Katrina Moody

A geek in love with Coffee, Coding, WordPress and Life

JavaScript for WordPress

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JavaScript for WordPress – Focused Learning in One Tremendous Course

Learning JavaScript for WordPress via Zac Gordon's JavaScript for WP course has been quite adventure for me.

Like many geeks, I learned most my development skills in bits and pieces. Google was (and always will be) my friend along the way; Googling different functions and examples as I needed them served me well before.

But I never learned the foundational, or core, bits and pieces. I could wrangle some JavaScript as needed, but I wasn't able to write my own code from scratch. As a self-professed geek, this just wasn't acceptable!

This course stood out from others as one that would help me fill in the foundation to my JavaScript learning.

Learning JavaScript for WordPress, Deeply

I was looking for something that would help me learn this JavaScript thing deeply, and there's a reason for that. I have a pretty busy life, and trying to dedicate time to learning new things is wasted effort if I don't put my all into it.

Life is full of distractions. And I know those distractions can take time away from the concentration I need to learn anything deeply. Like JavaScript. Since I can only devote an hour or two most days to this, I did what I could to make that time as constructive as possible.

I used my own knowledge of my own learning style along with some deep work concepts I've been learning about to chisel out time just for learning deeply. This meant immersing myself in learning the course material by spending time every day going through the course, practicing, or reviewing notes.

Know the Kind of Course you're Getting

Before I decided on Zac's course, I dabbled in several online courses to see if they offered what I needed in a JavaScript course. I realized I had to put some sort of list together if I didn't want to just throw money away on courses that didn't work for me.

So I put a list of practical things I needed to learn JavaScript (or development in general, really). It was a bit harder to find than I anticipated:

  • I wanted to learn from someone I was at least familiar with. Someone trusted.
  • I had to cover not only my best learning style, but a variety of them, because when I immerse myself in a subject I like having lots of different ways to learn something!
  • It needed to be paced in mostly shorter, well-documented steps, with examples and easy-to-understand audio
  • It needed to start from the beginning and fill in that foundational knowledge
  • While JavaScript is an awesome programming language all its own, I really wanted to learn it the WordPress way

The WordPress Way – Learn it I Will

I work mostly with WordPress-based projects, and WordPress standards are slightly different in some ways from JavaScript and PHP-based standards. Usually these are little differences, like spacing and using Yoda as a guide (really freakin' awesome!), but sometimes there are bigger issues as you go deeper into the code of a big project.

So I wanted to learn deeply, but also with a bit of an emphasis on WordPress standards and resources as well.

JavaScript for WordPress Course Review – Where I'm at Now

I’ve spent a couple months working through the first part of Zac’s JavaScript for WordPress course in my early morning hours. The steady, daily, learning is helping me learn it more effectively, even if it's going a little more slowly than I would have liked. (I'm a geek, I live to learn!)

I spend time taking notes, reviewing videos and looking at further resources, and sometimes re-writing my notes (I can't help it; I have a problem with perfection).

Zac spends time at the end of most sections explaining how you can more deeply learn the material by practicing in the browser and by playing with code yourself. And he usually gives examples of specific things you should try to emulate before continuing on to the next lesson.

The Course Modules:

Screenshot showing the 4 modules of the JavaScript for WordPress Course

Each of the four parts of the course include a depth of videos, notes, links to further documentation, and a lot more. As an example, I just finished the first part of the course, except for the full hands-on project.

I've spent over 20 hours (closer to 30-40) going through all the modules within this course, reading additional documentation, and hitting up some of my fellow humans for help explaining some topics.

If you click below, you can see a list of all the modules and submodules available in the first section so far (yeah, it's a lot! I know!):

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1.1 – An Introduction to JavaScript [0:08:02]

  • 1.1.01 – How We Use JavaScript Today [2:26]
  • 1.1.02 – A JavaScript History Lesson [5:36]

1.2 – JavaScript Language Basics [2:01:35]

  • 1.2.01 Part 1 – Writing JavaScript in the Browser [3:36]
  • 1.2.01 Part 2 – Writing JavaScript in a Code Editor [5:05]
  • 1.2.02 – Statements, Expressions and Keywords [3:58]
  • 1.2.03 – Data Types and Variables in JavaScript [3:27]
  • 1.2.04 – Data Types – Boolean [1:18]
  • 1.2.05 – Data Types – Strings [4:52]
  • 1.2.06 – Data Types – Numbers & NaN [7:22]
  • 1.2.07 – Data Types – Objects [2:52]
  • 1.2.08 – Data Types – Symbols [2:59]
  • 1.2.09 – Arrays in JavaScript [14:46]
  • 1.2.10 – Strong versus Weak Typing and typeof [2:14]
  • 1.2.11 – Operators in JavaScript [11:02]
  • 1.2.12 – If Statements in JavaScript [6:20]
  • 1.2.13 – If Else and Else If Statements in JavaScript [3:22]
  • 1.2.14 – Switch Statements in JavaScript [4:33]
  • 1.2.15 – Loops in JavaScript [7:11]
  • 1.2.16 – Do While and While Loops [5:34]
  • 1.2.17 – When to Use For, Do While and While Loops [1:12]
  • 1.2.18 – Break and Continue Statements in JavaScript [2:32]
  • 1.2.19 – For In and For Of Loops [3:36]
  • 1.2.20 – Introduction to Functions [6:07]
  • 1.2.21 – Function Parameters [5:28]
  • 1.2.22 – Returning Values from Functions [5:19]
  • 1.2.23 – Object Methods in JavaScript [5:50]

