Tag Archives: WordPress training

Creating websites with WordPress? 10 excellent tips you must check out

WordPress is not just the choice CMS for nothing. It is user friendly, easy to build web sites with, wordpress-logoeasy to navigate and allows you to include thousands of plugins to improve visitors’ experience. Learning to create websites with WordPress can be a little bit more effective if you abide by some simple rules as follows:

Keep it simple

With so many images, graphics, photos and plugins to play with its usually very tempting for you to want to overdo things. Make your WordPress design as simple as possible so it doesn’t look too cluttered or design heavyartificial. Remember people need the information more than the design.

Logins

If you don’t want attackers hunting down your WordPress site then you need to tweak the login details. Delete the default admin account and create a new one; without forgetting to move the old posts. On your blog use a nickname instead of your administrator name.

Choose the right theme
Wordpress sites and blogs are built based on themes.
Whether you are choosing free themes off the many wordpress theme sites or you go to a wordpress training course to learn how to create your own theme to put your site design in the right perspective ensure that you select the right theme. The theme for an entertainment site will be different from that of a business site.

Install the right plugins

With WordPress there is a plugin for everything from managing social network profiles to counting how many people are visiting your site. SEO plugins are very important so don’t forget to add them. Make sure the plugins you’re adding are doing something for you. If not they should be removed.

Use keywords

Every part of your content should have keywords in them. The title, mega descriptions, tags, images, subtitles, article body, videos and URL should all have niche relevant keywords .

Use alt texts for the images

Because the images you upload also counts in search engine optimization you’ll be doing yourself a lot of favours by using alt text to write their description. They appear when the image is not found, but make sure there is no space between the words.

Use SSL

To further protect your WordPress site from attacks try to make use of SSL and force SSL login. This certificate login might cost a little but it will give you peace of mind.

Socialize

Social media is becoming very much irresistible if not indispensable. To make your WordPress site more visible and popular you must integrate it with the other popular social networking platforms including Facebook, twitter and YouTube.

Sitemaps

Sitemaps are great because they help search engines crawlers locate, browse through and index your site. This is good for your SEO ranking and in helping new site users find what they’re looking for, with ease.

Back up

Please understand that no matter how much site security you implement or WordPress training you receive it can never be completely secure. There is no such thing as a 100% secured site. This is why you have to back up all your files right from the start. Depending on the volume of content of your site and your needs you will need a daily or monthly back up plan.

You can get more tips and tricks on  our wordpress essentials  and wordpress advanced training courses

It’s been quite a while!

Yes. It’s been a while since our last blog.
This always happens at this time of the year.
The new academic year means new syllabuses.
New courses added to the portfolio.
New material to be written.
New trainers to induct.
And so we have had our hands completely full.
Pressure is beginning to ease so you can expect that normal blogging duty will resume soon.

New things to look out for…

CeMAP 2012/13 Academic year material now completed. So for those looking to do CeMAP distance learning can rest assured we will only be sending them current material.

DipFA Coursework and FactFind Training has been going very well. We’ve been closely monitoring the success rates of our students and can only recollect a few that have not passed! We have our new tutor , Paul, to thank for that! He really cares about the students and provides them with a lot of aftercare support. The rave reviews he has been getting are extremely well deserved.

Stocks, Shares and Investments courses and our Day Trading Forex programme has been running smoothly under the management of Umar. He has brought a very practical slant to the courses and his post course mentoring is just first class. It’s no wonder people are queueing up to join his classes.

We’ve also been working hard on a Business Analysis course which is scheduled to kick off October 28th. For this we have recruited the services of a very senior Business Analyst at Amazon. We get so many Software Testing Analysts looking for a career progression route…and for most – this is it!

Our Software Testing Essentials course has had some new additions to it. We’ve added an extra day on to the course thereby incorporating Test automation into the programme.

We now have beginners to advanced WordPress courses ranging from the basics (using WordPress.com) to intermediate and advanced levels using wordpress.org and all the benefits of flexibility to looking at how to build your own themes and understanding the php code that allows you to customise your wordpress site even more.

We are also trialling the ACA qualification for those looking to gain Adobe accreditation in either Photoshop or Dreamweaver.
A goal for the Adobe Certified Associate certification is to address the real world, entry-level skill expectations for web communication, rich media communication, and visual communication.

This certification is a credential that validates entry-level skills needed to plan, design, build, and maintain effective communications by using different forms of digital media.

The qualification is open to anyone who takes our Adobe Photoshop Next Step Course and Adobe Dreamweaver Next Step course.

So as you can see there’s lot’s to look forward to at Futuretrend this academic year.

New courses:WordPress + PHP, HTML5, Systems Design, Business Analysis Training

2012 is going to be a full on year as we launch a number of new courses.
Look out for our new and improved WordPress + PHP course starting soon.
It’s not the run of the mill WordPress course as we add PHP basics to it.; Learning a little PHP goes a long way with WordPress.

With the demise of Flash,  HTML5 is aspiring to be the new “kid” on the block . As there is a trending away from Flash type design (not helped by Adobe’s discontinuing their mobile browser plugin support) and equal richness can be found in HTML5/CSS3; we are looking to be able to deliver this from March 2012.

We are also developing Systems Design and Business Analysis Training courses which a lot of folks that have studied Software Testing/Project Management with us have been asking about.

So exciting times here at Futuretrend. Watch this space for launch dates and news on more courses.