Are WordPress Bootcamps Worth It?

WordPress Bootcamps are useful for those who want to learn WordPress skills, either for their own website or to create and manage professional websites for others. Bootcamps are quick, cost-effective options to learn everything you need to know to start using WordPress or maximize your use of themes, plugins, and other WordPress features. 

What is WordPress? 

WordPress is the web’s most popular content management system used to create blogs, websites, ecommerce stores, newsletters, membership sites, and much more. It is estimated that about 43% of the websites on the internet use WordPress and its popularity is due to its ease of use and accessibility. Even with no coding experience, you can use WordPress themes and plugins to create professional websites. Plugins on WordPress allow you to add different features to your WordPress website like ecommerce, email integration, discussion forums, and event calendars. You can also install data analytics plugins to help you run your business, manage the user experience, and optimize your website’s performance. With coding knowledge, you can customize and create themes and plugins to make a WordPress website even more unique and tailored to a person, business, or brand’s own needs.

What Can You Do with WordPress Skills? 

Whether you are creating a website of your own or creating one for a client, a basic knowledge of WordPress allows you to begin creating personal websites or websites for other businesses and even learn SEO strategies to ensure your website ranks higher in search results. Knowing how to create and publish content and do some basic customization of themes and plugins allows you to simplify the process of creating your own blog or personal website, generating an online portfolio for your creative works or business projects, starting an ecommerce store, opening a membership site, and so much more. 

While your basic knowledge of WordPress allows you to create professional websites with ease, knowing HTML and CSS lets you do more using WordPress. Once you know these programming languages, you can build WordPress websites from scratch. WordPress Developers, those whose career is WordPress website creation and maintenance, can create themes and develop plugins of their own for websites, optimize a website for the user’s experience, make sure everything is functional across mobile, tablet, and desktop devices, and work with Web Designers to make their prototype website designs into a reality. Learning how to use WordPress is a great option whether you are creating a website of your own or you are pursuing Web Development or Web Design as your career path. 

Why Learn WordPress in a Bootcamp?

A bootcamp is a great way to learn WordPress skills in a short amount of time. Bootcamps are live online or in-person classes that are often shorter than a typical college course or certificate program and more targeted toward teaching a specific skill set or set of techniques. There are a variety of WordPress bootcamps, some of which are geared towards beginners with no programming knowledge and some of which are hyper-specialized (WordPress for small business owners bootcamps, for instance). 

Many WordPress bootcamps, however, will teach you everything you need to know about the software from introductory skills to more advanced forms of customization. You should expect to find many WordPress bootcamps geared towards those with coding knowledge and these bootcamps teach not only how to create and publish content, add themes and plugins, and optimize your website for SEO but also how to create and customize your own theme and use WordPress’s more advanced features. 

The most significant advantages to taking a WordPress bootcamp are the length of the course and cost. Because bootcamps are often shorter, you can learn what you need to know quickly and bootcamps are often easier to fit into busy schedules. Additionally, due to the shorter length of bootcamps, they are usually not as expensive as college courses or certificate programs. The best bootcamps offer guided instruction, hands-on learning, and up-to-date information and strategies for using WordPress but with a cost that is more approachable than taking a comprehensive, multi-month course of study. 

Compared to Free Courses

There are a variety of free courses, seminars, videos, guides, and other resources that you can find online to help you teach yourself how to use WordPress. Cost is the biggest advantage of using these resources, but they are also a great way to learn how to get started using WordPress as a beginner without committing to taking a paid class or troubleshooting your use of more advanced features with detailed instructions and guides. 

Besides cost, the biggest differences between free courses and bootcamps are the lack of vetting and no access to expert instructors. There are so many free materials online that finding the right course or set of videos or instructions can be overwhelming and some of the information you find online might be outdated or wrong. Additionally, there is often not a specific person you can contact for more information or to help clarify the meaning of something you see or read online. A bootcamp offers access to expert instructors who will not only guide you through the process of learning WordPress but will also be there to answer your questions, provide you with additional examples, and help you to work through any issues that arise as you’re learning how to use specific features of WordPress. 

