Started browsing through the online lessons. Following the debate and progress in general. Skimmed the loop lesson.
IMHO colored syntax and line numbers is missing. It is hard to read the samples.
Also – from a teacher’s point of view – I’d like to know something about the outer framework. How long is the lesson intended to last? How many students are in the class? Where do the students get hands on experience?
I miss a didactic strategy:
- A time to talk
- A time to work
- A time to give feedback
The loop lecture
You cannot set time aside to “install WordPress” in this lecture. If there is no running WP on all PCs you’ll end up using all the time for database or serverside issues. And get nowhere.
When I read a subsection like “Setting up a default loop” there is a # link. But a # does not say anything about the link. So the reader is lost. Text and code mingle in a way that makes the lesson hard to read. Here is a sample:
It sets up all the template tags, like the_title(),
to display the correct information for each item.
–>
<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post() ?>
<!–
This code will be repeated for each item in the loop.
Reading stuff like this is hard. Here I’d prefer a colored syntax. And it would be supercool if it was possible to experiment with different loops on the website.
There is room for improvement in the “Make WP training” Codex.