“I’ve been doing WordPress for 17 years and I’m falling behind…”
Since the introduction of Gutenberg, it seems like everything’s changing at a rapid pace.
The WP core team proposes an update on one of the Make blogs, the proposal gets discussed across Github issues and Slack conversations, the feature ships, and sometime way later you’re trying to piece it all together with little or no useful documentation.
Now you have to choose between staying current or actually getting your work done.
Sound familiar?
That’s the sentiment I hear over and over again. “I can’t keep up…”
Here’s what a senior engineer with more than 17 years of experience building WordPress sites said when I asked, “what is the biggest issue you face right now?”
“I feel lost and out of touch with the ever-changing terminology; I’m worried about falling behind. I’m not sure exactly what I should learn, or even where I can learn it.”
I’ve spoken with so many people who share this same pain.
You’re falling behind because you’ve been chasing a moving target.
For six straight years now, everything has changed so completely and quickly that last year’s advice is already wrong.
Even the Make and Develop blogs—the official guides on the matter—are split into so many pieces it’s easy to get lost.
You want to embrace the block editor, but you struggle to produce anything beyond a plain text layout.
Each new day you feel further behind than before just trying to keep track of the terminology, let alone the technology—should you use synced patterns (or was it “reusable blocks?”) and the site editor (Or block editor? …Gutenberg?)
Maybe you’re ready to quit WordPress completely and switch to Squarespace, Wix, or Webflow.
I wouldn’t blame you!
With each new WordPress release, your prior working knowledge becomes more obsolete, increasing how lost you feel (and are).
One of the biggest challenges with learning Gutenberg is the ocean of low-grade training content.
Chances are, you’ve already lost countless hours wading through bad resources trying to understand how to build WordPress sites and work with Gutenberg.
You’ve read blog posts that are inconsistent or chock full of bad advice.
You’ve found tutorials that are out-of-date and produce more errors than answers.
You’ve watched long, slooooow screencasts that don’t deliver useful instruction.
You’ve tried courses that are old, stale, or just plain wrong.
And YouTube videos. So many YouTube videos! Many of which turn out to be affiliate schemes trying to get a piece of your hard-earned cash without a care for you or your career.
After much effort and searching, maybe you’ve cobbled together some understanding, but it’s mostly been a series of dead ends.
This isn’t sustainable… and you NEED to find that sustainability.
What if you never felt lost again?
What if you could simply sit down and start learning, and avoid all the searching, bad advice, out-of-date information, stale demos, wrong answers, and dead ends?
Imagine you had a resource that consistently taught the fundamentals of developing WordPress sites and delivered proven advice for all the supporting skills you need to be a well-rounded professional.
Imagine that, instead of feeling lost, you felt confident about building and deploying new WordPress sites and maintaining or updating old ones.
Instead of being filled with worry and doubt, you had a coherent strategy for solving any problem.
Instead of struggling to keep up, you were leading the way!
Catch up in as little as 20-30 minutes per week.
WPSessions is the WordPress resource you’ve been missing.
With just 20-30 minutes per week, you could learn, practice, and stay current without a fear of ever falling behind again.
Picture yourself, months from now, working on more interesting projects, attracting better opportunities, earning more money, and delivering incredible websites that are a dream to use.
This isn’t just a dream—this is what really happens to WPSessions members commit to solving their problem!
We have the right instructors and the right training to set you up for years of success.
Learn to develop custom WordPress and WooCommerce sites directly from skilled professionals.
I’ve hired industry experts to teach you the exact skills you need to know—experts who actively use those skills to deliver incredible websites of their own!
The video library and companion resources I’ve curated here at WPSessions features the best training you’ll find anywhere in the world.
Since 2013, I’ve hosted more than 400 presentations and arranged them by topic, skill level, and learning path. Even with all these videos, I can match you with the exact right one to solve the particular problem you’re facing right now.
In fact, WPSessions is uniquely situated to do this.
I pay close attention to the needs of WordPress professionals and web development trends at large.
I’ve spent the past 11 years curating the topics and sessions that are most important to your career.
And I’ve spent the past 17 years developing relationships with the experts who can teach these topics best.
Get a level of access you can’t find anywhere else.
Many of the experts I host are the best in the world at what they do.
This means, in most cases, they’re completely inaccessible to you outside of WPSessions.
If you tried to hire some of our presenters as a personal mentor, you’re looking at anything from $500-2,000 per hour—and that’s just for the ones who make time for private coaching!
But, through WPSessions, you have an opportunity to learn from all of them and get their best advice on-demand.
WPSessions is your personal guide to a better career.
