Hello Dear Wonderful People,

I so much appreciate all the great vibes and support here on the mountain. You all are the BEST.

Special shout out to Laurie @laurieheer who’s been a fountain of information and insight today.

I made a short promo video for my course website and concept  of Course Crafters’ Camp.

The idea of this is not to be a comprehensive explanation of what the program is about.. but just to promote the look and feel and get people interested. Would love to hear feedback on what you like and how to make it better! Thanks in advance for watching!

In terms of where I am at: I have my course title and tag line, I’ve bought the domain name, and I have the who what where why, etc all figured out. I’ve spoken to several real life versions of my customer avatar who have said they are really eager to have my course and that it will help them very much. However, I can’t say I have achieved validation yet since I have not actually sold anything.

Next I need to create  a more fleshed out version of my course outline. I’ve got two design processes going on in my head at the same time right now: a left brained one and a right brained one, and they are not syncing up very well. That’s ok, except that I don’t want to RUSH the right brained one (right brained processes, in my experience, take more time, but also come out really well if allowed to evolve at their own pace. You really can’t rush the right brain.

I  think one reason I wanted to make the above video, was to demonstrate some of where the right brained process is heading. I want to create my course as a kind of adult summer camp/retreat… where online course creators can go to get away from it all and JUST focus on creating their course outline. It’s kind of ironic that I need to go there myself to create my own, lol.

Maybe that’s what I should do next: apply my own process to creating my own course outline.

Here’s a mashup of screenshots of my mobile site as seen from the back end of Thrive Architect today.

And here’s a video screenshot of the mobile site in progress.  The margins and paddings are better than they look in this video.. I was holding my iphone with one hand and mouse with the other so the results are kind of hit or miss, but the actual site looks better.

Lots of fun putting this together!I’m worried someone might think it was an ACTUAL camp and then get upset that it’s not real. I created this more artificial looking image partly to fend that off.

Thank you for your support and VERY kind words, Laura @laurakoller !

It might seem like I’m doing this fast, but this course is helping me pull together

and integrate ideas, tech skills, and projects I’ve been working on for the past 10 or more years.

So that’s why it might seem fast (but to me, actually feels slooooowww.. lol).

I am so thankful to Brad and Andy for creating this course and helping us all get to the next

level in achieving our dreams. I hope we can each and all do that for OUR course participants too!

I’m having a blast working on the sales page for my course.. it’s kind of helping me see how I will actually create it, as I go.

I’ll be using WP Courseware which I think will work, because I can turn any WordPress

page and/or blog post into a course unit. If I understand WP Courseware, it kind of turns your WordPress site into a Learning Management System…. someone correct me if I’m wrong on that).

So as I’m setting up the sales page, it’s kind of forcing me to think about how I will actually set up the course itself.

Heads up, I’m migrating all my sites this weekend (from Bluehost to Siteground). I’m nervous about it so please send good tech vibes my way.

Meanwhile, let’s all work on the beach today! (I made this video a while ago, and I’m seeing how I can integrate it into this course, as Brad and Andy are suggesting we do).

Mother Rebecca and her whacky crew will be your hosts at Course Crafters’ Camp (we have Mr. Know It All, Mr. Grow It All, Mr. Sew It All, the Empress of Orderliness, and other characters who work hard around the camp to keep everything flowing smoothly). Mother Rebecca will be giving weekly fireside chats (“Around the Hearth with Mother Rebecca”). Mr. Grow It All will be explaining how we keep the camp looking so green and beautiful. in the process he will be demonstrating how to teach a “how to” type course. Mr. Know It All really does know it all so we will be directing our hard-to-answer questions to him. And so on.

Right now for my sales page, I’m create a separate blog post page for topics like:

• Daily Activities
• Special Events
• Camp Personnel
• Camp Tour

I am tagging these posts with specific tags, then I am creating a post grid in Thrive Architect that will display the specific posts I want, on my sales page. That way people can use the sales page to get an in depth understanding of what Course Crafters Camp has to offer.  I need to remember to put a big link back to the sales page on the bottom of each blog post (as well as a way to opt in to the mailing list and a way to sign up for camp).

So there’s lots of work ahead but it’s so much fun and so exciting to see how ideas I’ve been working on for a long time, without understanding how they were related or how they would come together.. are now all coming together and falling into place.

Here’s some fun and inspiration to work on the beach today!

