Level Up with Blogging U.
Building a business website? Starting a blog? Working on your writing? Practicing photography? There’s a Blogging U. course for you.
Thousands of bloggers have used Blogging U’s step-by-step email courses to get started, grow as writers, create beautiful websites, learn the ins and outs of WordPress.com, push their photography skills, and more.
There are ten different courses currently available, for folks of all interests and skill levels. Click any course’s title to learn more about it and to get started!
- Blogging: Learning the Fundamentals — a solid grounding in the three big components of blogging: publishing, customizing your blog, and engaging with the blogging community.
- Blogging: Commenting Basics — a short course to get you comfortable with reaching out to other bloggers and commenting etiquette.
- Blogging: Branding and Growth — audit your brand, analyze your stats, explore social networks, learn about SEO, and more in this intermediate course.
- Blogging: Intermediate Customization — go in-depth into the customization options available on all WordPress.com sites. Learn to work with themes, custom headers, background and fonts, widgets, and basic HTML.
- Writing: Intro to Poetry — find your inner Dickinson with daily poetry prompts, and sharpen your verse by learning some basic poetic forms and devices.
- Writing: Finding Everyday Inspiration — a longer course to spark a daily writing practice and explore ways to find new post ideas all around you.
- Writing: Shaping Your Story — an intermediate course on the art of revision: four weeks of self-editing and rewriting. Dig into the process of focusing and building a story, whether fiction or nonfiction.
- Photography: Developing Your Eye I — a fun introduction to the fundamentals of photography, with 10 daily themes and shooting tips. Use any camera you like: the lens on your phone, a point-and-shoot, or a dSLR.
- Photography: Developing Your Eye II — 10 more days of themes and tips, getting progressively more in-depth. Take it after Developing Your Eye I, or on its own!
- Websites: Build a Business Site — create a website to help you meet your business goals. Publish pages and add site navigation, look at themes and customization, understand custom domains and SEO, and more.
Courses give you a daily assignment or writing prompt, along with the technical help you need to complete the task and insider advice from both our editors and the wider blogging community; each course has a handy resource page collecting everything in one place for you to refer back to whenever you’d like. Publish new posts using the course’s tag and you’ll be able to connect with others working through the same course for support, feedback, and friendship.
Click on any course title for more detail on what it covers and to begin immediately (click the “Start” button on the course’s page to enroll) or read on to learn more about how Blogging U. works.
FAQs
How do I start a course?
Visit the page for the course you’re interested in and click the “Start” button — that’s it! If you’re logged in to WordPress.com, you’ll receive an introductory email right away, and your first assignment a few minutes later. If you’re not logged in, we’ll prompt you to do so, and you’re off and running. Do each assignment as you’re able, and interpret them however makes sense for you and your site.
What if I want to stop?
No problem — every email you’ll receive includes an unsubscribe link at the bottom. Click it, and the course stops.
This won’t affect any of your other WordPress.com emails, like notifications. And if you want to give the course another try, you can register again.
How many courses can I take? Can I take them more than once?
As many as you’d like, as many times as you’d like. We recommend taking one course at a time — blogging is fun, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be overwhelming! — but you’re free to take multiple courses simultaneously.
What if I need assistance during the course?
Every assignment includes expert advice from our staff as well as links to more resources and to our customer support folks, called Happiness Engineers.
How do I connect with other bloggers during my course?
Reaching out to other bloggers helps participants get the most out of Blogging U. courses. We encourage you to use the tag for your course when publishing posts (e.g., #bloggingfundamentals) and to browse that tag in the Reader to find and connect with other bloggers. If you don’t know what tag to use or browse, don’t worry — when you begin a course, we’ll tell you.
We also have a weekly Community Pool discussion thread where anyone can seek or give feedback on any aspect of blogging. A new thread opens every Monday. And each Friday, new bloggers are invited to share their first posts with the community in our First Friday thread.
What if I don’t blog on WordPress.com?
All general assignments (publishing posts, customizing your blog, leaving comments, etc.) are applicable to any blog, anywhere. However, you’ll need to have a WordPress.com account to register for a Blogging U. course, and any specific how-to guidance we offer will be specific to WordPress.com.
How much does each course cost?
Nothing. Blogging U. courses have always been free, and still are.