Think about how much further ahead you would be if you had a guide who:
- …always offers you their best advice.
- …has been there and done that.
- …understands your goals and how to reach them.
- …teaches you the right way to solve your problems.
- …answers the questions you haven’t even thought to ask.
This is the exact life-changing guidance you will get as a WPSessions member, pre-recorded and ready to serve you on-demand.
The experts we host, the topics we’ve curated, and the learning paths we’ve developed ensure you learn the right things, in the right order, at the right time.
"The best investment you can make in your WordPress career!"
Become a member today and start your path toward WordPress mastery.
Renews at $299/yr.
OR
You’ll make your first payment today and get immediate access to the entire library. Each payment will be charged automatically on the same day of the month or year.
Prices shown in USD. Cancel anytime.
NEW: Learn to love WordPress again with a special behind-the-scenes training series!
Big news: I’m rebuilding the WPSessions website in public, and you’re invited to be part of the journey!
You’ll learn the right way to create custom blocks, work with block patterns, and even create your very own custom block theme—in a way that won’t be obsolete in about 4 minutes.
By the time we’ve finished this training series together, you’ll no longer struggle to keep up with the rapid changes happening in WordPress.
What's Included?
You’ll get a step-by-step roadmap to incorporate the block editor into your own work. Not just the “what” and “how”, but also why.
Why will this make your work easier?
Why will your clients love you for championing this migration?
You can join me, in real-time, as I modernize and migrate a legacy WordPress site.
I’m going to document the entire process of rebuilding the WPSessions website—including the decision-making process—to give you a first-hand account of what it takes to embrace the block editor and make something incredible.
Some of this will be live-streamed so you can ask questions and follow along in real-time. Other parts will be recorded and released as we go. Once we’ve finished, every lesson will be tightly-edited into the most useful pieces of instruction.
For the things I can’t teach myself, I’ll bring in experts who have already been doing this work—potentially including the core contributors themselves when their schedule allows.
Part 1: Project Planning
1.1 Structuring Data in WordPress
Knowing where and how data is stored, along with how it relates to one another, is paramount for delivering a usable solution.
As part of our scoping efforts, I’ll show you how to create an information architecture diagram. This diagram will show us all the different objects, properties, and relationships we need to accommodate throughout the site.
Then we’ll translate that diagram into custom post types, taxonomies, meta data, and relationships. For some of the things we’ll be doing on WPSessions, we may even require a custom table or two, so I’ll show you the best way to create and use those, too.
1.2 Scoping and Estimating Your Work
This site, like many you’ll encounter in the real world, includes a lot of hidden complexity. Shoot, in includes a lot of obvious complexity, too. Between ecommerce, restricted content, and custom post meta and relationships, there’s just a lot here.
Before we can get started, we need to know how much work is necessary.
I’ll show you my foolproof method of scoping work and creating reasonable and accurate time estimates.
1.3 Common-sense approaches to site development
It’s a lot of work rebuilding a site with any amount of history. Before we can dive into the rebuild it’s important we cover our bases.
I’ll provide my best tips for migrating and refactoring old code, rationale for using existing solutions vs building your own, and advice to help you pick themes and plugins that are worthy of your time and investment.
1.4 Adopting better development practices
An essential part to delivering anything to production is delivering something that is usable, accessible, and maintainable to all the people who need it.
Throughout this training series I’m going to show you my best advice for custom development that will better serve you, your clients, your colleagues, and anyone who uses the things you build.
We’ll especially adopt a few core principles:
- Prioritizing user experience (UX) in each decision
- Delivering accessible solutions
- Creating single-purpose functions and plugins for better maintainability
- Documenting as we go
- Testing as we go
Part 2: Learning to love the block editor
2.1 Intro to the block and site editors (aka Gutenberg)
Get your bearings with a safari tour of the different panels, sections, and settings. I’ll provide quick tips for a painless editor experience and walk you through a handful of scenarios.
We’ll discuss the ways you can strategically and systematically integrate the block editor to your existing work over time without overwhelming yourself or your clients.
2.2 Curating the editor experience
We’ll look at all the ways you can deliver a curated experience to editing the sites you deliver. From creating custom styles and sane defaults, to locking down specific blocks, to disabling certain functionality completely.
2.3 Extending and customizing core blocks
Here we’ll explore a critical question: do you even need a custom block?
Between block defaults, style variations, and block patterns, it’s entirely possible that you can deliver a stunning experience and meet client requirements using blocks that already exist.
2.4 Working with block patterns
For me, block patterns are the real shining moment for the block editor. They’re extremely versatile, easy to make, and easy to use.
