Welcome to the Pootlepress Academy
Learn at your own pace with our online WordPress training videos. These videos are the result of many requests that we have received from our WordPress training course attendees. As an Academy Member you will also get access to the Pootlepress Academy support forums, where you can ask us specific WordPress related questions.
The cost to join the Pootlepress Academy is £49.95 per year, and this will give you access to all our online training courses and our ‘members only’ support forums.
WordPress Tutorials
We will be releasing new courses every month in 2012 and our schedule for new tutorials is below. Academy Members will also be able to request specific training courses and we will create the ones with the most demand.
- WordPress Essentials (now available)
- How to add a Forum to your WordPress website (now available)
- How to build an Online Shop with WordPress (now available)
- Woothemes Canvas masterclass (now available)
- Woothemes Whitelight theme tutorial - how to build a great website for your business or organisation (now available)
- How to build a Business Directory with WordPress (now available)
- SEO and WordPress (now available)
- How to build an online-community with WordPress and Buddypress
- How to build a website for your photography
- How to build a website for your band or music group
Featuring: 16 videos
Running time: 1 hour
The WordPress Essentials course includes a walk-through of common tasks in WordPress, from installing WordPress onto a self-hosted site, to tutorials on creating content (pages, posts, and widgets), inserting pictures and videos, installing and using plugins, using themes, and incorporating search engine optimization (SEO).
- How to install WordPress
- Creating content with WordPress
- Creating pages, posts and widgets
- How to insert hyperlinks
- How to insert pictures and videos
- Creating a website with an integrated blog
- How to create and arrange WordPress menus
- How to use WordPress themes
- How to use WordPress plugins
- Optimise your website for Search Engines (SEO)
Sample ‘WordPress Essentials’ Tutorial
Featuring: 2 videos
Running time: 10 mins
This tutorial shows you how to add a Forum to your WordPress website.
- How to install the bbPress forum plugin
- How to set up bbPress
- How to configure your forums
- How to add your forums to your menus
Featuring: 13 videos
Running time: 40 mins
This course teaches you step by step how to set up and run your very own online shop built on WordPress. To see a live example of what you will build take a look at www.pootlepress-store.co.uk. This tutorial uses WooCommerce, the great new ecommerce plugin from Woothemes and the commercial themes Canvas ($70) and Canvas Commerce ($20).
- Introduction
- Installation of Woocommerce
- Configuration of WooCommerce
- Installing your Shop Themes
- Setting up your Products
- Selling simple Products
- Selling virtual Products (ebooks, mp3)
- Selling Products with options (e.g different sizes)
- Integrating Payment Gateways (e.g PayPal)
- Designing your Shop
- Customising your Design
- Creating Product Categories
- Creating sub navigation
- Adding Shop Widgets
- Adding a product slider to your home page
Sample ‘how to build your own online shop’ Tutorial
Featuring: 17 videos
Running time: 55 mins
This course teaches you step by step how to get the most out of the Canvas Theme framework from Woothemes.
- Introduction
- Installation of Canvas
- Configuration of Canvas
- Setting options
- Designing the header, navigation and changing fonts
- Positioning logo and styling widgets
- Using Woo widgets
- Connecting your website to social media
- How to create professional looking web pages
- How to create a great looking FAQ page
- Mastering column layout
- Page templates and why they are important
- How to add a contact form
- How to add a slider to your homepage
- How to add sliders to specific pages
- How to create a featured slider on your blog
- How to add widgets to specific pages
- How to create a great looking Portfolio page
Sample ‘Woothemes Canvas Masterclass’ Tutorial
Tutorial 5: Woothemes Whitelight theme tutorial
Featuring: 9 videos
Running time: 42 mins
The Woothemes Whitelight theme tutorial includes everything you need to know to build a great looking site for your business or organisation. It features a clean and responsive design, customized modular homepage, an image slider, and integrated e-commerce with WooCommerce.
To see an example of this theme in action take a look at this website we’ve built with the Woothemes Whitelight theme – click here to view.
