website's most important page, as it's often the first page site visitors see when landing on your website. In this section of the course, I'll show you how to design your home page from top to bottom, plus show you how to set your homepage to display properly in WordPress.

If the Homepage of a website is the most important page, then the "Hero Image" on the homepage is perhaps the most important element of a website. That's because this design element is the first thing people see when they land on your homepage. In this lecture, I show you how to use the WordPress Block Editor (also known as the Gutenberg Editor) to design a full-width hero image with parallax scrolling.

The next design element for the home page is the "Services" section. For this section, I'll show you how to add multiple columns to a single section. Plus, I show you how to insert images, text, and buttons to your site, and link these elements to the appropriate pages. All using blocks inside the Block Editor and no coding!

In this lecture, I show you how to add a simple full-width image divider to separate content on your home page. I also show you how to add a small caption to the image, while showing off more features in the WordPress 6.0 Block Editor.

We'll now move on to adding a "Latest Posts" section to the homepage to showcase all the latest blog posts we've published on our site. But, wait, we don't have any blog posts on our site... Aha! I'll also be introducing you to adding posts to your site - a feature that's made WordPress famous over the years.

In this lecture, I'll show you how to customize the styling of your Latest Blogs list to include photos and more stylistic elements for headings and text.

The last design element for the homepage before we reach the footer is the "Contact" section. This section will allow users to easily navigate to the Contact page of our site, where they can email the business or give it a call. I will show you how to design the Contact page in a future lecture.

Since WordPress can act as a blog or a professional website, it comes standard with an option to set your homepage as a "Latest Posts" page or as a "Static" homepage. For traditional websites, it's best to have a static homepage that can be custom designed how you want it. In this lecture, I show you how to set your newly design homepage as a static homepage in WordPress 6.0 (it's a little different than it was in previous versions).

In this lecture, we'll return to the Site Editor by creating a new page template from inside the Block Editor. I'll then show you how to further customize your site's header to remove unwanted default elements like the page title and separator that come with the Twenty Twenty Two theme.

In this lecture I move on to customizing our site's footer and copyright section from inside our homepage page template using the Site Editor. I show you how to create a footer with multiple columns that include a site logo, page links, latest posts, and a search bar.

In this lecture we move on from the homepage and begin designing the other pages of our site! I show you how to design an "About" page to tell site visitors about your business or project. I start this series of lectures off by showing you how to design the "Hero Header" for the top of the page using the Block Editor.

For the next design section on the About Page, I'll be showing you how to create a "Who We Are" section that includes multiple columns, a title, and some text to create a nice separation between the hero header and the "What We Do" section (coming up next).

In this lecture I show you how to design the "What We Do" section of the page, also called the "Services" section. In this section, we'll be adding a section title and separator along with 3 rows - each containing an image, paragraph text, and a button. You'll learn how to combine many blocks into a group, how to add background colors to individual sections, plus how to duplicate and rearrange entire block groups. This video is part 1 of 2.

In this lecture I show you how to design the "What We Do" section of the page, also called the "Services" section. In this section, we'll be adding a section title and separator along with 3 rows - each containing an image, paragraph text, and a button. You'll learn how to combine many blocks into a group, how to add background colors to individual sections, plus how to duplicate and rearrange entire block groups. This video is part 2 of 2.

It's time to cover Reusable Blocks! This handy WordPress 6.0 feature lets you save block areas to reuse at any time throughout your site. Similar to templates, Reusable Blocks will update site-wide when you make a change to any one instance of that Reusable Block. This is handy for saving time when you have the same block setup across multiple pages.

It's now time to move on to the Portfolio page, where you can upload image galleries to your website! In this first of 3 lectures, I'll show you how to add your first image gallery to your WordPress site. Plus, I provide tips that improve the performance of your images on the web.

In this lecture, I show you how to customize the settings of your image gallery to achieve your desired look. WordPress's Gutenberg editor provides tons of built-in customization options for your galleries.

In this lecture, I review the process for adding image galleries to your site in order to add multiple image galleries to a single page. I also show you how to complete your Portfolio page design by adding a page footer.

Did you know that WordPress 6.0 has an auto-generated option for adding a blog page to your website? I cover this method for those of you who want to quickly add a blog feed via a dedicated blog page to your site.

In this lecture I show you how to assign categories and tags to your blog posts in WordPress 6.0. These features allow you to better sort your blogs when using features like the "Latest Posts" block to display posts in certain section of your webpages. Tags provide detailed keywords of what is in your articles, allowing for users to more easily find the posts they're looking for.

In this lecture, I show you how to add a blog feed to your custom blog page that displays all your latest posts. I also show you how to customize the style of the feed and change what content it displays.

In this lecture I show you how to add a sidebar to your custom blog page, including a live Twitter feed that displays the latest tweets from any Twitter page.

Now that all of our webpage are designed for our WordPress website, it's time to customize the main navigation so that users can easily navigate to the different pages. I show you how to access the Navigation block for your site's header, plus how to add or remove navigation items, add submenu items, and style the colors of your navigation.

In this lecture, I provide an introduction to WordPress Plugins! I talk about what plugins are, who makes them, and how they can enhance your website. Plugins add additional features and functionality not found in your default theme. They are a great way to improve your site and give your site visitors what they want. They can also help with your SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, to help you improve your search rankings and get more traffic.

In this lecture, I show you how to update the plugins and themes installed with WordPress, as well as how to update to the latest version of WordPress.

In this lecture, I show you how to add a Google Maps feature to your contact page without using a plugin. I also show you how to make the feature responsive so it looks good on all screen sizes.

In this lecture, I provide an introduction to the WordPress Security section of this course! This area of the course is designed to help make your site safer from hackers and unauthorized users.

In this lecture, I show you step-by-step how to change your admin username and password on your site, and discuss how this can help bolster your site security.