We’ll start with the basics of creating and organizing patterns, plus some tips to make your life easier. Then we’ll create synced patterns that automatically share changes across multiple locations. After that we’ll look at how easy it is to quickly build entirely new pages using patterns.
2.5 Intro to custom block development
Let’s be honest, this is probably the module you were looking for.
Even if you don’t need a custom block for every project, you’re probably going to want one in many different occasions. So let’s learn how to create a standard block, the right way, with zero prior experience!
2.6 Create your first Block Theme
I’ll admit, I initially had many reservations about block themes when they were first introduced. But now I’m all in!
We’ll begin this section by exploring key differences between classic themes and block themes. This will lead to a reintroduction of template hierarchy and which templates you’ll need to include in your theme for the outcome you’re after.
Once we’ve gotten our bearings, we’ll explore the theme.json file and the vital role it plays throughout the entire editing experience—not just the site editor, but the block editor as well.
2.7 Advanced block development techniques
Once we’ve covered the basics, we’ll really stretch our wings by creating dynamic and interactive blocks. I’m personally going to need a lot of these for rebuilding WPSessions.
We’ll add support for core editor features, incorporate toolbars and other controls, and do other nifty things like support block transformations and post meta data.
2.8 Advanced Block Theme techniques
Once you’re familiar with the basic workings of a block theme, we’ll go deeper on the ways you can really make an impact.
We’ll look at creating multiple color schemes and style variations, developing reusable template parts, defining custom block patterns, and ways you can incorporate PHP in your patterns and templates (yes, PHP is still relevant in this new era!)
2.9 Alternative Approaches to Creating Blocks
After we’ve worked or way through all the essentials and fundamentals, I want to take some time to explore the different ways you could approach this work.
Specifically, we’ll look at methods for creating blocks with the popular Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) as well as straight PHP. But we’ll also explore different ways to speed up the standard scaffolding process using starter templates.
Part 3: Rebuilding WPSessions
3.1 Real-world Practice and Common Tactics
Across the many plugins we’ll be creating, we’ll be leveraging a number of different common tactics and development practices.
You can be sure you’ll learn and practice all of these approaches:
- Creating new editor sections
- Adding features or controls to existing blocks
- Modifying other plugins via action and filter hooks
- Fetching and storing data from external APIs
- Creating and accessing custom database tables
- Garbage collection for expired data
- Modifying WP_Query and query blocks
- Utilizing browser history state
- Working with transient data
3.2 WooCommerce Customizations
There are a number of parts about WooCommerce that I prefer to simplify in order to deliver the best possible customer experience. In my case, this means removing the cart page entirely—that’s an unnecessary extra step.
I’ll show you how to customize the checkout page, eliminate unneeded checkout fields, auto-advance order statuses, improve the order confirmation page, and deliver a fully custom customer dashboard.
3.3 WooCommerce Enhancements
With some baseline customizations out of the way, the next step is introducing some useful improvements and enhancements to WooCommerce!
In this portion I’ll show you how to build direct-to-checkout links so customers can move straight from a landing page to the checkout page (like on this very page).
I’ll also show you how to create custom coupon links that will automatically clear the cart, add our intended product(s), apply a coupon, and deliver the visitor on the checkout page. Is it magic? No, but it sure feels like it!
I have a few customizations that send specific data along to ConvertKit so I can identify active customers vs expired or inactive ones. I’ll show you how this works, too.
Finally, I’ll show you how to fetch and display a product’s price anywhere you please and then manipulate and adjust that price on-the-fly for dynamic, one-off purchase prices. I personally use this to deliver purchase-power-parity (PPP) but I can think of other use cases as well!
3.4 Creating restricted pages and blocks
There are tons of plugins that offer this functionality, but I currently use my own custom, filterable behavior.
This is the perfect opportunity to reevaluate my setup and decide if a commercial plugin is a better solution or if I need to make a few upgrades to my existing plugin.
In the end, I’ll show you how to apply varying degrees of restriction across entire pages and individual blocks. This will support things like content previews, customizable restriction messages, and customizable calls to action.
3.5 Building integrated submission forms
Next, I’ll show you easy and robust ways to capture essential data in user submission forms while delivering the most simple experience possible to the person using the form.
For example, I’m going to create a “Submit a Problem” form that collects the page URL, page title, video timestamp, the name and email of the submitter, and a description of the issue. The only field they will need to populate is the description field.
I’ll also show you strategies for leveraging query strings in your links to pre-populate or hide form fields and save your visitors steps.
