February 29, 2012, London Bridge, London. Women Unlimited and Springmedia, a london digital marketing agency, are running a workshop to help you create your own website in 1 day. During this workshop, you will create your own website using WordPress.  WordPress is a blogging platform that is used by people all over the world to manage their websites and blogs – and also the platform that Women Unlimited is built on!

Please note this workshop is open to both men and women.

We will provide the platform for you to work on for the day, or if you would prefer to work on your own website, we can upload wordpress to your webspace or provide hosting with installation for a fantastic price.  You choose the package that is right for you.  So when you come along on the day you are able to get right into the fun stuff of building your website.

We will help you define your menu, choose your design, show you how to change your designs, how to add functionality without ever needing to get your hands dirty with the code.

WordPress workshop. We  will take you through the process of creating a website or blog using WordPress.  It is an incredibly flexible system that gives you the chance to manage and update your own website at will.  This is the 6th time we’ve run this workshop and you can see some of the fantastic sites that have been created by some of our previous delegates below.

What you will NOT learn:

Firstly, (and this is really important), you will NOT be learning how to write html or coding language.  WordPress has an easy to use interface, everything is available to you through an easy to use administration panel. Using plugins and widget, WordPress takes all the tricky coding out of your hands.

We specialise in making technology simple and will be on hand through the whole day to show you and assist you.  This is a practical course in the extreme in that at the end of the 6 hours you will have your own website that you can be proud of.  That will look professional, that will be easy to update (as WordPress will be your content management system), and will be Google friendly!  What more could you ask for?!

WordPress agenda items

1. How WordPress works
2. How to add templates to your site
3. Choosing and applying your design
4. How to add pages to your site
5. Creating your navigation so that it makes sense
6. How to add and remove elements from your site
7. How to add functionality to your site (ie Twitter, Google sitemap – don’t worry, we’ll give you a few of our favourites and show you where to find the rest)
8. Where to find more information

How will it work?

You can bring your own laptop to the workshop or use the computers onsite.  We will provide you with all the software that you need and the templates that you will be using.  For the purposes of this workshop, you will need to use the templates that we have provided as they have been chosen for their quality and suitability for business sites.  However, we will direct you to other sites where you can choose from thousands of other designs (most of them free!)

What you will need to have in place

All of these things  listed are necessary, but we are happy to talk you through the requirements and how to get them on a one to one basis with each person who books on the course.

Hosting: You will need to have hosting in place if you want to work on your own website and not just any hosting, you need Linux hosting with a MySQL database. Typically this costs about £5 per month (and we are offering this as an option at £50 per annum). We will provide a working wordpress installation for you to work on during the workshop.

Laptop: If you bring your own, please make sure you have a wifi connection.

Domain: Not explicitly necessary to build the website, but your site can’t go live without a name.  We can also go through how to connect your domain to your hosting company, set up your emails etc – we recommend UKreg for domain purchasing.  Never let your web developer buy your domain as you are likely to pay over the market rate and this will become one of your most important assets and you want to make sure you own it completely.

Images: As part of the workshop we will show you were to find images, but will not be able to spend a lot of time on this.  If you would like to have specific images on your site, we recommend you purchase or source them in advance.  Best site for this is http://www.istockphoto.com

Content: Ideally you will have your own content to add to the site.  But don’t it stop you if you don’t – we will provide you with dummy text that you can change at any time.

Who is this for?

• Anyone who wants to create their own blog
• Service based business such as accountants, Virtual PA’s, Coaches, Marketing Consultants, Graphic Designers etc
• Anyone who is interested in creating their own sites for internet marketing

Type of sites this workshop is this not for

• E-commerce sites (sorry, while it can be done, it is out of scope to create this type of site in a day)
• Payment based sites – see above

WordPress is one of the most powerful tools on the internet today and once you have the skills to create your own website, your only limitation is your own imagination.

Logistics:

Where: LMG Training and Development, 202 Blackfriars Road, Southwark, SE1 8NJ (click here to see a map, it’s about a 10 minute walk from London Bridge, 8 mins from Waterloo and 2 minutes from Southwark)
Date & time: February 29, 2012 10:00 – 5:00
Cost: £145.00

Previous delegates websites

But don’t take our word for it!  Here are some of the sites developed by our previous delegates

WordPress is a (free!) blogging platform that is used by people all over the world to manage their websites and blogs – and also the platform that Women Unlimited is built on! This is the third time we’ve run this workshop now so now we can show you some of the fantastic sites that our previous delegates have created. These are website that any new business would be proud of. A lot of work has gone into these websites but it has really paid off!

… and some feedback …

“I attended the ‘Build Your Own Website In Word Press’ workshop a couple of weeks ago, and apart from a few minor problems which were easily overcome I now have a fully functioning, totally fantastic Word Press website! I love it, it’s easy to use and have really enjoyed putting it together. I really wanted to take control of my website, because things change sometimes daily and it was important for me to be in front of the curve as far as new developments are concerned. Julie has been absolutely brilliant (and very patient) in helping me to do this – I do find technology challenging, but I decided to take up the challenge and it’s absolutely fantastic to actually get a result for a change. I definitely recommend everyone to come on this course, it’s money very well spent.

Thanks again, and now looking to upload some audio having just worked out how to use Audacity to record an MP3 – there’s no stopping me now!”  Wendy Dashwood Quick written on June 15 after attending the previous workshop on June 4.  www.resolutioncoaching.co.uk

Not to sound melodramatic, but taking the ‘Build your own website or blog in WordPress‘ course with Women Unlimited was seriously like a weight being lifted off my chest. I’d had experience running WordPress sites before, but invariably ended up wasting hours trying to figure out what became obvious in a matter of minutes on the course. In just one day, Julie and Viv managed to give me the tools to now be able to create and manage WordPress sites independently. Unlike other courses where info is piecemeal and there’s a DVD to buy at the end, Women Unlimited’s approach is to give you everything they can – as well as free support phone calls and webinars – to make sure you’re needs have been tailored to. Basically, I couldn’t recommend it more and just wish I’d seen the course sooner.

Christian McLaughlin, producer/director, Dakus Films