If you know me, you know I am all about teaching and learning. Most of my WordPress career has been based on just that. So when I come across quality learning sites that I can refer my readers to, I don’t hesitate. Because let’s face it. For a lot of people just jumping into WordPress, it doesn’t come as easy as they had anticipated. In fact, my mantra is WordPress isn’t easy for everyone, but once you learn it, it becomes easier.
This is also true of a lot of the WordPress plugins. One of the most popular eCommerce plugins, WooCommerce, is no exception. It’s a powerful plugin that can help you build from a small online shop to a mega-store. But when tackling the setup, you usually need some guidance.
A helping hand. That is where WP Apprentice comes into play.
WP Apprentice Online Courses
Kirk over at WP Apprentice is not new to the whole online course thing; he has been doing this for some time. His popular WP Essentials and WP Website Blueprint have a good reputation in the WordPress space. More recently, he released his WooCommerce Essentials Course and that is what we are looking at today.
I have not gone through the entire course, which includes over 6 hours of instruction via 45 video tutorials, but I did randomly pick a few to get a feel of not only how they are presented, but a sense of Kirk’s teaching style as well.
The WooCommerce Essentials Course
The course is broken into the two parts:
- eCommerce Quick Start
- WooCommerce Essential Lessons
eCommerce Quick Start
This is listed as a bonus to the course and takes you beyond some of the initial questions around the WooCommerce settings, products and other direct functionality:
What caught my attention here were the pieces that Kirk pulled in that not everyone would include.
As I said, many of these lessons help you to better understand the broad scope of eCommerce and the importance of choosing the right eCommerce plugin. In fact, I found it interesting as he shared short videos on other plugins such as Easy Digital Downloads or Shopping Cart platforms. What he presents here gives you an opportunity to think deeper into the WordPress eCommerce ecosystem and make a better choice based on your needs.
In addition, some lessons on site design, security, payment processing, etc., give you a better birds-eye view of what it takes to set up and run an online store.
The Essential Courses
This is where you start digging into the actual plugin WooCommerce and get help in setting up your online store.
Getting Started
The first video impressed me because it included something a lot of introductory course material lack. Kirk not only explains what you can expect in the course in terms that even the beginner can understand, but he also explains what not to expect. With a topic such as eCommerce, this is so critical and I’m sure his students appreciate the candor.
Another one I listened to was Integrating WooCommerce with an Existing Website. This one intrigued me because it’s a big pain point for many people who are onboarding with WooCommerce. Kirk not only covered the situations any person may find themselves in, but also explained it from the start, without assuming you simply understood what WooCommerce brings into your site.
WooCommerce Settings
Here Kirk goes through the basic settings and does a thorough job of explaining each one. After listening to a few of them, his clarity shines through. I especially found it interesting when he was talking about the tax settings. His emphasis on getting your taxes in order using a professional accountant was what he considered as your first step and something you should do before even setting these up. Now unless you are a tax pro yourself, and understand all the implications behind taxes, I thought this was a nice touch, instead of just hitting the settings, explaining what they do and moving on.
WooCommerce Products
The Products part of WooCommerce is a huge piece and each product type is well explained in his videos. I watched the Variable Products, as I know from having worked with beginners a lot, this is probably the one they have the most challenges with. I appreciated his explanation of other product types. When creating a variable product he doesn’t just jump into the guts of the settings that are unique to a variable product, such as attributes and variations. Instead, he explains other generic settings such as Taxes, Shipping, etc to show you how you will want to determine those specific settings based on your variable product. Although this may be hard to imagine, I can assure you that it will help you understand it even much better when setting up your own variable products.
Design and Customization
This module is a great addition as often we leave it be with WooCommerce settings and feel we are good to go. Adding in lessons on themes and widgets gives you better direction when it come to building out your online store just beyond adding the eCommerce plugin.
Kirk’s approach on looking for and evaluating themes will help anyone who is still at that point of indecision. He admits, as most of us do, that there is no magic formula for finding a theme, but he does give you some good tips to help you start your search and be more aware of what you are looking at and for.
He also shows you how to set it up with a few chosen themes and revisits the challenges of using WooCommerce with your existing theme, providing some good solutions there as well. No matter where you are with your site, he pretty much has you covered.
Running Your Store
Again, you will find a lot of online courses on plugins that will show you how to install, and how to set them up. But with an eCommerce plugin, that is only the beginning. You are creating an ecosystem with your online store that you will need to continue to manage. The more you know, the better success you will have with your store. It’s not something that you just plug and play. This module of lessons will help you better understand specific features and options that come with WooCommerce.
Advanced Topics
Here Kirk explains some options to expand your site beyond what WooCommerce itself offers through extensions, picking out some of the more commonplace ones that a store owner may want to add. For example, I know that the Table Rate Shipping is a very popular and needed extension as the built-in options for WooCommerce are limited. He does a good job of explaining, so you will know if you need it, rather than having to second guess.
As with any video course, the challenge is constant change and how to keep up with that. On the lesson for Membership sites, I can imagine that at some point he will be changing this one from using the Groups extension to using the Membership extension.
