Workshops

We are currently working on a Troubleshooting workshop, aimed at experienced WordPress users who need a little bit of encouragement and education to be confident in their ability to troubleshoot broken WordPress sites. This is a very specific course, and is not a new user workshop.

Our first pilot workshop was available to women (as part of a diversity initiative) in Washington, D.C. the weekend of March 1-3, 2013. The second will be available to women in San Diego, CA on March 24, 2013. We will be offering more courses in the future.

Prerequisites

For this course to make sense, students need to have the following experience:

• Currently the admin of at least one self-hosted WordPress site (i.e., not on WordPress.com), with access to your hosting account and domain registration.
• Know how to edit settings, manage widgets and menus, update WordPress/themes/plugins, add themes/plugins — in other words, you manage a site vs. just creating content on a site managed by someone else.
• Able to recognize CSS and HTML, and know at least some of the basic tags/attributes (like href, strong, etc)
• Have a WordPress.org username (can be new account, doesn’t need to be super active).
• Have used FTP before.

If you have any experience with SQL (phpMyAdmin is fine), SSH, and/or manually installing WordPress, that’s a plus, but not required.

You do not not need to know PHP or JavaScript for this workshop.

Format and Course Content

You’ll need to bring a laptop capable of running a local WordPress install, equipped with a modern web browser, and able to connect to the venue’s wifi. If your laptop is too old to meet these requirements, or you don’t have a laptop, this isn’t the right workshop for you. Tablets won’t cut it, sorry.

Students will be asked to download and install some applications and advance material prior to the workshop.

Sunday’s workshop will 10am – 4pm with periodic breaks, and will be held at a downtown office. Anyone who had trouble with the advance installations can come at 9am on Sunday for help, but it is much preferred that you get these things installed in advance.

We’ll be troubleshooting real sites in real time; this is a hands-on workshop, not a lecture series. Students will work in small groups with TAs as well as testing their new skills individually. The specific problems we’ll teach you how to troubleshoot and solve will vary based on time and  the interest of the student group, but will include the following topics:

• Installation
• Common Errors (white screen of death, 404s, syntax issues, etc.)
• CSS Fixes
• Hacks and Viruses

In addition to troubleshooting on your very own local installation, we’ll have you solving problems on test sites, and by the end of the day every student will have (hopefully!) successfully answered at least one question in the WordPress.org support forums.

Interested?

Sound like it’s up your alley? If you live in the San Diego area and would like to attend the workshop being held March 24, 2013, please fill out the form below to register. There is no cost to attend the workshop (it’s free, just like WordPress!) but we do ask that you only confirm a registration if you really plan to attend, since space is limited, and if you meet the experience criteria listed above.

Remember, this pilot workshop is only being offered to women this time, so even the best, coolest, awesomest guy in the world will kindly but firmly be sent home if he tries to sneak in.

If you meet these criteria and identify as a women, follow these steps to register:

• Select 1 ticket  in the form below.
• Click the blue Register button in the lower right.
• Fill in all fields on the form on the next screen and click the Claim Tickets button in the lower right.
• Please overlook the poor styling of this form.

— Registration is closed now that these pilot workshops have passed. We’ll update this page when we start the next round. —