WordPress Mastery
Not a tour of the dashboard. A complete professional training in the tools real WordPress work is built on — how they work, why they exist, which one to reach for, and how to hand a finished site to a paying client without dreading the support email.
What this programme is really for
WordPress still runs a huge share of the web, which means there is steady, well-paid work in it — but only for people who genuinely know the stack. The gap between someone who can install a theme and someone who can build, secure, speed up and maintain a client site is enormous, and it is exactly the gap this programme closes.
You will work on live installations you host yourself from the first week. Every module ends with something built, and by the end you own six complete sites you could show a client tomorrow.
Why we made this our flagship
It is the fastest honest route from beginner to paid work. A capable WordPress professional can take on freelance clients months before a self-taught developer is ready for a first interview — and everything you learn here transfers directly if you later move into full custom development.
What you will be able to do
- Install, configure and secure WordPress on any host
- Build professional layouts in Elementor and Gutenberg
- Work confidently with block themes and Full Site Editing
- Model any content with custom post types and ACF
- Build and run a complete WooCommerce store
- Launch membership, booking and course sites
- Diagnose and fix a slow site properly, not by guesswork
- Handle SEO fundamentals and Core Web Vitals
- Harden, back up, stage and migrate sites safely
- Write child themes, hooks and simple custom blocks
- Clean up a hacked or broken site you inherited
- Scope, price, deliver and maintain client projects
Curriculum
12 modules · 16 weeks · a live class every week
Before touching a single plugin, you learn what WordPress is made of — so that everything afterwards makes sense instead of being memorised.
- How WordPress, PHP, MySQL and your host fit together
- WordPress.com versus self-hosted WordPress.org, decided properly
- Choosing hosting, domains, DNS and SSL
- Installing WordPress on shared hosting and on a local machine with LocalWP
- The dashboard, settings, permalinks, users and roles
- Setting up a professional local → staging → live workflow from day one
Most broken WordPress sites are broken because nobody thought about structure first. This module makes sure yours never are.
- Posts versus pages, and when each is the wrong choice
- Categories, tags and custom taxonomies
- The media library, image sizes and sensible file organisation
- Menus, navigation patterns and hierarchical pages
- Permalink structures and why changing them later hurts
- User roles, capabilities and safe client access
Where WordPress is heading, and how to work in it without fighting the platform.
- Classic themes versus block themes, and choosing between them
- The template hierarchy, explained until it clicks
- Full Site Editing: templates, template parts and patterns
- Global styles and
theme.json - Child themes and safe customisation
- Evaluating a commercial theme before you commit a client to it
Deep, practical control of the tools you will use every day — including the parts most tutorials skip, like responsive control and keeping a build maintainable.
- Elementor in depth: containers, flexbox layout, global colours and fonts
- Theme Builder: headers, footers, single templates and archive templates
- Elementor popups, forms, motion effects and dynamic content
- Gutenberg blocks, reusable blocks, patterns and block locking
- Genuinely responsive design across breakpoints, not just shrinking
- An honest comparison with Bricks, Divi and WPBakery so you can work on any client site
- Keeping builder sites fast and maintainable instead of bloated
How to judge a plugin before you trust a client's business to it, and the standard stack we build on.
- Evaluating a plugin: support, update history, code quality, reviews
- SEO with Rank Math and Yoast — configured properly, not left on defaults
- Forms with WPForms and Contact Form 7, including spam handling
- Caching with WP Rocket and free alternatives
- Security with Wordfence, backups with UpdraftPlus
- Why plugin count matters less than plugin quality
The skill that lets you build a site a client can update safely — and the one that justifies charging properly.
- Custom post types and custom taxonomies, with and without code
- ACF field groups, conditional logic and flexible content
- Repeaters, relationships and options pages
- Dynamic templates in Elementor driven by ACF
- Building a directory, a property listing and a team page from real data
- Designing an admin experience your client will not break
A complete store from an empty install to a first live order, including the operational parts most courses ignore.
- Simple, variable, grouped and digital products
- Inventory, shipping zones, tax and currency setup
- Payment gateways, including options commonly used across the Middle East
- Customising shop, product and checkout templates
- Coupons, upsells, abandoned carts and transactional emails
- Order management, refunds and handover to the client's team
- Store performance and security considerations
The projects clients pay the most for, because most freelancers cannot build them.
