We’re getting ready to submit several classroom sessions for an upcoming projects focused on getting parents up to speed on technology in the city of Chicago and surrounding surburbs with plans to expand to additional schools.

Here are a few of the curriculum outlines we’ve created.

Interested in these sessions?  Use our contact form to inquire about custom training programs for your organization.

We’ve also submitted a few ideas for next year’s Type A Parent Conference and Blissdom.

Safety Online: How To Keep Your Children Safe On The Internet
Everyday we hear stories of kids who go missing because they shared their personal information with a stranger online.  Find out what you need to be talking with your kids about and how to monitor what they’re saying online.

Social Media for Families
Learn how students, parents and teachers are using social networks like Facebook, Twitter and blogging to communicate, organize and connect with each other.

Smartphones: How To Pick Your Next Phone, Family Plan And Set Limits For Your Kids
With all the new technology out there, which is the best for your needs?  We’ll explore the iPhone, Android, Blackberry and even the Palm to compare features.  After that we will look at different providers including T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and more plus compare regular and pre paid plans.  Last, we’ll cover how to set boundaries for your children when using cell phones.

Webcams, Chat And Texting: What You Need To Know To Keep Your Kids Safe
With more ways to communicate each day, parents need to pay attention to what kids are doing online.  Learn about these tools and suggestions on how to set boundaries with your kids when using them.

Gmail Training: Learn How To Master Your Email Inbox
Tired of your email inbox filling up with junk?  Learn how to use Gmail, Google’s email solution, to toss spam aside and be productive in your email!

Google Docs: How To Share Documents And Collaborate With Others Online
There’s a new solution online that is changing how people work together when it comes to documents, spreadsheets and sharing ideas.  Learn how Google Docs can replace Microsoft Office…and for free!

Skype For Communication: Free Long Distance Calls, Video Chat And Conferencing
Phone calls to relatives and friends no longer have to be expensive.  Learn how to use Skype to stay in touch with people across town or on the other side of the world for free.  We will also cover video chats and conferencing.

Computer Troubleshooting 101
What is wrong with this computer?!?  We’ll look at common problems that affect the family computer and how to take steps to fix it.  We’ll also cover how to find a computer repair shop or technician plus how to backup your important data.

Home Networking: How To Setup A Wireless Network For Your Family
With more and more families have multiple computers in the home, it’s essential to get everyone connected and online.  Learn how to setup a wireless network, keep it secure and get all your devices online.

Laptop 101 For Parents
Thinking about buying a laptop but not sure where to start?  Learn how to use that new laptop you just purchased including how to keep it running smoothly, save battery life and protect it from damage.  We’ll also cover wireless on the road and how to keep your laptop safe from hackers.

Photo credit: vancouverfilmschool

This very popular, hands-on workshop will teach you everything you need to know on how to setup and customize WordPress, as well as demonstrate how content choices affect SEO.

Build Your Own WordPress Website

This 101 training for WordPress introduces you to best practice concepts for setting up a new website using WordPress, blogging, hosting, content creation, SEO and website maintenance.

No previous experience with WordPress or website development necessary.  Each session is from 4pm – 6pm Pacific time.

Session 1: What is WordPress? Thursday September 8th, 2011
Session 2: Installing WordPress Thursday September 15th, 2011
Session 3: Customizing WordPress Thursday September 22nd, 2011
Session 4: Show and Tell Thursday September 29th, 2011

Bonus Session! 5: How to setup and customize a WordPress WooTheme
Woothemes are one of the most commonly used premium WordPress themes by adult learners taking our courses and workshops.  We want to congratulate Woothemes on a job well done and help our students at the same time!  You can read more about it on the blog.

P.S. Can’t make it to the training?  Pre-order the video series for just $49.  Videos will start being released September 10th!

P.P.S.  Did you see our special Labor Day coupon good for 50% off your training?  It can be used 4 more times: LABOR50

BONUS!  Session 5: How to setup and customize a WooTheme – To celebrate Woothemes releasing their 100th WordPress theme, Freshworkshops will be offering a special session for attendees of this month’s Build Your Own WordPress Website on how to customize your Wootheme.

This hands-on workshop will teach you everything you need to know on how to setup and customize WordPress, as well as demonstrate how content choices affect SEO.

This is a 101 training for WordPress on the current version and introduces you to best practice concepts for setting up a new website using WordPress, blogging, hosting, content creation, SEO and website maintenance. No previous experience with WordPress or website development necessary.

We will be announcing the training date to attendees soon!

There’s still time to register for the workshop which starts on Thursday!

