1MB Blogging Mentorship - Full Curriculum
I am taking you on an in-depth exploration of WordPress, and its empire? Have faith in me (your mentor) and procced step-by-step. Trying to swallow a bigger piece will end up choking you in trouble. Learn drop-by-drop. This entire mentorship on WordPress and blogging (combined) is build for you (beginners) and once you have successfully completed it, your door to advance learning is wide open.
So, are you ready?
I welcome you here! Read every word very carefully to get the most out of this mentorship page.
Session 01: WordPress as open source (+History), Hosting & Domain Name
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
CMS stands for content management system. If you carefully observe the internet, you will discover that 90% of the internet is a form of content. Blogs, landing pages, videos, pictures, graphics, music, social media profiles, bio, etc., all are content. A CMS is way that makes it easy to create, edit and manage these content.
Read more here:
- What is CMS? And, some top CMS in the world.
- Download Free PDF on CMS (on Gumroad).
An open source software is one whose source code (the program of the software) is freely available for anyone to view, edit, modify and distribute with General Public License (GPL).
Since, WordPress is an open source software therefore, WordPress code is publicly available for everyone on it official website. Also, there are more than 12,000 themes, and 50,000 plugins available for free from thousands of WordPress contributors.
Read more here:
If you have understood, CMS and open-source, you are ready to learn WordPress. By definition, WordPress is an open-source CMS. It is a solution for publishing online and managing the published blogs or pages without any high need of coding.
WordPress.org is the official website of open-source WordPress, however, WordPress.com is a completely different platform. WordPress.org is self-hosted while .com hosting is managed by the company as per the subscription.
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WordPress is more than 20 years old. In 2003, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little used b2/cafelog framework and designed the first version, WordPress 0.7 for the first time. Slowly with coming updates, WordPress got several new features such as plugins, themes, comment moderation, admin panel, pages creation, until we have today, version 6.4.
Read more here:
WordPress program files don't run on any operating software, or mobile devices. It is accessible with a server- either locally or online. So, you can download WordPress code freely, from the official website but require a host to use it.
We have two ways, to turn your local computer into a host server using XAMPP or use LocalWP software. And, the second options is to purchase hosting from Bluehost or Hostinger and install WordPress program to access WordPress.
Sometimes we wish to run WordPress locally to learn WordPress, or to test and prepare a demo for client's project. In all such cases, where going LIVE is not needed, local host is the best options. There are several apps to allow this, however we will concentrate on two - XAMPP and LocalWP.
Read More here:
Using WordPress locally is not our final objective. We want to go ONLINE in the internet. This is where we require hosting. Hosting is a space on the server which keeps our content online 24/7, 365 days.
Hosting is much like a land, where your house is made. However, there are shared hosting and dedicated hosting, which we need to understand.
Read more here:
- What is hosting? how it works?
- List of best hosting companies.
Domain name is the address of the location where your website is hosted. Its actually in numbers. For example, google.com actual address is 8.8.8.8 but since it difficult to remembers such numbers, therefore, these numbers are mapped as strings of alphabets and made into human-readable languages.
Domain name are registered at ICANN using registrars. And, no domain names can be purchased permanently. All these names are taken on leased until renewed.
Read more here:
- What are domain names? And, how it works?
- What is ICANN?
- What is WHOIS lookup?
Ultimately, to go LIVE on internet, you have to purchase hosting and domain name. There are companies like Bluehost, Hostinger, GoDaddy, HostGator, Cloudways, with lucrative options and plans. However, you must do a good research before you opt any of these. Hostinger is what I recommend for beginners. It allows 100 domain names to be hosted in premium plan.
A domain name can be purchased from any of these companies, but GoDaddy is found to be best option to purchase domain name. It's equally important to learn to use Nameserver to connect domain name from GoDaddy to other hosting companies.
Read more here:
Assuming that you have purchased Hostinger, as it comes with one free domain name, SSL, and weekly or daily backup, based on your picked plan, we procced further to understand the dashboard and cPanel (hPanel, in case of Hostinger) to manage and access our hostinger account.
- Hostinger Hosting complete exploration.
This session was planned to give a strong foundation of WordPress basic operation and history. A lot of WordPress bloggers have least knowledge on who developed WordPress and when. Even though they can doing well with their blogs or website, however, they are still not well aware.
