I launched my WordPress for Noobs online course this week.  Over 30 participants have registered and paid thus far, with a few more expected by week’s end.

All’s working well with the integration of two big WordPress plugins to make the course happen:

• Wishlist Member which handles the registration, integration with PayPal, and membership management
• Simple:Press which provides the discussion forum for the course (screenshot on the right)

I’m using GoToWebinar to host a live Q&A webinar for the class each week, and Camtasia Studio to produce two screencasts (how-to videos) each week, hosted at Screencast.com.

All of this is a result of my taking the Teaching Sells course a year ago, with ongoing support from Third Tribe Marketing.

I’ve got more online courses (AKA Integrated Learning Environments) in the works. Next up: Blogging for Leaders.

All of which served to convince me that A) the popularity of WordPress continues to grow; and B) the demand for help in using it continues to grow.

So I decided to create an online course called WordPress for Noobs, and have it be the first course delivered by my new interactive learning platform:

Your Thick Skull

I’ve been coaching adults on the use of internet-related technology tools and services since 2002. Many adults feel intimidated by these technologies at times, and it bugs them when instructors talk over their heads. But just as often, it bugs them when instructors talk down to them, as if they’re little children.

Over time, I’ve learned that an approach which combines plain English with a little irreverent humor works well when teaching adults. Looking a frustrated adult in the eye and saying with faux exasperation, “Come on, get it through your thick skull!” invariably brings a smile and a sigh of relief. (For those who might not be familiar with the English language, to ‘get something through someone’s thick skull’ is an idiom which means ‘to manage to get someone, including oneself, to understand something.’)

The name Your Thick Skull is similar to the Complete Idiot’s and For Dummies reference guides in that it is not meant to be insulting and the instruction is designed to be non-intimidating.

Unlike those reference guides, however, Your Thick Skull will not offer books. Rather, I’ll use it to offer online courses that are best described as interactive learning environments or communities of learning. Big diff!

My initial online courses will be technology-related (WordPress for Noobs starting January 10; Blogging for Leaders in early 2011). In the near future, I’ll be branching out to offer a wide variety of online courses, partnering with others who have an expertise (teachers, authors, consultants, coaches, etc.) but who need help in sharing that expertise in an interactive learning environment. (Contact me if you’re interested in exploring that type of partnership.)

‘Nuff said for now.  I’m pleased to announce:

WordPress for Noobs

begins January 10.  Get it through Your Thick Skull.

After sitting there for 20 minutes, I began preparing to send out another tweet to tell the WordCamp organizers that I wasn’t going to make it in time. But suddenly, traffic began to move so I held off and arrived at 9:15. When I found chief WordCamp organizer Lauren Freeland, she told me that they’d seen my tweet and bumped my session up to 10:30. I thought, "Jeesh, these people have their shit together."

  
Left and center photos: On stage at Best Buy HQ: Lauren Freeland, WordCamp conference organizer; Toby Cryns, co-founder of the MSP WordPress User Group; Right photo: Steve Borsch, capturing some video of the scene.

As it turned out, I was able to do my WordPress Basics for Noobs session at 9:30; I also did a session at the end of the day: Blog-Based Conversations: Tools and strategies for managing comments and the people who make them. Both were well-attended, I got lots of great questions, and was pleased with the informal feedback I got from people afterwards.

WordCamp MSP was a well-run conference, starting with the venue, the food, and the range of sessions offered.  As a speaker, I was impressed with the whole process, including their terrific blog site and all the helpful email communications with Lauren Freeland and Brian Goeppner leading up to the event. A special tip-of-the-blogger hat goes out to the tech support volunteers who rescued me at my first session when hook-up to the screen projector failed.  Twice I overheard people talking about how helpful the WordPress troubleshooters were at The Tech Shop onsite. What a great idea that was.

WordCamp MSP 2011?  I hope so. In the meantime, I’ll be a regular at the MSP WordPress User Group.

2:30 PM Update:  A WordCamp album of 43 photos by Lauren Melcher posted to the TECHDotMN’s Flickr account, including one of me not paying attention.

The photo on the right shows my T-Mobile G1 (Google Android phone) displaying the home page of my community blog, Locally Grown.

Comments are visible after clicking on any post. You can add a comment as well. The best way to keep track of comments, however, is to use an RSS reader app on your mobile device and subscribe to the blog’s comments RSS feed. Then if you see a comment that you’d like to comment on, click the link to the comment. It will activate the mobile-optimized view of the web page and position you for typing in your comment.

• WordPress blog: How to Keep WordPress Secure
• Lorelle: Old WordPress Versions Under Attack
• Mashable Social Media Guide: WordPress Attack Underway: WordPress Users Must Upgrade

I wrote to my favorite web host, Tiger Technologies in California, asking them if they knew about it the worm and whether they could tell if any sites had been compromised. The owner, Robert Mathews, wrote me back within a few minutes:

We were actually the ones who detected this new worm about three weeks ago, notified the WordPress people about it, and urged them to make a public announcement:

(See the "In addition to that, we’ve discovered something else interesting…" section.) Would have been nice if they’d given us some credit, but oh well.

Anyway, all our customer sites have been protected against this attack since August 12, because we saw exactly how it worked and added server-wide rules against it. Your sites won’t have been compromised (by this, anyway).

That said, the general tone of those posts is correct. You should always upgrade WordPress (or any software you use) the day a new version becomes available.

From painful experience of watching how thousands of customers manage their sites over the years, we can categorically say that if you do that with all software on your site, you will almost certainly never be compromised; if you don’t, you will almost certainly be compromised one day.

But we hope that helps set your mind at rest about the possibility of having been infected by this particular new worm.

Please let us know if there is anything else we can do. Thank you again!

– Robert Mathews, Tiger Technologies