WordPress 3.0 and above allows you to list and organized your navigation any way you like using custom menus. You can include pages, categories, posts and even links to external websites!

Watch as we create a custom menu, add items and then reorganize and nest the menu items.

You will learn step-by-step how to register a domain name, setup Google Apps, configure your MX records and and get your domain email up and running!

You can offer your staff email, shared calendars and document storage in one spot.

Learn step-by-step how to setup Google Apps with your own custom domain for professional results!

It’s a snap to enable Google Apps on mobile devices like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android so your employees can stay in the loop while out of the office, accepting appointments and replying to email.

Great For

• IT staff who are sick of Microsoft Exchange and want to setup domain email with Google Apps
• Business owners looking to reduce IT costs, get rid of spam emails and have consistant branding
• Consultants who setup websites and blogs for their customers

Time: 3 hours

Location: Online

Upcoming Training

Next training June 23rd, 2011.  Sign up now!

You will learn:

• How to register for Google Apps for your domain
• How to register a new domain name at GoDaddy and always get a low price
• The steps to fully activate your new domain email
• Verify domain ownership for new Google Apps account
• How to change mail records (MX) for new Google Apps account
• Discuss: What are mail records (MX)?
• Discuss: Email migration strategies
• Discuss: The difference between Google Apps and Microsoft Exchange
• Tour of Google Apps dashboard
• Learn how to test for mail record resolution

You will leave with:

• A fully functioning Google Apps account
• Increased comfort level of how to register a Google Apps domain account
• Better understanding of how email accounts work
• Links and resources for migrating your existing email into Google Apps

Maybe you’re trying to figure out WordPress, Google Analtyics or your email newsletter system.

Well never fear because at Freshworkshops, we’re all about helping you learn about the web so you can run your business faster, smarter and with less effort!

We’re starting the series we talked about earlier this year, “QnA with Freshworkshops” where we answer your burning questions about building websites, getting the hang of social media networks like Twitter and helping to deliver better customer service by staying on top of your business.

QnA Session Details for May

Join us for this live and open QnA session where we’ll answer questions we received this week.  Enter your questions in the comments below

What: Live screen webinar answering web technology questions

Date: Monday, May 16th, 2011

Time: 12pm noon to 1pm Pacific

Host: Adria Richards

Register: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/761973534

The royal wedding between Kate Middleton and Prince William has caused quite a stir worldwide.  It’s expected that their wedding would draw over half a million viewers today to watch the nuptials.

Camila Prada is an artist and an entrepreneur.  She creates ceramic pottery and stoneware.

When she heard about the wedding she decided to put out a set of limited edition mugs that said, “I could care less about the royal wedding”, registered the domain http://sorrybut.co.uk and uploaded a simple website using WordPress that contained all of five pages.

Not a big, complex website by any means.  The mugs were available to be shipped worldwide and you had two choices based on your location.  It turns out that other people agreed with Camila and the mugs quickly began to sell.  So fast in fact that when Camila checked her Paypal account the following week, she had a balance of over $16,000! That’s right!

A quote from Camila to a Bloomberg reporter:

“I was just sitting at my computer freaking out,” Prada, a 34-year-old Canadian, said in an interview. “My account went from zero to 10,000 pounds ($16,000) in a week and a half.”

Breaking It Down

Here at Freshworkshops, we often see the frustration entrepreneurs experience as they learn to build an online presence.  They want to get traffic, be contacted and make sales but it can seem overwhelming to plan, build and launch a website.  They may already have a website up and running somewhere else, want to understand how SEO really works or are trying to figure out how to use social media to promote their products and services.

Let’s look at what Camila’s website and what she did to make this simple ecommerce site a success:

A domain name. By branding this product with it’s own domain name, the site became memorable and stood out.  Now Camila could have put it under her main website but this was a much smarter move because the url indicates what people will find there.

A website build with WordPress. This was a great choice because out of the box, WordPress is SEO friendly and is easily indexed by Google.  A quick search for “sorry but uk” shows Camila’s website as the fifth result out of over 32 million.  That’s amazing!   So not only was Camila able to put together a site fairly quickly, it began doing really well for keywords in the major search engines.  Wordpress is known for being an easy website platform to work with.  If you know how to use Microsoft Word, you an manage you own website.  Wordpress is a Content Management System (CMS) and that means it separates the design of the website from the content making it fast and easy to do updates.