Finally, I’ll show you ways to get this form data outside of WordPress through web hooks and external automations. I’ll specifically show how I send data to Airtable, Slack, and my email service provider.
3.6 Developing Custom Plugins
I need to create a whole slew of custom functionality to support the various behaviors across the WPSessions website. Here’s some of features we’re going to build and ship as plugins in this series:
- Content Collections
- Expiring Preview URLs
- Play Queues (custom video playlists that auto-advance)
- Interactive Transcripts
- Watch History
- User Favorites & “Watch Later” lists
- Popular Content
- Recommended Content
- Query Filters
- Site-wide Messaging
"The best investment you can make in your WordPress career!"
Become a member today and start your path toward WordPress mastery.
Renews at $299/yr.
OR
You’ll make your first payment today and get immediate access to the entire library. Each payment will be charged automatically on the same day of the month or year.
Prices shown in USD. Cancel anytime.
Believe me, there’s nothing worse than feeling lost or behind.
Feeling lost and behind is the kind of thing that shakes your confidence to your very core. The longer it lasts, the more you fall behind and the easier it is to quit.
I know how awful it feels because I’ve been right there myself.
The fact that you haven’t quit already tells me that you’re smart and capable.
And I want to help you!
I want to help you to feel confident and capable. I want you to feel empowered by WordPress. In fact, that’s the entire reason I created WPSessions in 2013.
My Journey
In April of 2013, just prior to launching WPSessions, I faced and accepted several hard truths:
- My own skills had plateaued.
- My self-directed learning created embarrassing blind spots and knowledge gaps.
- I was completely lost, without someone to mentor or guide me.
- I was falling behind, unable to keep up with my peers or the ever-evolving web itself.
- I didn’t know where to turn for reliable WordPress resources I could trust.
In the process of accepting these truths, I found so many other people who privately shared my struggles and embarrassment.
I resolved that I wouldn't quit.
I decided I would find a way help myself as well as others.
I reached out to a number of respected experts within the WordPress community and asked if I could hire them to teach what they know to me me and others.
To my delight (and relief) they said yes!
I hosted the very first session in June of 2013 and kept growing from there.
Regain your confidence in as little as one day.
Today, I’m pleased to tell you now that you don’t have to go it alone and you don’t have to spend 10 years building your own training library like I did**.**
I did that so you wouldn’t have to!
If you’ve been struggling for any amount of time, I want to assure you: you’re not alone.
Let’s take a look at how WPSessions can help you this year to reach your goals, deliver more value, and earn more money:
- In the first hour you could completely transform your income by using my handy rate calculator to determine how much your time is worth and how to bill for it.
- In the first 1-2 days you will be able to answer your biggest question and start addressing your biggest issue. You can jump right in with one of our courses or learning paths, or you can request a personalized learning path.
- Within a week you could create your first block, build your first plugin, or convert your first classic theme.
- Within a month you could improve the performance of a site, cleaning a hacked site, adding recurring revenue to your service business, or raising your rates.
- Within a year you’ll be prepared to solve nearly any WordPress problem, ship a greater portfolio of work you’re proud of, attract more clients and better opportunities, and add add multiple new revenue streams to your business.
- Beyond year one you’ll continue to sharpen your skills and stay ahead of the curve, build your authority as a trusted professional, gain respect from your clients and colleagues, attract more of your ideal client, and develop a sustainable pipeline of new projects and repeat business.
Yes, you really can catch up and never feel behind again!
Achieve the outcomes you deserve!
A lot of positive outcomes (and income!) are possible to you as a WPSessions member. I want to spend a moment focusing on five of them:
- You’ll attract more opportunities. Instead of dividing your time between doing the work and catching up, you can focus on doing better work which will bring more and better opportunities your way.
- You’ll gain more time in your day. You’ll build skills that help you work faster or reduce unnecessary work entirely. The amount of time you’ll spend building these skills with WPSessions is way lower than trying trying to build them yourself in isolation.
- WPSessions makes life easier.** Our case studies and workshops help you avoid common mistakes altogether. You don’t have to suffer through problems alone or struggle with each step in a project or client relationship.
- WPSessions gives you an unfair advantage. In several situations, you can jump straight to a working solution instead of to painfully figuring out each individual step yourself. The support and access you gain from WPSessions means you’ll be able to find more paths forward any time you feel stuck.
- Sacrifice less time to reach your dream outcome. Everything about our guided instruction is designed to help you reclaim your time and spend more time on the things that matter to you.
I should remind you that nothing is guaranteed in life—you get out whatever you put into a system—but joining WPSessions, and putting in a reasonable amount of effort, makes outcomes like these the most likely result.
