Your Website, Your Way — The Power, Flexibility and Accessibility of WordPress

Description

Learn to Create Your Own Personal or Business Website Using WordPress

Comprehensive Home Study Course and Interactive Resource Portal by Mystic Access

Have you dreamed of having a website of your own, for business, pleasure or just as your special home on the web? Have you wondered about the possibilities of creating and managing such a venture as someone with little or no physical sight? Do you know or know of blind or visually impaired individuals or business owners who have websites, but you aren’t sure how accessible they are from an administrative perspective?

We’re happy to share some good news with you. It is possible to create a website while using a screen reader and with little or no sighted assistance. It’s also possible to customize a website to add such useful features as a mailing list, web store, blog and so much more. The best part is, you can do a large majority or perhaps even all of your site maintenance yourself, as well!

How is all this possible? Mystic Access recommends the wordPress.org platform as the most flexible and accessible way to create and maintain a self-hosted web presence. Now, you can learn how we created our WordPress site, and how you can, too, in our comprehensive home study course… Your Website, Your Way — The Power, Flexibility and Accessibility of WordPress.

Course Objectives

With the knowledge you gain in this extensive course, you will be able to:

• Consider the advantages of WordPress from a blindness perspective, and the variety of features which you may include on a WordPress powered website.
• Purchase a domain name and web hosting for your website.
• Install the wordPress content management system and choose a theme for your site.
• Create blog posts and / or pages for your site.
• Explore and configure your WordPress site settings.
• Build menus and add widgets for use on your site.
• Use plugins to further enhance and extend your site’s functionality.
• Learn to sell products and services on your site.
• Learn about how search engine optimization can help your site get noticed by interested visitors.

Course Prerequisites.

• Moderate computer and screen reader skills. In other words, you need to feel relatively comfortable and confident browsing the internet, using check boxes, edit boxes and radio buttons, doing searches, and using heading navigation, as well as other web tasks. If you do not, you’ll find it more difficult to successfully meet the course objectives.
• Knowledge of your particular screen reader. Some of the discoveries you make as part of this course may require you to slow down your speech, for instance.
• A sense of curiosity and adventure. You need to be willing to approach this course material with an open mind, ask questions when you’re stuck, and learn when it’s best for you to walk away from the material for a few minutes and when to persevere.

This course is primarily taught by Kim Nova, director of product development for Mystic access. Kim knows her way around WordPress sites, as she’s played a pivotal role in developing several sites on the platform since 2011. She’s also totally blind and a JAWS and NVDA screen reader user. Learn from Kim’s many experiences, mistakes and trials and errors so that you can discover the joys that come with having your own little (or not so little) piece of Cyberspace.

The course was initially taught as a ten-week live experience, but has been modified into a home study format for your convenience.

The Course Logistics

Most audio lessons last between an hour and an hour and thirty minutes. Lessons should be completed in the order they are presented in the course. Because you have lifetime access to the audio lessons, you will receive any updates that we provide. You’ll never have to wonder if the info you’re receiving is out of date.

Lifetime access to an online course portal is also provided, which will include links to supplementary written resources for most topics covered. This portal will be regularly updated to make sure you have the materials you need for success.

Have questions?

You will receive a lot of material in this course, so we want to make sure that plenty of time and attention is devoted to your questions. Regular Q And A sessions will be held, where you can get your questions answered live, and learn from other course participants. If something is unclear, confusing or overwhelming, these sessions allow you the opportunity to discuss how you’re doing with your site and with the course lessons.

In addition to regular live Q and A sessions, you will also be placed on the course mailing list, where you can ask questions and share tips and tricks with others in the course. Your course instructors will be active on this list, as well.

Course Syllabus

Course Introduction.

Discover what you’ll learn in the course, the best ways to go through the materials, and other tips for using this course in order to receive the greatest benefits.

Lesson One — Why a Website and Why with WordPress?

Why might you want a website to begin with? What’s the value of having a website? And once you know you want one, how do you get started building a site in a way that is accessible to you? Why use WordPress? Learn all this and more in our first lesson.

Lesson Two — Getting Started… First Steps in Your Site creation.

Before you can jump into getting your site up and running, there are important steps that must be taken first. We’ll discuss these in some detail, as well as talking about WordPress installation and a tour of the WordPress dashboard. This discussion will help you feel much more comfortable with WordPress itself before we dive into what it takes to make your site your own.