Session 02: WordPress Dashboard, Themes, Plugins, & Their Customization
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
WordPress dashboard looks very satisfying (to me personally). The admin panel for any website can be accessed with login password simply by adding /wp-admin at the end of primary domain. Or, if you are using Hostinger, follow the steps: website > manage > Admin panel.
This is how WordPress admin panel looks like:
On right top, login user's name appears. While left panel has a vertical menu with black background. Options such as post, pages, comments, media, appearance, settings, tools, users, etc., appear to every WordPress. And, rest options adds up later on respective plugins installation.
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SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It's a data security feature that adds a padlock icon on browser, indicating a secure connection. It makes http:// into https:// where "s" stand for secure connection. Some of the hosting companies offer free SSL certificate in their hosting plan, while other's make it available at some minimal charges.
SSL is important as it encrypts users data before its stored to server. Hence, adding a extra security for customers, or audience. Its must for eCommerce where payments details are shared, as well as its important for simple business or blogging site. It builds trust in visitors. Also, Google prioritize SSL secured sites.
Read more here
WordPress is designed from a solo-entrepreneurs to a multi-national business owner or eCommerce. Its made for team and hence, it has an inbuilt feature to add more users with distinct user roles.
Some of the user roles are: Adminstrator, author, editor, contributor, SEO manager, etc. More roles are added based on plugins installed. For example, if WooCommerce plugin is installed, roles like customer, shop manager, etc. are added.
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Permalink defines how your post and pages links are structured. For example, news website have date and year and time. While website with lots of author have author in their links. All these can be set in settings > permalinks of your WordPress dashboard.
For a blogging website, post name is the best option.
- How to set permalinks of your website.
Every WordPress website requires a theme. A themes makes the backbone of your website. All the rest design and structure are made over the themes file. Since, WordPress is an open-source platform, so there are 11,000+ free themes, while several thousands WordPress themes are available paid on various marketplace.
You first need to pick a good WordPress theme that fulfils your requirements. Then install and activate it. And, finally customize the theme for your need.
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Theme customization is an important stage in WordPress development. Theme in its original (installed) form is just like an uncooked vegetables. It's with the heat of this customization that builds the taste of the theme for your website There are dozens of settings options possible, which on setting can give you a desirable look for your website.
Some of the common setting option include, setting up logo and icon, header and footer layout, menu setting, homepage and blog page setting, breadcrumb, post layout setting, etc.
Read more here:
- Customization of a WordPress theme.
Among thousands of free available WordPress themes, not every theme is worth using. I had few recommendation in the previous list. Now, I have picked Astra for more explanation.
Astra is a powerful theme that offers immense possibilities just with a very few settings. It has transparent header, sticky sidebar, variety of header and footer layout, and extensive blog and archive settings layout.
A WordPress plugin is an extra piece of code that adds additional features on your WordPress website. There are 50 thousands plus plugins on WordPress from thousands of contributors, but not every plugin is coded and developed well.
Features like forms, share button, payment gateways, eCommerce features, newsletter, etc. are achieved using plugins.
A WordPress editor is the main working environment on WordPress. Since we know that WordPress is primarily designed to publish content online. That's what a WordPress editor do; allowing users to create, edit, publish and view WordPress pages and posts.
We have a default WordPress editor, named Gutenberg Block editor. Before 2021, Classic Editor was the default editor. However, there are few more WordPress editor which can be accessed by installing and activating its plugin. Some of the WordPress editor are:
- Elementor
- Classic Editor
- Gutenberg editor
- Beaver Builder
- SeedProd
- VisualComposer
- WPBakery
WordPress in itself is a good place to explore. It will take a few days or around a week to get comfortable with WordPress dashboard, but ensure to give 2-4 hours everyday. Themes and plugins are endless to explore but exploring 5-10 top themes and 15-20 essential plugins are enough as beginner.
Practice is the key here in this session.
Session 03: Elementor, Page & Post Creation and Forms Designing
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Elementor is a page builder plugin available in free and paid version. It was developed by an Israeli company, Elementor Ltd in 2016. The company was founded by Yoni Luksenberg and Ariel Klikstein.
Elementor is one of the top page builder of WordPress with 5+ Millions active installations of free plugin. Its a block editor which allows user to create pages and posts simply with drag and drop of elements. Several free addons are built to extent its features even more. With the hide/show panel, Elementor allows its users to view the changes in real-time while designing the page. All the elements of Elementor are categorized in three setting options, content, style and advance.