"The best investment you can make in your WordPress career!"
Become a member today and start your path toward WordPress mastery.
Renews at $299/yr.
OR
You’ll make your first payment today and get immediate access to the entire library. Each payment will be charged automatically on the same day of the month or year.
Prices shown in USD. Cancel anytime.
Here’s what you’ll get as a WPSessions Member
A WPSessions membership isn’t just one thing, it’s an entire collection of benefits and resources designed to help you get ahead and stay ahead.
From individual videos, to learning paths, to code samples, to community support and beyond, WPSessions will meet you where you’re at and deliver the skills and experience you need to become a world-class web professional in your own right.
Learn directly from world-class experts.
When you join WPSessions, you’ll get immediate access to a growing library of more than 400 videos featuring 300 different presenters.
The format features a mixture of live and pre-recorded presentations, short-form tutorials, long-form case studies, and in-depth courses. We’ve also hosted a number of hands-on workshops so you can practice alongside the presenter in real time.
Annual members can also download any video and enjoy permanent, offline access.
Check out one of our sessions right now, for free:
Make meaningful progress with our guided learning paths.
It’s not enough to give you a boatload of videos and say, “good luck!”
We’ve developed a series of pre-made learning paths to help you know which things to learn and in what order. As time goes on, we’ll add more and more of these outcome-focused playlists to the library.
Whether you’re looking to boost your development skills, or get better at client management, build more secure sites, or create your first block, theme, or plugin, we have a learning path that will help you.
And, where our topic-based learning paths fall short, you can request a personalized learning-path to meet your specific goals.
Don’t just watch, interact.
Every video includes interactive, searchable transcripts so you can read along or jump around as your curiosity leads. You’re in control of the playback speed as well, so material is covered as quickly or slowly as you prefer.
For our hands-on workshops, you can download the code samples or other resources and participate right alongside the video—including with picture-in-picture mode if your browser supports it.
Learn a variety of topics.
Whether you’re looking to gain new, in-demand skills or get better at the fundamentals, we have you covered!
WPSessions can help you close your knowledge gaps and become the best, well-rounded WordPress professional possible!
- Accessibility
- Block Development
- Business Development
- Case Studies
- Client Services
- Content & Copywriting
- Databases
- Design & UI/UX
- Development
- Ecommerce
- Events & Community
- Headless & Static Sites
- Interview/Roundtable
- Javascript
- Maintenance
- Performance & Optimization
- Plugin Development
- Sales & Marketing
- Security
- SEO
- Testing & Debugging
- Theme Development
- Tips & Advice
- Workflow & Tooling
Training that’s approachable to any skill level.
Our videos are categorized by skill level so you can confidently step in and start learning whether you’re breaking into web development for the very first time or a seasoned professional with 10+ years of experience.
All of our material is designed to be approachable no matter your background. Our videos will build upon whatever knowledge you already have (or haven’t yet acquired) and help fill in the gaps to give you a complete picture for building great websites.
Go far together. Connect with your peers in our Slack community.
Get to know the other folks who are on this journey with you.
Celebrate your wins and share your struggles so you can enjoy more satisfying accomplishments and less troublesome burdens. You’ll be amazed at how small problems become when you have more people to share the load.
The Slack community is also a great place for show-and-tell on your projects (or parts of projects) that make you particularly proud. Inspire others and earn kudos for a job well done!
Get permanently un-stuck with friendly support at any point in your journey.
If you have a question about a topic or video, or find something that looks broken, friendly support is a single email or Slack message away!
When the community can’t step in to help you, I’ll be standing by to answer specific questions and get you pointing back in the right direction.
We’re all in this together!
BONUS: Take advantage of sample project proposals, checklists, and contracts.
Sometimes the best way to help is to provide templates you can copy and immediately put to work. Our sample proposals and contracts are exactly that.
You’ll get more than just the documents themselves, though. You’ll also get videos that explain how to use them and how to negotiate with clients to make sure you’re including the right things in your proposals and contracts.
BONUS: Determine your worth with our Rate Calculator.
If you’re struggling to know how much you should charge, or you’re ready to raise your rates but don’t know how to justify it, we have a handy tool to help you!
The WPSessions Rate Calculator helps you account for all of your current needs and future goals in order to build a complete picture of how much you need to earn in a year.
We then combine this total need with a realistic look at your availability. The calculator includes breaks for holidays, illness, breaks, and—critically—time for growth and skill development.
The end result are suggested rates you can use for billing hourly, weekly, and monthly.