- Membership sites and content restriction with MemberPress
- Course platforms with LearnDash and Tutor LMS
- Appointment and booking systems
- Recurring payments and subscription handling
- Email marketing and CRM integrations
- Choosing between a plugin stack and a custom build
You take a deliberately slow site and fix it, measuring every step, so you learn diagnosis rather than a checklist.
- Reading Lighthouse, PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix without panicking
- Caching layers, object caching and what your host already does
- Image optimisation, modern formats and lazy loading
- Database cleanup, autoloaded options and cron issues
- CDN setup with Cloudflare
- Technical SEO: schema, sitemaps, redirects, canonical tags, indexing
Every WordPress professional eventually gets the call about a site that is down or defaced. This module is how you answer it calmly.
- Hardening: file permissions, logins,
wp-config.php, disabling file editing - Two-factor authentication and brute-force protection
- Backup strategy that actually restores when tested
- Staging environments and safe update routines
- Migrating a site between hosts and domains without downtime
- Diagnosing and cleaning a compromised site
- Building a maintenance routine you can sell as a monthly plan
Enough PHP and JavaScript to stop being blocked whenever a plugin does not do quite what the client needs. Written for people who have never coded.
- Just enough PHP to read and modify WordPress code with confidence
- Hooks and filters: the mental model behind all WordPress customisation
- Building a child theme and a small custom plugin
- Custom Gutenberg blocks
- The WP REST API and connecting WordPress to other systems
- Using Git for WordPress projects
Skill alone does not make a living. This module covers everything between "I can build this" and money in your account.
- Running a discovery call and writing a proposal that gets signed
- Pricing: hourly, fixed, value-based — and what to charge as you start out
- Contracts, deposits, scope creep and revision limits
- Building a portfolio when you have no clients yet
- Finding work locally and on freelance platforms
- Site handover, training the client and documentation
- Monthly care plans: the recurring income most freelancers miss
- White-labelling and subcontracting for agencies
Tools you will master
Taught hands-on, on live installations — not demonstrated in a video you watch.
Sites you will build
Six complete, live sites — your portfolio is finished the same day the programme is.
Business brochure site
A polished multi-page site for a local business, built in Elementor with a custom header, footer and contact form.
Blog & magazine site
A content-heavy site using a block theme and Full Site Editing, with custom archives, categories and author pages.
Property directory
Custom post types and ACF driving a filterable listing with dynamic single-item templates and a map field.
WooCommerce store
A full store with variable products, shipping, tax, coupons, a customised checkout and live payment gateway.
Membership & course site
Gated content, member tiers, recurring payments and a full course structure with lessons and quizzes.
Client-ready handover package
Rebuild a real slow, insecure site: fix performance, harden it, document it, and produce the proposal, care plan and handover pack you would give a paying client.
Who this is for
A good fit if…
- You want paid work in months, not years
- You want to freelance or start a small web agency
- You already build in WordPress but know you are guessing
- You run a business and want to control your own site properly
- You are a designer who wants to deliver finished sites, not mockups
Probably not, if…
- You want to become a software engineer at a product company — take Web Development instead
- You only need a single personal site and never want to touch it again
- You are looking for a way to spin up sites without understanding them
Questions about this programme
Not to complete the programme. Every module is taught so you can follow along with the free versions, and we show the free alternative for each premium tool. That said, if you intend to do client work, Elementor Pro and ACF Pro pay for themselves quickly, and we cover exactly when that becomes worth it.
You can complete the entire programme locally and for free using LocalWP, which we set up together in week one. But we strongly recommend getting inexpensive shared hosting at some point, because deploying, migrating and debugging on a real server is a skill in itself — and it is one clients pay for. We walk through it either way.
The programme deliberately teaches both the classic approach and the block/Full Site Editing approach, because real client sites use both and will for years. We revise modules when a major release changes something meaningfully, and because your access is for life, you get those revisions at no cost.
The first two modules will be revision for you. From module four onwards — dynamic content with ACF, WooCommerce operations, performance diagnosis, security response, custom development and the client business module — most self-taught builders find substantial gaps. Skip ahead freely; the material is yours to use in any order, and the live sessions are where you get the most value.
Sixteen weeks from here to client-ready.
Join the founding cohort and learn WordPress the way professionals actually use it.