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Code · craft · somewhere worth waking up

Learn WordPress.Escape the office.

Intensive, in-person WordPress workshops held in inspiring places. Three to five days, a small room of makers, and one craft worth mastering — themes, plugins, blocks, and WooCommerce — taught hands-on, then put to work before you leave.

The idea

What is a WordPress retreat?

Three to five days of intensive WordPress training in a beautiful location. Small groups of eight to twenty. Expert instructors. Hands-on projects. You leave with new skills and feeling refreshed — think WordCamp crossed with a working vacation.

01

Who it’s for

Freelancers leveling up their WordPress skills. Agency teams doing offsite training. Solo site owners wanting to take control. Developers moving from other platforms. Anyone who simply learns better in a room than alone online.

02

What you learn

Theme development from scratch. Custom plugins. Advanced Custom Fields and custom post types. WooCommerce stores. Gutenberg block development. Performance optimization. Security hardening. Client workflow and project management.

03

How it runs

Mornings are taught, hands-on. Afternoons are project time with instructors at your shoulder. Evenings are for the place you’re in. Small cohorts mean every question gets answered and nobody hides at the back.

04

What you leave with

A real thing you built, the workflow to repeat it, a cohort of peers who became contacts, and the rare feeling of having learned deeply — rested rather than wrung out.

Where

Destinations

Chosen for the season and the vibe — somewhere that earns the early mornings.

◎ TexasAustin, TXTech hub, great food, home base.
◎ Central AmericaCosta RicaAffordable luxury, surf breaks.
◎ EuropeLisbon, PortugalCoworking capital of Europe.
◎ IndonesiaBaliDigital-nomad paradise.
◎ AppalachiaAsheville, NCMountain-retreat vibes.
The curriculum

WordPress skills to master

Four crafts, each deep enough to earn from. Workshops go to the level your cohort needs.

Theme development

Understand the template hierarchy. Build child themes before custom themes. Use starter themes like Underscores or Sage. Learn PHP basics — functions, loops, conditionals. Master the Loop. Enqueue scripts and styles properly. Responsive design with CSS Grid and Flexbox.

Plugin development

Hooks and filters are everything. Actions do something; filters modify something. Create custom post types and taxonomies. Use the Settings API. Database queries with $wpdb. REST API endpoints. Follow the WordPress coding standards.

Gutenberg blocks

The future of WordPress. Learn React basics. Use @wordpress/create-block to scaffold. Build dynamic blocks with PHP render. Block patterns and templates. Full Site Editing is the next frontier. theme.json for global settings.

WooCommerce

Product types — simple, variable, grouped, external. Payment gateways: Stripe, PayPal, Square. Shipping zones and methods. Tax configuration. Email customization. Customization hooks like woocommerce_before_cart. The extensions marketplace.

After the retreat

Running your WordPress business

The craft is half of it. These are the workshop sessions on turning the skill into a living.

$

Pricing projects

Never charge hourly for WordPress builds. Use fixed project pricing: brochure site ($2–5K), custom theme ($5–15K), WooCommerce store ($5–20K), custom plugin ($3–10K). Maintenance plans run $100–500/mo. Recurring revenue is the key to sustainability.

Client management

Use a project management tool — Notion, ClickUp, or Basecamp. Collect content with Content Snare or Google Docs. Stand up staging sites for client review with Local by Flywheel or WP Engine staging. Set timeline and revision expectations in writing.

Hosting for clients

Resell managed WordPress hosting. Cloudways: best value for agencies (~$14/mo per server, unlimited sites). WP Engine: premium managed (~$25/mo per site). Flywheel: designer-friendly. Mark hosting up 2–3x and fold it into the maintenance plan.

Maintenance plans

Monthly core, theme, and plugin updates. Weekly backups with test restores. Security and uptime monitoring. A monthly analytics report. Emergency support hours. Charge $100–500/mo by scope — this is how recurring revenue gets built.

By the numbers

The shape of a cohort

8–20
Makers per room
3–5
Days, fully hands-on
4
Crafts covered
5
Destinations
1
Real project shipped
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