The DOM [4:55:28]

  • 1.3.01 – Introduction to the DOM [5:57]
  • 1.3.02 – Exploring the DOM in the browser [6:30]
  • 1.3.03 – Selecting Nodes in the DOM [9:47]
  • 1.3.04 – Traversing the DOM [12:28 – 2 Videos]
  • 1.3.05 – Getting and Setting DOM Node Values [15:13 – 2 Videos]
  • 1.3.06 – Getting and Setting Attribute Node Values [15:00 – 2 Videos]
  • 1.3.07 – Getting and Setting Form Values – Part 1 [42:43 – 5 Videos]
  • 1.3.07 – Getting and Setting Form Values – Part 2 [38:29 – 4 Videos]
  • 1.3.08 – Styling Nodes in the DOM [32:21 – 4 Videos]
  • 1.3.09 – Creating Nodes [13:55 – 2 Videos]
  • 1.3.10 – Adding Nodes to the DOM [13:12 – 2 Videos]
  • 1.3.11 – Cloning Nodes [21:09 – 3 Videos]
  • 1.3.12 – Removing Nodes from the DOM [8:44]

1.4 – Events in JavaScript [2:11:58]

  • 1.4.1 – Introduction to DOM Events [41:28]
  • 1.4.2 – Inline Events [12:41]
  • 1.4.3 – Global Event Handlers [16:31]
  • 1.4.4 – Event Listeners [8:28]
  • 1.4.5 – Removing Event Listeners [15:14]
  • 1.4.6 – Event Propagation – Capturing and Bubbling [20:26]
  • 1.4.7 – The Event Object [10:13]
  • 1.4.8 – A Look at More Events [5:57]

1.5 – JSON & Local Storage [0:51:02]

  • 1.5.1 – An Introduction to JSON [11:42]
  • 1.5.2 – JSON and JavaScript [25:03]
  • 1.5.3 – Introduction to Local Storage [14:17]

1.6 – PROJECT – VanillaPress V1 [2:57:02]

1.7 – JavaScript Development Tools [6:18:44]

1.8 Advanced JavaScript Topics

1.9 – PROJECT – VanillaPress V2

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A Whole LOT of JavaScript Learning!

Behind each Module is a full complement of Learning. Gordon is releasing content and updating more content as he continues releasing the other parts of this master course.

To me, this illustrates how this course is one of the most all-inclusive options available to learn JavaScript for WordPress. While there are lots of JavaScript-specific courses out there, I didn’t see the full complement of different ways to learn available anywhere else.

If I sound like a cheerleader at this point, it’s because I’ve been impressed by the completeness of Gordon’s course. It includes a huge number of targeted videos, additional resources, and hands-on learning WHILE you’re learning and via a huge project after you have gone through the full module content.

But I wanted to show a bit more to help illustrate how in-depth the different sections are.

Sections Within Modules Drill Down to Specifics

Zac has a good number of posts freely available through the blog on his JavaScriptforWP.com course, and I suggest going through several of the ones that present part of the course content.

For example, learning about Loops in JavaScript is a common struggle for anyone new to development.

You can see from the list of modules I included above that Zac broke it apart into multiple sections: learning about loops in general, then learning about the most common loop types.

Here’s the first video from that section in the course, available for free on his site!

A little unsure if you’re understanding? Zac includes code examples with each section that you can download as well (early in the course, he links to JSBin). Here’s a link to a JSBin example for his Loops section: https://jsbin.com/jemezu/edit?js,console

And here’s the link to the rest of that post on his blog, where you can look at the other videos in the series. There’s actually over 20 minutes of content in this section within in the course, as well as over a dozen links to additional resources. But his post is a great, FREE, introduction:

Loops in JavaScript

Kat’s Review To-date for the JavaScript for WordPress Course by Zac Gordon

So it’s no real surprise I’d recommend this course to anyone serious about filling in the gaps in their foundational knowledge. I know it might seem expensive, but definitely take a look at everything you get. It’s not really just one course, but four ongoing courses.

The investment is definitely worthwhile, but I definitely recommend you try to invest the time to work on the course daily as well. That daily work will help you learn at a deeper level and serve you well as you move into the projects and further parts of the master course.

Were I to give a rating I would give 5 out of 5 stars, as the course is just that full of information. The only drawback I’ve found is that this is a video-heavy course. If you find learning via videos difficult, it might be harder to justify the cost right now.

I know that Gordon is working on getting transcripts of the videos, and filling in more written material, including additional resources. It’s very likely it will be available when folks find this post later 😉

I didn’t find the lack of written materials to be a problem, but I think it’s important to note in case others need that available.

I’m excited to move forward into the project at the end of the first part, and I’ll be sure to update again as I move through other parts of the course.

Your Turn!

Have you taken any online courses? What did you think? Were you happy with what you learned or feel let down? Have any questions about this course? I’ll be happy to answer what I can!

Disclaimer: Not-so-Big Little Note

I had a chance to talk with Zac at the Day of Rest conference in Boston earlier this year. So I was able to ask him specifically about how he broke apart the content. I went on to look at his site again and decided to take the course.

Another disclaimer, because this is just that kinda thing, the company I work with, Human Made, is one of Zac’s partners for his course – so I didn’t just stumble on his course. I don’t remember a specific conversation, but I’m sure I probably heard some of my fellow humans chatting it up at some point or another.