Ready to register? Head to the Blogging U. home page to get started!
- August 23, 2016
- Better Blogging, Community, Customization, Writing
WordPress.com News 
Thanks for this write-up. Signing up now
LikeLiked by 3 people
Wow it seems very interesting and helpful.. I’ll surely join this course
LikeLiked by 6 people
Pretty cool! Thank you so much 🙂
LikeLiked by 3 people
I am interested.
LikeLiked by 5 people
Thank you for letting us know about this wonderful resource.
LikeLiked by 4 people
I have joined it. I hope it’ll be an amazing journey!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Very helpful and informative
LikeLiked by 4 people
Pretty useful tips, especially for people just staring off.
LikeLiked by 4 people
It’s so cool. I’m joining right away!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Blogging U is fantastic. what a wonderful resource for all of us. i am very grateful. have just finished Writing: Shaping Your Story. so much excellent info, but too much to absorb all at once. will take my time reading back on it.
LikeLiked by 4 people
great resource, i just signed up. thanks.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Tried to get started, was not successful. Help!
LikeLiked by 5 people
Can you tell us a bit about what happened?
If you clicked “start” and haven’t gotten any email yet, take a look in Gmail’s Social and Promotions tabs — Gmail likes to file them there!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Your courses are very well done – well written and packed with practical instruction, tips and resources. Appropriate for all skill levels as there is something in them for everyone. Thank you WordPress for helping me learn and progress!
LikeLiked by 6 people
Wow. This is really cooool!
LikeLiked by 4 people
Hi Michelle! Got a question: What if i want to blog in Indonesian language? Is there blogger communities supporting these courses in Indonesian language? And is it okay if the assignment is done in Indonesian also. Thank you 🙂
LikeLiked by 4 people
The assignments themselves will be in English, but you can blog in any language you’d like. We’ve had folks from all over the world participate in Blogging U.
I don’t know any Indonesian blogging communities off the top of my head, but I don’t doubt that they exist! Try searching the Reader in Indonesian; I’m sure you’ll find other bloggers.
LikeLiked by 2 people
When does the beginning photography course begin in Oct.?
LikeLiked by 4 people
Courses don’t begin at any particular time — they’re available on-demand, and you can start them anytime you like.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’m interested. Thanks!
LikeLiked by 3 people
I’m using this at the moment. And it’s actually really great. It has helped a lot.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Sounds great! I might try it out!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Very cool, look forward to it 😊
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you for the information !
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks for the info. I will sign up then.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Excited to give these courses a try! Once I get into a balanced posting schedule I’m definitely gonna sign up! 🙂
What a great resource!
LikeLiked by 2 people
I’d love to try..tho I haven’t been on much lately ..I will definitely check this out..thanks for the heads up!! 👍
LikeLiked by 3 people
I think I will start blogging, 90 percent there. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 3 people
Thank you for making these courses available to us newbies. They have shown me many new things.
LikeLiked by 3 people
I have a question about a course I am taking, where do I ask it? I tried email reply and it came back. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 3 people
You can contact the Happiness Engineers here: https://wordpress.com/help/contact. If your question is about the course, and not about WordPress.com itself, feel free to ask it here!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have taken a couple of these classes and found them helpful. I need a class on the logistics of upgrading to a higher level of WordPress (self-hosted?). I also need to know what happens to my current site, its contents and its followers when I upgrade.
LikeLiked by 4 people
There is no class specifically around that, but I can tell you that nothing happens to your site, it’s contents, or your followers — upgrading only adds features and tools; it doesn’t change anything that already exists.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you so much for sharing these great resources, Michelle! I’ll certainly be checking some of these out 🙂 Becky Wright http://www.inspiringhopeblog.com
LikeLiked by 2 people
Ok, thanks Michelle. Yes it is about the course or courses. I want to know where I post my work for the assignments so I can be graded or advised or what have you. I certainly do not want to post it on my site as it is completely irrelevant to it and I definitely don’t want to mess with my site and make it a train wreck which I am very capable of doing just by looking at it.
I need to post my work someplace in order to know if i understand it or not.
Thank you.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Great. EXPERIENCED Bloggers are also bound to be benefitted. Thanks.
LikeLiked by 2 people