Lesson Three — Domains and Hosting… a Demonstration of The Process.

In this lesson, we take you through the domain registration and hosting purchase process described in Lesson Two. We share about methods for making this as stress-free as possible, and some important steps to remember as you do this yourself.

Lesson Four — Dressing Your New Baby.

Once you have the shell of your site created, what steps should you take next? In this lesson, we’ll be discussing WordPress themes (the clothes of your website) and we’ll walk through how to search for, learn about and install themes.

Lesson Five — Creating Site Pages And Blog Posts.

In this lesson, you’ll learn to create pages and / or blog posts for your website. Learn about entering text, formatting your content, and how posts and pages differ from one another.

Lesson Six — Site Configuration.

We could have called this lesson… Settings, Menus and Widgets… oh my! we’ll be taking a thorough look at the WordPress settings, discussing creating menus for your website, and asking the all important question, “What the heck is a widget, anyhow?” You may wish to break this material into a couple of listens, as this is a very lengthy lesson.

Lesson Seven — Customizing with Plugins.

This will definitely be a fun lesson. WordPress plugins can help you with everything from creating newsletters to featuring blog posts and creating compelling discounts for customers in an online store. They can even help make sites more accessible to visitors who use screen readers. But how do you find out which plugins you may want and need? This lesson shows you how to search for, install and configure plugins.

Lesson Eight — The Joy of Blogging.

This lesson is dedicated to those of you who wish to have a blog as part of your website. Blogging can be a great way to get your written content noticed, and to promote any products or services which you offer on your site. We’ll talk about blog settings configuration, comments, blog categories and tags, and more.

Lesson Nine — Crucial Tips on Security from a Professional WordPress Site Developer.

In this lesson, you’ll meet John Sawyer, Mystic Access’s own site developer. John helps us with security, regular maintenance, and other projects related to making our site the best it can be. In this lesson, he answers several questions posed by course participants, and provides a lot of helpful and very important info about site security.

Lesson Ten — Selling Products and services with WordPress.

There are a variety of plugins to support you in adding a store to your site. In this lesson, we discuss two of these options in detail, and provide other possibilities for ways in which you can sell on your site.

Lesson Eleven — Mindset Tips for Success.

This short supplementary lesson provides important mindset tips to make this journey as stress-free and enjoyable as possible. Doing the website work is really only half of the process — if your attitude is poor, you won’t be as successful as quickly. This lesson was created to assist with the mindset portion of this adventure.

Lesson Twelve — Important Dos and Don’ts to Remember.

This short supplementary lesson shares a number of important ideas to keep in mind as you work towards site success.

Lucky Lesson Thirteen — A Note on SEO and Final Thoughts.

In this lesson, we’ll talk briefly about search engine optimization (SEO), and Kim will share some final thoughts on the use of WordPress, and creating and maintaining websites in general.

When You join this WordPress course, You Will Receive:

• Thirteen and a half hours of audio lesson materials.
• DAISY and MP3 versions of all course materials for easy and intuitive navigation.
• an exclusive private discussion list where you can ask questions of the instructor and share with other participants.
• Lifetime access to the course materials, including any and all future updates.
• access to an online portal filled with a wealth of written resources to further advance your learning.
• Access to a WordPress demo site. Now you can get comfortable playing in the WordPress back end before you even begin creating your site.
• Regular Q and A sessions to enhance your course experience. Get your questions answered live, and share with other course participants.
• If new materials are added to the course over time, you’ll receive those at no additional cost.

Important Notes

Mystic Access does not build websites for our clients. We do offer one-on-one WordPress training in which we can provide you with more personalize step-by-step guidance on the creation of your website.

This course is perfect for those of you who want to learn in great detail about the process of building and maintaining a website accessibly. The course will be kept up to date to make sure you’re receiving the most relevant material. There is no time limit for completing this course — you have lifetime access.

Your investment for lifetime access to this course is $99. If you have any questions prior to making your purchase, please don’t hesitate to contact Kim, and she’ll be happy to address those for you. We appreciate your interest in Mystic Access. We look forward to assisting you in making your website dreams a reality.

Please click on the player below to listen to a sample of the Your Website, Your Way — The Power, Flexibility and Accessibility of WordPress audio course.