And, yes, there’s even a video to explain how to set and justify your rates, too.
BONUS: Enjoy discounts on products and services you’ll actually use.
Throughout your journey there will be a variety of products and services that you’ll need to purchase. Some of these will be to support yourself and the way you deliver projects. Others will be to support your clients (or whomever you’re building sites for) in order to deliver a particular kind of experience.
We’ve made arrangements with a number of plugin shops, theme designers, web hosts, and other service providers to offer you exclusive deals and discounts you’ll actually use.
Some of these discounts are big enough to recover the entire cost of your membership in one year!
In other words, you can spend less money by buying a membership—just for one discount—than you will spend buying a specific product or service by itself.
Meet Your Guide
Hi! I’m Brian Richards and I’ve been creating things for the web since 1998. I love helping good people accomplish great things they never thought possible.
I’m excited to help you!
My primary role through WPSessions is to help guide you on the right path to success.
Throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to work with household brands, fortune 500 companies, notable non-profit groups, incredible agency partners, and numerous independent contractors.
I’ve contributed to WordPress core, shipped commercial themes, built and supported free and premium plugins, and delivered custom solutions to ecommerce stores fielding thousands of orders per minute.
I’ve been a freelancer, a well-paid consultant, a team lead, a CTO, and a small business owner. I’ve managed dozens of contractors, led teams of 30, worked in teams of hundreds, and operated as a self-sufficient company of one.
Wherever you’re at right now, and wherever you’re trying to go, I’ve either been there myself or personally know someone with that experience.
I’m here to help you identify and reach your goals!
Together, we can expose your blind spots, identify your knowledge gaps, and establish a learning path to get you from where you are today to where you need to go.
Think of me as your personal guide and liaison to hundreds of experts operating in and around the WordPress community!
Meet some of your instructors
WPSessions is home to more than 200 different instructors. We’ve hosted engineers from Google, top agency owners, core committers, JavaScript developers, White House staffers, UX researchers, SEO writers, security researchers, and scores of other professions.
It would take far too long to introduce you to everybody. So here’s a semi-random sampling to impress upon you the caliber of experts you’ll find on WPSessions.
"The best investment you can make in your WordPress career!"
Become a member today and start your path toward WordPress mastery.
Renews at $299/yr.
OR
You’ll make your first payment today and get immediate access to the entire library. Each payment will be charged automatically on the same day of the month or year.
Prices shown in USD. Cancel anytime.
Purchase with confidence. You’re protected by my unconditional, no-risk, money-back guarantee.
If you decide don't like WPSessions over the next 14 days, for any reason, I will provide a 100% refund. No justification necessary.
Let me explain why I'm confident enough to offer you this guarantee.
WPSessions was created for the express purpose of helping web developers, designers, independent contractors, and agency owners deliver better solutions and find better clients.
Since its inception in 2013, WPSessions has continued forward single-mindedly in this purpose.
You will find presentations on this site that can help you earn an additional $2,000 or more per project, and others that can help you earn that much or more per month. Single presentations!
Fewer than 1% of customers have ever asked for a refund.
I want to do everything possible to help you succeed, and I believe WPSessions can help you succeed better than you would alone.
It's simple: join WPSessions today, dive into our exclusive training content, and if you don't find enough value in the first two weeks (e.g. advice that will help you earn more than 10x your purchase cost), I'll refund your purchase 100%.
This guarantee covers you for the entirety of the next two weeks. During that time, I'll be ready and waiting to answer any questions you have, as quickly and best as I am able.
TL;DR: This is an incredible opportunity!
WPSessions will help you go from “I don’t even know the ‘right’ way to build a WordPress site anymore” to “I know exactly what I’m doing and enjoy delivering amazing solutions other people love!”
Here are just some of the benefits of being a member:
- Gain mastery over WordPress and renewed confidence in your skills.
- Enjoy a greater understanding and satisfaction in your career (or hobby)!
- Create a body of work that attracts more opportunities to work on exciting projects.
- Grow your revenue by understanding what your time is worth and how to deliver more value to your clients or employer.
- Produce happier clients by learning how to manage expectations and meet their true needs (rather than just their wants).
- Work faster and easier by adopting better workflows and processes.
- Ship websites that are more performant, secure, and easier to use and maintain than anything you’ve shipped before.
- Get permanently unstuck by learning how to troubleshoot and navigate complexity.
And that’s not all! Enjoy these incredible features:
- Watch and learn from more than 300 skilled professionals.
- Get the right instruction for the particular problem you’re trying to solve right now.
- Follow a pre-made learning path or get a personalized learning-path to meet your goals.
