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WordPress WordPress Theme Development Custom Post Type Templates in WordPress The Portfolio Single Page

Sean May
Sean May
9,145 Points

Could this whole course be redone?

I'm usually not one to complain, but this whole course has been so frustrating to go through, and I don't feel like it's at the quality level of the other courses I've gone through on Treehouse. I don't mean anything personal to Zac, but the quality of the teaching in this whole track is very sub-par.

The worst thing that has happened many times throughout the videos is that Zac will make an error, sometimes a very obvious one, and then not correct it until much, much later. I can't even count how many times he's said "oops" about something, quickly jumped to a file and fixed something that was messed up five lessons ago. There are a lot of instances where file names, paths, and various other small details are incorrect, which leads to very frustrating issues where I feel like my code is wrong, but it turns out the instructor's code is.

Also, Zac frequently doesn't refer to specific parts of the code he's working with, he'll just say things like "now we'll take this part of the code out", followed by a quick cut or backspace, then followed by a switch to another screen to the point where it's really difficult to figure out what has just been cut without going back over a few frames of video multiple times. If he would instead be descriptive of what code is being removed and say things like "we're just going to delete from the start of the div with the class 'secondary' all the way down to the close" instead of just "let's delete this", things would be better.

The narration being unhelpful and not descriptive makes it really, really difficult to follow along during the lesson, and the transcripts of the video are similarly worthless because they are filled with pronouns instead of descriptive names or any kind of context as to what's going on.

Then there's the fact that the code editor on the video doesn't show the entire lines of code, so it's unclear what's being cut or sometimes what is being typed.

This whole course has been incredibly frustrating to me, and because the only project files provided are the final theme, it's really difficult to check my code against something other than cut-off lines in the video.

Maybe if there were incremental files showing the state of the code at the beginning and/or end of the lesson, much like there are on lots of other Treehouse courses, this wouldn't be as much of a problem, but as it stands my choices are to either just watch the videos and not even attempt to follow along or just abandon the track altogether and find somewhere else to learn WordPress.

Sorry to go on a rant like this, but I'm just really disappointed that something riddled with so many errors and poor teaching is available on Treehouse, which usually has exemplary content.

That's why I usually don't code while i following along with the course. I just watch the course and then download the final project files at the end. Then i inspect their code. Works better for me.

1 Answer

Joseph Fusco
Joseph Fusco
5,030 Points

If at the end of each lesson there was a download of what you should have at that specific point, it would be easier to figure out what you might have missed. As it is, the theme only exists as a complete template of what you should end up with at the end of the course. Even if you get all the quiz answers correct you still might not be able to use your work to progress to the next section.