How to create an education website with WordPress

List the pages visitors need before changing the design. A small education site normally needs Home, About, Courses or Classes, Teachers, Blog or News, Contact and an enrolment or enquiries page.

Decide which information belongs on a page and which belongs in a post. WordPress pages are intended for lasting information, while posts are better for news and dated updates.

In the WordPress dashboard, go to Pages > Add New. Create the pages from your plan, add a clear title and build each layout with blocks such as Cover, Columns, Image, Media & Text, Buttons and Group.

For each course or class, show the audience, level, duration, timetable, location or online format, teacher, price if relevant and the next action. Publish the pages only after checking their page addresses and featured images.

Choose a theme that supports the layout you need, then set the site logo, colours, fonts, spacing and button styles. With a block theme, these controls are usually under Appearance > Editor; older or classic themes may use Appearance > Customize. The Customizer is not available for every block theme.

Keep the visual system small: one heading font, one body font, two or three brand colours and one button style. Education sites often become difficult to scan when every class page uses different colours and spacing.

Build the homepage in this order: a short promise for the school or centre, a prominent enquiry or enrolment button, featured courses or classes, reasons to choose you, teacher profiles, testimonials or outcomes, upcoming dates and contact details.

Use reusable patterns or template parts for repeated sections such as a call-to-action strip or contact panel. In a block theme, patterns and template parts can be managed from Appearance > Editor > Patterns, and template changes can affect every page that uses them.

Add the key pages to the header navigation and keep the top level short. A useful structure is Home, Courses, Teachers, About and Contact, with less important links in the footer.

Block themes use the Navigation block to edit menus. Only published pages appear as normal page links, so an unpublished page can make a menu item appear to be missing.

Preview the site on a phone and tablet. Check that headings wrap sensibly, buttons are easy to tap, images are cropped correctly and the header does not take up the whole screen. Test every course, teacher and contact link.

If you need lessons, quizzes, progress tracking, student dashboards or restricted course content, install and configure an LMS or membership plugin. WordPress’s core page and layout tools can present course information, but they do not provide a complete learning system.

If you want the manual design work reduced, use Shelly. It is an education-focused Elementor theme with ready-made teacher, class, blog and contact page structures, so it suits a school, training centre, academy or college that needs a presentable site quickly.

Import its starter content, replace the example text and images, then adjust the colours, typography and navigation in Elementor. Check the imported pages before launch: a missing display condition or an Elementor Canvas layout can hide a global header or footer.