- Get encouragement and friendly advice from the community and help with any problems or situations you encounter.
What’s included:
- Get immediate access to more than 400 recorded presentations.
- Watch 8 different in-depth courses.
- Read and search the interactive transcripts available on every video.
- Practice alongside hands-on workshops with the provided code samples.
- Join the Slack community and connect with your peers.
- Get un-stuck with friendly support at any point in your journey.
- Enjoy discounts on products and services you’ll actually use.
- Take advantage of sample project proposals and contracts.
- Determine your worth with our Rate Calculator.
- Watch from anywhere with offline access (for annual members).
Total value:
A single hour of coaching with some of our presenters costs anywhere from $500-2,000 per hour. With more than 200 hours of training in our library, you could easily spend more than $100,000 on this level of education.
Instead of hiring a coach, you can join WPSessions and pay one of two ways:
$299 per year, or $29 per month
The membership plans are identical except for one feature: annual members can download all the videos in the library for permanent, offline viewing.
And you can purchase with confidence because you’re protected by my unconditional, no-risk, money-back guarantee: If you decide don't like WPSessions in the first 14 days, for any reason, I will provide a 100% refund. No justification necessary.
"The best investment you can make in your WordPress career!"
Become a member today and start your path toward WordPress mastery.
Renews at $299/yr.
OR
You’ll make your first payment today and get immediate access to the entire library. Each payment will be charged automatically on the same day of the month or year.
Prices shown in USD. Cancel anytime.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is WPSessions right for me?
If you’re asking this question, what you really want to know is one of the following:
- Is the training material a good match for my current skill level?
- Will this help me build better websites (or build websites better)?
- Will this help me find better clients or manage clients better?
- Will this help me work any faster?
I believe the answer to all of these is “yes!” and I offer more detailed explanations for each of them throughout the copy above and the other answers below.
If you’ve read through this page and are still unsure, please email me brian@wpsessions.com before signing up!
What happens after I buy?
When you log in for the first time you'll have immediate access to every session, course, and learning path that already exist in the training library. You can begin watching our member-only videos just as soon as your order is complete. Over time, you’ll gain access to new training and resources as they’re published.
Our new behind-the-scenes training series will begin production in June and run throughout the year, with new videos landing each week, until every module has been completed.
How and when do I access WPSessions?
By logging into the member dashboard, you have 24/7/365 access to everything that is already in the training library. When we host live events, you’ll receive an email with your personal viewing link and instructions on how and when to join. If you miss a live event, recordings are typically uploaded within one business day of the broadcast ending and, often, same-day.
Is there a "community" component to WPSessions?
Yes! Well, sort of…
We’ve maintained a Slack community for years but it has historically gone underutilized. In the past it has primarily served as a hang-out during our flagship conferences.
This year I am breathing new life into it, beginning with the new behind-the-scenes series. If there is enough interest from the group, I’ll be happy to introduce organized activities like community round-tables, working sessions, and show-and-tell days.
Will you (Brian) be available if I get stuck?
My priority is for you to succeed, so when you have specific questions about understanding and applying what you're learning, I'll absolutely do my best to help!
But to keep expectations clear, joining WPSessions doesn't turn me into your private 24/7 business or life coach. If you email me for help, I ask that you're respectful of my time and, more importantly, trying to solve problems on your own. The first question I’m likely to ask is, “what have you tried so far?” so be prepared with an answer!
I do offer private coaching options for anyone looking for dedicated 1:1 training and mentoring. Coaching rates begin at $250/hr.
I’m a beginner, is WPSessions right for me?
It sure is! Even though we get into some pretty advanced stuff on WPSessions, there are loads of videos and resources for anyone who is just getting started on their journey. We’ve been careful to categorize every video by “experience level” to help you find the sessions and lessons that match your current skills and help you to level-up accordingly.
Make sure to utilize our Learning Paths and ask for recommendations so you can watch the right videos in the right order
Is WPSessions good for experienced folks?
Yes, definitely! WPSessions was originally designed for, and will always cater to, experienced and advanced professionals.
This training site was originally born from my personal frustration toward a lack of useful, applicable training resources for anyone with 5+ and 10+ years of experience. We all have blind spots and skill gaps, but rarely do we have the same, overlapping gaps.
In fact, I was 14 years into my own career when, after discovering some of my more frustrating blind spots and skill gaps, I created WPSessions as an opportunity to learn new skills myself.
To paraphrase the late Hair Club for Men founder Sy Sperling, “I’m not only the founder, I’m also a member!”
Are there any prerequisites or requirements?
