WordPress Theme Selection & Customization

Course details

The key to creating a professional-looking WordPress website is to use high-quality commercial themes and good graphics. In under 2 hours this course delivers in-depth feature tours and demonstration of 5 of the most popular commercial theme frameworks on the web (StudioPress, WooThemes, ElegantThemes, Thesis, and OptimizePress), as well as an advanced tutorial on the excellent free Weaver theme framework. We cover fundamental things you need to know before you choose a theme for your professional services or ecommerce website, so that you don't end up at a dead-end with an unsuitable theme and have to start fresh. Through numerous examples and commentary on websites created by WP Academy students you will be inspired to create your own professional-looking website that may be indistinguishable from a website created by a professional designer for $2000 or more.

There is no other course on the internet that gives you so much practical and directly actionable information in such a brief time to short-cut your becoming a proficient web designer, either for your own business sites or as an additional income source. Several of the lectures have been made "free" -- feel free to preview them below and find out what you are going to learn.

Introduction

• How to choose a theme

StudioPress build

• Outside tour of Associate theme
• Inside tour of Associate and Genesis themes
• Populating home page widget areas
• Adding a slider
• Other StudioPress examples

ElegantThemes build

• Outside tour of ElegantThemes Feather theme
• Inside tour of Feather
• Populating home page
• Other ElegantThemes examples

WooThemes build

• WooThemes Fresh News build
• Other WooThemes examples

OptimizePress build

• Tour of OptimizePress
• Creating a squeeze page
• Creating a sales page

Thesis 1.8 build

• Thesis 1.8 or 2.0?
• Thesis 1.8 installation & quick tour
• Adding header & navbar
• Adding Meteor Slider
• Adding center-page 4x2 table
• Adding footer widgets in Thesis

Firebug

• Using Firebug CSS inspection tool; creating CSS overrides

Weaver build

• Weaver advanced tutorial

Responsive themes

• What is a responsive theme?

How to learn more

• WP Academy additional courses and program

Additional WP Academy courses on Udemy or in production

• WordPress Essentials for Business
• WordPress Backup, Security & Performance
• Images and Graphic Editing
• WordPress CSS Styling & Advanced Content Creation
• WordPress SEO
• WordPress eCommerce & Membership Systems
• WordPress Email Newsletters & Social Media Integration
• Video Production for the Web
• WordPress Plugin Selection (coming soon)