A single product. Rather than sell mugs, t-shirts, plates, necklaces and keychain holders, Camila focused on promoting one product with one message.  The choice for the visitor was not, “Which one do I want” but rather “Do I want this?” making their next question, “How do I get this?” which is an excellent conversion workflow.  If you have an ecommerce site, sit down with a piece of paper and write out all the questions a visitor ask themselves before they hit your buy button.  Too much thinking can cause potential buyers to give up.

Images of the item being sold. Especially with products that you can’t touch, it’s important to give a sense of texture with screenshots.  In this case Camila had a physical product to offer and she puts it front and center on the website.  She also takes the time to create a photo gallery page and shows the detailing on the bottom of the mug.  Excellent!

Pages explaining more about the product. Camila uses the About page to identify with the buyer about the royal wedding as well as explaining the availability of the product as well as that part of the proceeds will go to a charitable cause.

Tired of the media circus?

Commemorate your indifference with this fine china mug made in Stoke-on-Trent, in the heart of England. This is a beautifully made, rare memento for folks who go against the grain. A maximum of only 1000 limited edition mugs will be produced.

10% of the selling price from each mug will to the WE LOVE STOKE Fund, a charity for Stoke-on-Trent, the birthplace of quintessential English fine china. Stoke has one of the highest unemployment rates in the UK due to ceramic factory closures, unable to compete with cheaper manufacturers overseas.

Ecommerce through Paypal buttons. There are a lot of choices when it comes to selling online.  Many people get wrapped up in the idea of a shopping cart and all the fancy bells and whistles.  Paypal is one of the easiest flexible and most popular ecommerce solutions out there.  Not only can you create basic buttons like Camila did, you can connect Paypal to shopping carts, accept reoccurring membership payments, have your developer connect to their API and use their new mobile payments service.  It’s free to sign up for Paypal.

Social media buttons. The website made it easy to share the mug message.  There were both Twitter and Facebook buttons near the bottom right corner to encourage people to spread the message.  It’s definitely a snarky statement to say something to the effect, “Hey!  I don’t care about your darn wedding!” and on the Internet, outspoken, racy messages are king.

Summary

Camila’s success shows that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars, create a lot of content or wait months to see results.  Business owners feel apprehensive about starting to build a website so much so that they often hand off the entire project to someone else for fear of making a mistake.

In this example, there were three strong message about the success of the coffee mugs at Sorry.co.uk.

Camila provided:

• A product people wanted
• A straightforward explanation of what you would get
• A way for the buyer to purchase it her mugs

So content is still king but it certainly helps if you lay the foundation for success with planning, strong content, an easy to navigate website and of course, WordPress!  It also turns out that Camila is a friend of one of my friends so it was nice to learn about WordPress helping yet another small business owner become successful!

If you’re a business owner, what you do feel is holding your site back from being successful?

If you’re a website designer, what is the biggest challenge you see to client success?

Get WordPress Training

The training program on WordPress that we offer here at Freshworkshops, Build Your Own WordPress Website, teaches you step-by-step how to setup your own website from scratch.

Everything from registering the domain name to the hosting to installing WordPress as well as once it’s setup how to create post and pages, install themes and widgets plus planning your content to attract people using solid SEO techniques.

Many websites on the internet will recommend website hosting companies based on the comission they receive if you sign up which can be as high as $200. Then once you’re on board and if you have problems, it’s not their problem. They have their commission and go on promoting hosting companies that don’t deliver.

I’ve just updated our hosting recommendations page with a fresh version of the Website Hosting Matrix and it’s specifically geared toward entrepreneurs looking to find a place to host their WordPress website and the things you should look for are:

• Excellent technical support
• cPanel offered to manage your hosting space
• Automated backups
• Secure hosting environment
• Servers that are fast with new hardware

I’m still recommending Rochenhost as people who have signed up there from taking a Freshworkshops class still rave about how happy they are with the service! I too am a satisfied customer and have been with them over 2 years now.

Website hosting Comparison Matrix

In the meantime, I’ve created this chart based on my experience hosting websites which goes back to 1999 when I registered my first domain name.

I began offering hosting to my clients in 2003 after many of them had trouble with their hosting companies.  This allowed me to learn more about website management, DNS and the type of support people should expect.

Check out this helpful video from WPZoom on how to use Firebug to find the css, Firepicker to select colors and Firediff to get the changes and put them in your css file!

We just spotted this amazing deal where you can save $10 bucks and get a domain name from GoDaddy for just $1.00!

Use coupon code: ACES1

Good for any new .COM .ORG .CA .MOBI .BIZ .CO.UK domain name registration or domain transfer.  Not good for renewals

Hurry! Expires after 10,000 uses or 11:59pm May 23rd, 2011