In Conclusion
I have gone through and watched various courses on WooCommerce for the beginner and can say that what I actually recommend can be counted on one hand. The course over at WP Apprentice can easily be included in this group.
Kirk’s ability to teach with ease, simple understanding and clarity comes through in each lesson. He takes the time to explain things and isn’t rushing through it or trying to woo you into thinking you are embarking on a very easy job. He gives clear indications of what you can learn through his videos, but also other pieces where you may need to seek out professional help. He doesn’t sugar coat anything.
If you are considering building a WooCommerce online store, or haven’t yet decided on WooCommerce, this course will certainly guide you in the right direction. And because he offers it risk-free for 30 days, with a no-questions 100% money back guarantee, you can do no wrong. I would recommend the WP Apprentice WooCommerce Essentials course to anyone thinking about starting work on building their online store.
Great article Bob! I could not have said it better myself and I endorse everything you say here because it is all true. Kirk is very clear in his explanations and he never hypes up WP which only ends up in disappointment.
I have seen many of Kirk’s videos. His WooCommerce Essentials is outstanding and his service is excellent. Members have a forum to ask questions where the responses are helpful and rapid.
Hey Bud, thanks for coming in and sharing your own experience. Also appreciated you adding the note about the forums, something I neglected to share. That’s a huge plus for sure… cheers!
Dear reviewers: Let me add my experience with Kirk. It is not a positive one at all. Anything that Kirk finds negative, he eliminates quickly so no negativity or critique is permitted. Only good comments and positive experiences are allowed. Here was my experience … Having registered and paid for the course, I expected to learn the “essentials” of WordPress. Themes are essential to WordPress. However, I was surprised and disappointed to learn an additional $199 was required to learn about themes. This cost is hidden inside the site and not made known when you register for the course. I did post a comment objecting not to the course itself, but to the strategy employed about not being up front with users. Within 2-3 hours, my money was refunded, my comments were taken down … simply because I objected to the strategy being used and felt that others should know. Kirk seems so concerned about not getting any negative reviews that he seems to refuse any open discussion.
Some background: My mission is to help non-technical business users succeed with WordPress. Too much of the WordPress training available online assumes the learner has some background in web development. The reality is that many non-coders struggle to learn the basics, let alone build a functional business website.
WP Apprentice offers a number of courses designed to fulfill this mission. And it’s important to me that my customers find the course that best meets their needs. That sometimes means steering people away from courses they aren’t ready for. Or providing a speedy refund and some helpful advice when they do purchase a course that’s not a good fit for their needs.
My WordPress Essentials course is not designed for coders. In fact, the course description page specifically reads “no programming required”. Clearly it’s a bad fit for anyone interested in learning the technical details of WordPress themes. And so I was happy to refund your full purchase price when you realized the course was not what you were expecting.
I do offer a theme customization course. It’s also the most technical course I offer. Which is the reason it isn’t listed on my main website. As I explained when you originally contacted me, the vast majority of my customers have no interest in programming. I’ve had a few enthusiastic beginners sign up for that course only to realize they were in over their heads. Of course I was happy to provide those customers with a refund and work with them to find a WordPress Theme that gives them design control without requiring a knowledge of CSS or PHP.
Since you seem to be implying that this is some sort of bait and switch scam, I want to point out that existing customers are given a $50 discount when they purchase My Theme Mechanics course. That’s most of the cost of the WordPress Essentials course.
To your complaint that I was not willing to deal with your issue in a public forum: your original complaints were posted on a lesson page where members ask questions and try to work through their WordPress problems. That is not the appropriate place for a customer service discussion. It actually makes things more difficult for members who are trying to learn WordPress. I maintain a customer support system that’s setup to address problems in a timely manner. And that’s where I attempted to deal with your issue. However, I’m afraid you were more interested in a public airing of your grievance. And so here we are on Bob’s blog.
Is there anything I’ve missed?
I think you have a big misunderstanding. I know Kirk very well and the last thing he wants is an unhappy customer. That is the reason why he refunds money to someone who is not satisfied with “no questions asked” as he says.
As for any type of comment about his service what he said was that he preferred those not go on the pages dedicated to training as they disrupt the learning process for other students. If you were in a class room would you stand up in the middle of a class to say that you believed that the material presented was not as advertised? I hope not.
An appropriate place for comments are in private email.
The fact that you will see a lot of positive comments are a testament to how good his service is.
Unfortunately, some people don’t read Kirk’s description of his training. No where does he state his training is for developers. Assuming he returned your money, where is the harm, where’s the foul?
Hi Bob and Kirk,
I loved this course but I had difficulties to find the checklist google document.
Can you lend me a hand with that? 🙂
Thanks for the course, it was a really great start to learning about WooCommerce!
Thanks,
Judit
Hi Judit,
It looks like I left the link off of one of the lesson pages. Thanks for pointing that out. It’s fixed now. You can access that worksheet here. Be sure to watch the final eCommerce Quick Start lesson for instructions on how to save the worksheet to your own Google account. You’ll need to do that in order to update.
Kirk
Thank You Kirk!
All good now!