To use Elementor (free version), install and active and it's ready to use.
Pages are fundamental aspects of any website. Pages are like rooms of your home. Some website are just made of a single page; so referred as single-page website, other few have 20-50 pages based on services or products. Each of these pages are intended to fulfil a purpose. For example, about us which is made with a purpose to share the story behind the website.
All these web-pages are essential to meet your final goal of creating your website.
A website can be of just one single page or of 100s of page. Its depends on your need. So, here we will go through list of some of the popular pages for a bogging website.
- About us page
- Home page
- Blog page
- Contact us page
- Privacy policy page
- Disclaimer page
- Service page
- FAQ page
- Portfolio page
- Testimonial page
- Sitemap page
- Affiliate disclosure page
- Advertise with us page
- Write for us page
Post and pages are fundamentally two different things. Pages are static while posts are structured on a timeline. Pages make the structure of any website, while posts are content of the website.
Once you have the basic understanding of pages, we are ready to start creating our pages from the list, based on our requirements. It is important to first plan your page UI/UX on paper of tools such as Figma. For beginners, planning it on a white paper is enough. After that, follow; Pages > Add new page.
Name the page, create a slug and "edit with Elementor". Next, add the required elements of the Elementor and design it to get a basic design layout for your blog.
- How to add and edit heading?
- How to add and edit paragraphs
- How to add and edit spacers in Elementor
- How to add and edit divider in Elementor?
- How to add and edit buttons?
- How to add and edit icons in Elementor?
- How to add and edit toggle bar in Elementor?
- How to add and edit slider in Elementor?
- How to add and edit images in Elementor?
- How to add and edit videos in Elementor?
When your blog articles are structured in various categories, it becomes a need to display your articles in grid format on pages sorted in different categories. We will be using post grid elements of some of the plugins and make a grid view of posts that shows latest post automatically when new blog posts are made live.
Read more here:
- How to display blogs posts in grid format?
- How to display blog posts in slider format?
Mobile optimization is a must step to m
Session 04: Elementor, Logo Creation, Header & Footer Design.
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Session 05: Writing a Great Blog For your Audience
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Session 06: SEO, Indexing, Google's Ranking & Related Concepts
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. This is a very important aspect of blogging on any online business. So, first we will learn about the terms used in SEO and further understand the various concepts in it.
- SEO
- SERP
- Organic search
- Keywords
- Long tail keywords
- Keyword density
- SEO title
- Meta description
- Domain authority
- Backlink
- Keyword stuffing
- Crawling
- E-E-A-T
- Internal and external links
- Google bot
- Sitemap
Session 07: Google Search Console and Domain based email
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Session 08: Marketing to gain readers for your blog
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Session 09: Monetization: It's time to Earn from Your Blog
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Session 10: Growth Tips, Blogging Community and Further Learning
Our journey start with understanding of CMS and the leading CMS in the market, i.e., WordPress(.org). This session covers the basic topics that makes the foundation of WordPress and Blogging. The outline of the session #1 are:
Blogging is not a closed door business. I never recommend my bloggers to lock themselves in the corners of their own niche or website and conduct their blogging business. There's no success that way!
One needs to come out into the market. Because it's the market where you get readers, customers, investors, visitors, partners, guest post opportunities, etc. So, there is a need to build a network with other bloggers. And, that's what I want you to understand here.
When you will first start networking; there's a struggle. Not every networking approach turns out to be a success. Maybe they won't reply to your inboxes or email. So, does that mean, you should start networking?
I will share several useful tips for building a strong network with your fellow bloggers here.
A good planning is half-the work done! So, during this last session of our blogging mentorship, we ensure that you are ready with the plan for at least 6 months. We will do few analysis as well such as SWOT analysis for your blogging business. And, therefore this plan is going to be your success key if done with high precision.
Self-doubts are unavoidable, mostly in the initial days of anything. Even though you are technically equipped with basics after this blogging course, yet motivations are needed time to time.
Money can be the first motivation, while your "WHY" is the main motivation. You have to figure out the main reason of starting your blog. Additionally there some top bloggers or motivations I can recommend you to follow to keep up your inspiration.
Throughout the course, we have shared several tools and website that plays their role in your blogging. However, I have more to this list. And, we will know these here in this article.