Learn WordPress in an Hour?

Occasionally I get a call asking; “sit down with me” and teach me WordPress. I had one client that wanted to learn WordPress in “a couple of hours” and offered to pay me for my time. This is an interesting concept to price out for a one-to-one personal service — as opposed to the old fashion way of taking an immersion course over several years.

If I could teach WordPress in an hour, how would that be priced?

Here’s an analogy. If you buy a membership at the gym for $50 a month, you can go to the classes with everyone else and get in shape. They supply the facility, you get to use the gym. This would include use of the gym and all the fixings. But, if you want a one-to-one personal trainer the cost would be $50 an hour (maybe  more).

Let’s say you buy a website from a design agency. Let’s say the average cost is $5,000 to build the site. You get the use of the design agency for the month with all the fixings. They supply the website, you get to use it. But, if you want a one-to-one personal trainer to teach you to build a website, the cost, in the same ratio to the gym example above, would cost about $5,000 an hour (maybe more).

I think what people like is the idea that they can build a website. That it’s easy (which it can be) and that it’s quick (not very likely without a lot of experience). This is the selling points used by hosting companies — that anyone can build a site. What they fail to acknowledge is that these DIY web-building tools can be very limited. Sometimes you get stuck. Half way through building the site you realize that you want something they don’t offer,  you want more features, a better site. This can waste time.

The best option to build a site is to use a framework that is well supported, WordPress being one. It’s more reasonable to help people understand frameworks, than to teach them in a couple of hours how to build a site. There are great teachers out there for low money: You Tube and Linda.com to name a couple. But it will most likely take more than a couple of hours.