Hey guys, this is working out really well… if
anyone has a WordPress blog and wants to use this
tip to organize your sales page (if you aren’t already doing it this way),
feel free to use this too:

I am creating a new blog post for each of the things I want to highlight on my sales page.
I am tagging the blog posts with tags I can use to select them (people, places, schedule, activities, etc).

On my sales page, using Thrive Architect, I am creating a post grid. I am editing the grid to only contain
4 posts (for each grid) and I am then including just the tagged posts I want. HEre’s how it looks on desktop and mobile, so far.
Having so much fun!

What’s great about this is that I can then go into a lot more detail on the blog post page, about each thing (the daily camp schedule, camp staff, activitis, map, etc, ) without having to cram it all on to the sales page. I can also segment my sign ups (when I have them), by what page they signed up from (because on each blog post page, I will create an optin form which tags the people who signed up from that page). So if a lot of people sign up from the course from the “get disciplined” page, that will tell me that my course participants are really focused on me providing structure and discipline for them, etc. I will also put a button on each blog post that takes us back to the camp overview. I can also get them onto my mailing list from the blog posts, and link to them from social media.. and even include them in the course itself (I’ll just clone them and remove the sales part). So it seems that this is really working to create the sales page and even start building out the course and the social marketing plan all at the same time.

Thanks Brad @bradleytmorris!
I really appreciate your guidance and feedback.
I agree that the photos right now have kind of an eclectic/funky look.
I was wondering if that was an enhancement or not.. sounds like it’s not.
The purple font is going away, I don’t like it either.
It’s interesting that the image you liked best (so far.. that you mentioned)
is an illustration, not a photo. Is that just a personal preference (the one
you liked is the one most similar to the images for THIS course, for example)?
Or is it generally best for EVERYONE to use illustrations rather than images?
I have a Getty images subscription and I’ve been searching intensively for images
that convey the points (and look and feel) I want to get across.. so if they are not
working right after all that, I am not really sure what to do to get them more consistent.
With illustrations you can control that (if you do the illustrations yourself, of course).
But I won’t have the time or money to invest in that many images.

One concern I have with realistic photos is that it can be hard to tell, on a web site, that
they are for a course and not an ACTUAL camp.So in that sense illustrations would be better
because they would eliminate that problem.

HOw did you get the fantastic illustrations for this course? Did you do them yourselves or hire
a graphic designer to do them?
I can use Photoshop and Illustrator well enough for functional purposes, but I’d rather spend my
time focusing on the teaching aspects of setting up the course… I guess what I’m trying to say is
that getting all my images to have the same look and feel might limit what I can portray in terms of MEANING
and CONTENT. It’s like if you translate poetry: you can translate the same poem multiple different ways. One way you would replicate the rhyme scheme from the original language, in the target language.. but then you would sacrifice
meaning when it comes to word choice, Or, you could go for the perfect words in the target language to convey the meaning of the original poem, but then you would not be able to keep the rhyme scheme the same as the original.

We’re talking about affordances and constraints of various media (a subject that is dear to my heart). An affordance of Getty images photos is that I can find one to portray just about any concept or idea in a realistic looking manner. A constraint is that the photos (as you’re pointing out) then don’t always have a consistent look and feel.

An affordance of illustrations is that you can get them to all have the same look and feel (IF the illustration collection is large enough, or you have access to someone who can create them custom, or you can create them custom yourself). I don’t see that the Getty images illustration collection is as large as the photo collection though.. and many of the illustrations will still require me to modify them in order to fit my content. So I can have a more consistent look, which would be great, but at the sacrifice of depth of content (and speed in getting it created).

I’ll keep looking for illustrations and try remaking the page and see how it comes out. I really appreciate the suggestion. I just have to see if I can make it do what I want it to do, if I restrict the images to illustrations and/or restrict them to a similar look and feel.

Right now it’s got a kind of funky/eclectic aesthetic (or, lack of aesthetic, lol) which is, admittedly, somewhat horrifying. However, this could end up being its own signature in a way.
For example, take a look here:
http://www.greentortoise.com/adventures/adventures-departure-name.php
This is a fantastic bus trip by the way. I went on it myself (both directions) and had a fantastic time.
Note that their website has a certain late 1990’s aesthetic….. that is part of its charm. I’m not comparing mine to theirs.. I’m just saying that while I recognize mine is somewhat awful right now from a graphic design point of view, that may be part of its charm .. sort of like a tacky miniature golf course kind of look..
http://www.laweekly.com/arts/this-pop-up-mini-golf-course-in-echo-park-is-actually-a-collection-of-architectural-wonders-7059050