WordPress Web Development

$500.00Free

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It is with sincere enthusiasm and utmost pride that we present to you this compendium of objectives and ideas, with the intent of turning it into a viable educational project that has the potential of positively impacting technical knowledge in Central Florida as a pilot region.

In today’s world and economy, the Internet has become an essential tool for business, education and every other aspect of every day’s life; it is almost taken for granted that any given business or organization has an up to date and acceptable form of web presence, but one might be surprised to learn this is rarely the case.

Web Design and Development has come a long way since its humble beginnings in the early nineties, from a basic text only interface that barely used any colors, to the once unimaginable virtual reality sites like Google’s Street View, which literally allows you to navigate through a city’s streets from your web browser.

Web technologies and related jobs are on the rise and will continue to be for the foreseeable future and properly trained Web Developers are a fundamental element of success in this expanding industry.

What exactly is WordPress?

It is a Content Management System (CMS), simply put, it’s a computer program that allows its users to manage content on a website; this content can range from a picture to a full fledged interactive page within the website. It’s a publishing platform originally conceived and designed for blogging, that is, a collection of consecutive dated entries on an archive, an online journal.

From a technical point of view, it’s a collection of PHP scripts that manipulate a MySQL database, providing a data infrastructure to handle common tasks such as user management, access control, content creation and classification, and a well documented API for extendability through PHP plug-ins and themes.

Why WordPress?

As it is natural with any growing industry, when it comes to choosing the right tool set whether to develop a web project or to expand your working knowledge towards a specific field, the possibilities are endless.

Among the ocean of names and complex abbreviations you can normally hear during a conversation revolving around anything web, WordPress will almost undoubtedly make it to the top positions of that list; it has become sort of an unofficial standard in many aspects, and this is for good reason.

Taken directly from their website, this short excerpt accurately depicts a good picture of its rapid and steady growth:

“WordPress started in 2003 with a single bit of code to enhance the typography of everyday writing and with fewer users than you can count on your fingers and toes. Since then it has grown to be the largest self-hosted blogging tool in the world, used on millions of sites and seen by tens of millions of people every day.”

Is WordPress always the best tool for the job?

No. WordPress is the best framework to build and maintain many different types of websites, but it is important to understand that there’s not such a thing as one-size-fits-all in web development.
WordPress can be the perfect tool to build simple, straight forward, informational websites, it can help you create your personal blog in no time, your friend’s wedding planning business website, a multinational corporation’s million dollar website, but it might not be the best tool for a university’s front facing student portal, in which a high number of custom processes and functions take place, many of which are very unique to this particular university, besides being connected with other vendors’ technologies for external processes, like confirming classroom availability with a third party, for instance.

It all comes to purpose, a website like the one described in our hypothetical university example, will be more efficient, safer and faster if a completely custom solution is specifically designed and developed for them, instead of using a CMS like WordPress. On the other hand, any of the other mentioned examples -which make up the vast majority of websites- can make for a perfect use case scenario for WordPress, just install a fresh copy, grab a high quality theme (thousands available, both free and paid) and customize its look and colors, add some plug-ins, your client’s content and you have a unique, high quality, fully functional and production ready website ready to deliver to your client, and all this in a matter of hours once you get the hang of it.

Why OPG Training?

With OPG Training you will be learning the material from an instructor with extensive hands on experience in the industry and a competent educational background.
Otto Perez has over a decade of active involvement experience in the IT consulting and web development industry, performing work and offering expert advise on a diverse array of projects for multiple clients, both in the public and private sectors. Mr Perez holds an engineering degree from Florida International University, where he participated in a university team responsible for designing, assembling and testing the first nanosatellite jointly built and
sponsored by a Florida university and a middle school; he’s also an FAA certified airplane pilot and fluent in both English and Spanish.

After successful completion of the program, the student will have access to free or discounted expert advise and consultation from OPG Consulting.

Why Orlando and Central Florida?

Central Florida’s economy has greatly diversified from tourism, and the area is now considered a primary city for the hi-tech industry. The University of Central Florida is home to more than 60,000 students, the second largest public university campus by enrollment, the Central Florida Research Park is the fourth largest research park in the United States.

It is host to dozens of technology ventures, including major hi-tech companies such as Oracle Corporation, Electronic Arts, and Siemens.
Orlando’s metropolitan area has a $13.4 billion technology industry employing almost 55,000 people and is a nationally recognized cluster of innovation in digital media and software design.

The Program: Objectives and Scope

The main goal of our program is to enable every student, regardless of previous experience, to learn the necessary skills and obtain the required knowledge to successfully plan, develop and deliver a standards compliant, fully functional website to their prospective clients.

In addition, we seek to give our students the necessary skills to jump start their careers through continuous self-learning, the efficient use of available training resources and have a very clear understanding of the WordPress and web development environments.

Last, it is a profound motivation for the development of this course and associated materials to encourage the mastery of specialized knowledge as means to individual economic self sufficiency.

The program is divided into four core modules designed to take the average person with no previous web development experience to a point in which he or she can carefully plan, present, develop, test and deploy, simple but top quality website projects for clients. It covers from the very basics of how the Internet works, to an in-depth look at the functionalities of some of the most widely used plug-ins in the WordPress market today.

It will open the doors to learn and advance in this high paying and rewarding career!

Program Outline: WordPress Web Development

36 lecture hours, 4 formats:
4 weeks, 3 times a week, 3 hour sessions, 15 mins break.
4 weeks, 2 times a week, 4.5 hour sessions, two 15 mins breaks.
2 weekends, 4 days, 9 hour sessions, two 15 mins breaks, 1 hour lunch.
1 week, 5 days, 8 hour sessions, two 20 mins breaks, 1 hour lunch.

Course Content

Module 1: Introduction to Web Development
- The Web: Brief history and How it works
- Web Browsers and HTML
- HTML: Elements and syntax
- Styling basics
- Introduction to PHP
  - Syntax, Variables, Echo / Print
  - Control Structures
- Database driven websites

Module 1: Introduction to Web Development 0/1
- The Web: Brief history and How it works

WordPress Web Development