Compared to Self-Paced Classes

Self-paced classes are often also known as on-demand classes. These are paid or free online classes where you follow pre-set course material such as video lectures or readings at your own pace. Self-paced classes allow you to speed up or even skip material you already know or find easy and slow down, study, or review material that you find more challenging. These classes are also great for those with busy schedules, who often cannot commit to taking a live online or in-person course over a certain number of days, weeks, or months. 

To take a self-paced class, you need to be self-motivated. One of the biggest issues that someone runs into when taking these classes is that there is no external factor pressuring you to finish the course--no instructor, deadline, or other students to push you to learn the material, practice the skills, or keep going. For self-motivated learners, these classes can be great, but for those who need more structure or learn best in a setting similar to a traditional college or university classroom, a self-paced class will not be a good option. 

Compared to Certificate Programs 

Certificate programs are comprehensive classes geared toward giving you all of the knowledge and skills necessary to be proficient in a certain job. There are no official certificate programs that judge someone competent in all aspects of WordPress, though you will find that WordPress skills are frequently taught as part of certificate programs for Web Developers and Web Designers. Because roughly four out of every ten websites are created using WordPress, WordPress skills are widely taught for website creation, design, and management. 

Certificate programs are often longer and more comprehensive than bootcamps. Think of a bootcamp as one module that you might cover in a certificate program. If you are only looking to become proficient in the use of WordPress, you will not need an entire certificate program to do so. However, you should consider taking a certificate program if you are following a specific career path like Web Developer or Web Designer. A certificate program will cover the basic knowledge you’ll need to know to do your job, introduce tools, techniques, services, and programs that are used in the industry, allow you to practice and test your skills, and often get you started building your professional work portfolio.

Learn WordPress Skills with Noble Desktop

Noble Desktop offers a variety of affordable in-person and live online classes for those looking to learn how to use WordPress. A great bootcamp option is Noble Desktop’s 18-hour WordPress Bootcamp. Knowledge of HTML and CSS is a prerequisite to taking this bootcamp as it is designed for those who want not only an introduction to WordPress but who want to learn more advanced and specialized ways to code and develop customized WordPress websites and themes. This prerequisite can be fulfilled by taking Noble’s Web Development with HMTL & CSS class or equivalent knowledge and training in HTML and CSS. Students taking this bootcamp can expect to receive expert instruction and hands-on guidance as they learn the ins and outs of WordPress from installing WordPress, publishing posts, adding text, images, and video, and utilizing themes and plugins, to learning about more advanced customization options, downloading WordPress onto your computer, and creating your own custom theme for WordPress. 

Additionally, you can consider taking a longer, more comprehensive certificate program to learn multiple skill sets and tools throughout one class. The WordPress Bootcamp is included as part of two useful certificate programs offered by Noble Desktop, the Front-End Web Development Certificate and the Web Design Certificate. Both certificate programs are geared towards teaching WordPress website development and are for those looking to follow career pathways to become Web Developers, Web Designers, or WordPress Developers. 

Front-end web development focuses on coding the part of a website or application that users will see and interact with and this is usually the part of web development that you’ll need to know to become a WordPress Developer. The Front End Web Development Certificate offers hands-on training from experts and taking this program will provide all of the skills necessary to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for front end web development and WordPress website creation. The Web Design Certificate will be more useful if you are interested in not only learning to code, for WordPress and other websites, but also learning important principles of design and getting hands-on experience creating clickable prototypes of websites to add to your portfolio. 

Additionally, if you take Noble Desktop’s Full-Stack Web Developer Certificate, you will have the option to add on the WordPress Bootcamp at the end for no additional cost. This program is especially useful for those who want to become well-rounded Web Developers and are interested in knowing not only how to program the part of a website users see and interact with (the front end) but also the infrastructure behind the front-facing website (the back end).