For the Winter Quarter 2011, Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, offered one of the first WordPress-exclusive full credit courses taught by Lorelle VanFossen of Lorelle on WordPress. For the final project, the class was divided into teams to create a small business site on WordPress.com. This gave the students a chance to put into practice what they learned and find creativity within the limitations of WordPress.com. The small business sites are hypothetical, giving them a chance to use their skills in web design, content strategies, and WordPress to serve a variety of business “clients.” The business types were chosen from lists of the top 500 most popular small businesses in the United States representing potential future clients.

The following are the teams for the Introduction to WordPress Final Class Project:

• The Southwest Teahouse
  • Meagan – Wedding Marketing Now
  • Mike – mwhobb2012 | CTEC 280
  • Tyrone – Iconbloggist
• Toni Alfresco Cosmetologist
  • Cait – Caitspace’s Blog
  • Sheri – smoff87
  • Travis Clinton
• Vanessa Vaines Virtual Assistant
  • Duane – City Ranked Internet Marketing Blog for Small Businesses
  • Chris – momento nel tempo
  • Alex – Clark College CTEC Tutoring
• Computer Training Tailored for You
  • Angela – Stapleton Web Design
  • Kurt Olstead
  • Alicia – Social Is Hard
• Patty’s Pet Care
  • Hannah – Quark 24/7
  • Luisa – Much Ado About Nothing by Never Say Never Again Girl
  • Reuben – The Sound of Awesome
• The Clark Photography Club
  • Sam – Suitcase and Trunk
  • Simon – The Wedding Experience
  • Leiulf – About Sound and Vision
  • John – mawvacation

Introduction to WordPress Final Project Guidelines

The WordPress Project is designed to help the students use their basic WordPress skills and creativity to create a WordPress Theme within the limitations of WordPress.com for a small business. The business may be hypothetical but the student teams will do their best to make the site as “real” as possible.

1. Deadline for Completion: All projects will be completed and ready for presentation March 13.
2. Create a statement work: Consider the WordPress Theme you use as a framework. Create a statement of work for the project to guide your team through the process.
   • Create a WordPress.com site:
   • Use the company name or its initials and the numbers 123 or 456 for the domain name such as clarkridingstable123.wordpress.com or crs456.wordpress.com.
   • Set the Privacy settings to NOT permit indexing by search engines.
   • Turn off trackbacks and pingbacks.
   • The project must be completed within the limitations and the Terms of Service of WordPress.com.
3. Project Website: The finished site requires the following:
   • A graphic disclaimer above the fold on the sidebar to indicate this is a class project.
   • Each student team member must be an Administrator on the site.
   • The About and Contact Pages must be complete with appropriate content and images. It is required you investigate related businesses and their industry in order to complete the project
   • Policies appropriate to the company’s needs must be included.
   • If the company offers services or products, as much specific and technical information as needed to meet the goals of the website must be complete including photographs and graphics.
   • Posts/articles are required to be in appropriate categories and have titles representative of the topics such a business would offer. The article content may be Lorem Ipsum.
   • All content must be “original” or within Copyright Fair Use, not plagiarized.
   • There must be a minimum of 5 categories with three posts per category. The posts should feature appropriate keywords for the business per the post title (and implied subject matter).
   • Visual styles and graphics must be representative of the company’s goals and customer needs.
   • Site authors/contributors must be represented by names (rename yourselves in the Profiles).
   • Social media “integration” should be through the use of visuals and tools that do not require the creation of social media accounts. Pretend.
4. Presentation: The presentation will consist of:
5. Each team member presenting the statement of work and summary of the project assignment and goals, different aspects of the site and the reasoning behind their decisions.
   • A maximum 15 minutes in length with up to 5 minutes for Q&A.
   • The site must be presented live so students can explore it.
   • A PowerPoint presentation is recommended to highlight the project details.

The disclaimer graphic required on all class project sites is featured below available in different sizes. It must have a link to this post around the graphic.