There are no hard requirements or prerequisites for joining WPSessions. The training library includes videos and resources to support you at any step of your journey, from beginner to experienced web professional.
I would recommend you have a year or two of experience creating or managing websites. In particular, it will be helpful to have familiarity with using WordPress itself as well as any amount of experience writing HTML, CSS, PHP, or JavaScript. If you’re unfamiliar with any of these languages I can point you toward excellent primers for each and every one of them.
How is WPSessions different from all the other resources out there?
WPSessions respects your time by providing highly-curated and guided instruction from trusted and experienced professionals. We only teach skills and techniques that are worth knowing. Nothing else makes the cut.
There are so many great places to learn new skills online. I personally owe a lot of my early success to studying the source code of websites I admired (an approach with severely diminishing returns in the modern era). More recently, YouTube has become a shining star as I research my various interests like woodworking, 3D printing, small electronics, etc. And, for WordPress training, I’ve always been a fan of the dot-org sites like developer.wordpress.org (and the Codex before it), WordPress.tv, and the newer and better learn.wordpress.org.
The challenge with many other resources is that it’s almost impossible to know if the advice you’re getting is actually any good. There is a huge disparity in the quality of training and even certain positive signals—like the production value of a video—is a poor indicator of good instruction.
Very few places offer you any form of guided training, which means you have to design a curriculum yourself. This is extremely frustrating because it’s very hard to know what you need to learn, and in what order, unless you already understand the material. Every web professional I’ve ever met has been a self-directed learner, so I know it’s possible, but it has to be the least-optimal way to learn anything—not to mention all the blind spots and skill gaps it produces!
I designed WPSessions to solve all of these problems at once:
- I’ve gathered well-known and trusted authorities to provide the instruction
- We only cover topics that are useful and worth your time to learn
- We’ve created curated learning paths so you know what to learn and in what order
How is a WPSessions membership different from your conferences, free events, and newsletter?
There’s more of it, much more! We can barely scratch the surface of any topic through all of the free outlets but, in the membership, we can cover far more ground.
All of the free training and resources delivered through the newsletter, webinars, and conferences are useful and valuable on their own but they're only a small piece of the value that you will find as a member. If you’ve seen and liked anything from WordSesh, WooSesh, LoopConf, or the weekly newsletter, you’re going to love what you’ll find inside the membership!
How much time will it take to improve my skills?
I think the answer to this is similar to the answer for, “how many days of exercise will I need to feel like I'm in good physical shape?”
There is a certain minimum threshold you’ll need to pass before you feel like you’re beginning to see any progress. After that, it will be several more days or weeks until you feel like you’re making meaningful progress. Finally, you’ll reach a point where you’ve achieved your goal.
But does this mean you’re done exercising? Usually not.
There’s no one answer here because it ultimately depends on your goal, your starting point, how many hours per week you can commit toward reaching your goal, and how quickly you’ll get back into it if you’ve fallen into less-productive habits.
How long do I get access to WPSessions?
Your access is valid for as long as you remain an active member. As an annual member you will have access to all of our training videos, code samples, resources, and community for one year. You may also download any video or resource you like for permanent, offline access while you are a member. As a monthly member you’ll have access to all the materials for one month.
You may cancel at any time and your membership access will remain valid (officially “Active, pending cancellation” status) until your paid term ends (e.g. until the end of the month or year that you’ve already paid).
Are there any recurring costs or subscriptions?
Yes, memberships are billed in monthly or annual increments, depending on which payment term you choose. You may cancel at any time, including immediately, and continue accessing all materials until the end of your current term without the subscription auto-renewing at the end.
Is there a guarantee? What if I don’t like WPSessions?
Absolutely. I stand behind this training and provide a 100% refund without exception if you aren’t enjoying it or getting value from it.
You don’t need to provide any explanation or meet any requirements to get a refund, all you need to do is ask and you’ll receive your refund within a single business day.
I will ask you for candid feedback afterward so I can make the experience better, and I hope you’ll provide it, but even this is optional for you.
I still have questions!
I'm sure I have answers for you—just drop me an email at brian@wpsessions.com
"The best investment you can make in your WordPress career!"
Become a member today and start your path toward WordPress mastery.
Renews at $299/yr.
OR
You’ll make your first payment today and get immediate access to the entire library. Each payment will be charged automatically on the same day of the month or year.
Prices shown in USD. Cancel anytime.
Purchase with confidence! You’re protected by my unconditional, no-risk, money-back guarantee. If you decide don't like WPSessions in the first 14 days, for any reason, I will provide a 100% refund. No justification necessary.