- Introduction to the theme
- Installation and configuration
- How theme options work
- Setting up components
- How to set up your homepage
- How to add widgets to your homepage
- How to set up features and blog posts on your homepage
- How to insert a slider
- How to personalise the design
- How to upload your own logo
- How to set up menus
- How to set up your own shop
Sample ‘Woothemes Whitelight theme’ Tutorial
Tutorial 6: How to create a Business Directory with WordPress
Featuring: 13 videos
Running time: 25 mins
This tutorial teaches you ‘step by step’ how to build a great looking Business Directory. It uses the brilliant Listings theme from Woothemes. The Listings theme is our favorite way to build a Business Directory with WordPress. To see an example of what you will learn to build take a look at this website – click here to view.
- Introduction to the theme
- Installation and configuration
- A look at Listing options
- How to create your directory
- How to organise listings
- How to configure your home page
- How to add a featured slider
- How to customise the design
- How to customise your menu
- How to customise search options
- How to create an image gallery for each business listing
- How to create an ‘upload your listings page’
Sample ‘how to create a business directory’ Tutorial
Tutorial 7: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and WordPress
Featuring: 6 videos
Running time: 31 mins
This tutorial teaches you how to optimise your WordPress websites so that you get the best possible results in Google.
- Google Search results explained
- How Google ranks your site
- A great way to do your keyword research
- How to check on your competitors
- How to optimise your WordPress website
- How to use the ‘Yoast SEO plugin’ for WordPress
- How to track your ranking
- How to check your site for SEO problems
- An SEO checklist
And some testimonials…
“What a great set of tutorials, easy to follow, clear explanations and useful visuals. This set really does take you through from ignorance to building a WordPress website – highly recommended!”
Holly Tarquini
Bath Film Festival
“Thank you SOOO much for making the Whitelight videos…they totally solved every question I had. I followed along step by step, and after a little while I had gotten my entire site set up! You saved me so much time and made things so easy…I don’t know how to thank you enough. I think it’s quite safe to say that I would never ever figured out how to get all those Woo-Component steps done unless you walked me through it and showed me exactly what to do.
Whitelight is so much more complicated than Headlines was…so I even though I had built WordPress blogs before, I found myself completely lost with this new theme (but Whitlelight is so great I just had to use it!). The WooThemes tutorials were no help at all because they’re so general, and Whitelight has about a million special tricks. Now that WordPress and Woo Framework are getting more and more sophisticated, I’ll definitely profit from watching all your other WordPress video tutorials, too.”
Sherm Cohen
Disney and SpongeBob Storyboard Artist
“I must say what a hidden gem Pootlepress is, I learnt so much in the one-days training, in fact, it became invaluable knowledge when our previous websites became corrupted, and after the initial panic, I managed to set-up our two main websites within 2 days. The Academy is an amazing resource, easy to use, extremely helpful; in fact, you should put your price up.
I am so glad I googled WordPress courses
Bill Goss
Impressions Print & Publish
“The Academy is a great way to learn WordPress without trawling through pages and pages of information. Key points delivered in a logical and easy to access way that will get you up and running with wordpress in no time.”
Kevin Rodgers C.Psychol
Occupational Psychologist
“I have recently joined the Pootlepress Academy and worked my way through the 15 videos for tutorial 1, WordPress Essentials. They are excellent and have helped me develop a basic website for my girlfriend’s driving school.”
Michael Mangroo
I recently purchased woothemes whitelight theme and was searching on the internet for a site that had actually utilised the whitelight theme. Although I did not find one I came across the Pootlepress site which was offering amongst other wordpress related tutorials, nine on building a site using the whitelight theme video tutorials. Being a bit suspicious of the low price of £49.95 per year I emailed Jamie and asked if it was possible to build a site by just watching the tutorials. I received his affirmative reply, subscribed to the academy and watched the videos….
Within a few hours I managed to create the site although I do need to add more content to complete
Now–for anyone else unsure on joining the academy I am aged 54 with a little knowledge of wordpress. Just over one year ago I attended a one day wordpress course (not Pootlepress) which I found the pace of the course too quick as I am slow with a keyboard and unfortunately have a limited attention span!
The video tutorials are easy to follow and understand. Ideal for who wants to work at their own pace!
Well done Jamie and the team.
Kevin Slowther
Managing Director A19 Insurance in Tyne and Wear
