
<p>If you haven&#8217;t seen it already. Let me introduce <a href="//honorswp.com" data-type="URL" data-id="htps://honorswp.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Honors WP &#8211; https://honorswp.com</a> </p>



<p><strong>Mission: </strong><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://honorswp.com" data-type="URL" data-id="https://honorswp.com" target="_blank">Honors WP</a> was established in 2021 to help build an eLearning community and offer product solutions. </p>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-medium"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="300" height="269" src="https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HonorsWPLogo-300x269.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2911" srcset="https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HonorsWPLogo-300x269.png 300w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HonorsWPLogo-1024x918.png 1024w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HonorsWPLogo-768x688.png 768w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/HonorsWPLogo.png 1031w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></figure></div>



<p>My goal is to create a new community of teachers, students, and those who maintain and work on websites for them. </p>



<h2>Beta Ready</h2>



<p>At this point HonorsWP is very much in <strong><em>beta</em></strong> as we just get off the ground, polishing the plugins we have, and building the community.</p>



<p>I have a lot to learn about building a better community, but I&#8217;m very excited about this particular community. </p>



<p>I will be talking more about Honors WP in the blog posts to come, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/royboy789" target="_blank">stay tuned</a>. However, I want to go more into where the idea came from and why I wanted to run with it.</p>



<h2>Love To Teach</h2>



<p>Teaching has always been a passion. When I was in middle school, I had a summer TA job, and I loved it. The students ranged in age from grade 2 though middle school. While some teachers just needed the basic assistance, some let me help them with lesson plans and executing on those plans. Nothing I enjoyed more than being able to see kids learn from me and retain that knowledge the next day and through the summer.</p>



<p>The best part of my day would be when students from previous years would come up to me and still talk about lessons or activities we did together.</p>



<h2>Learning To Code</h2>



<p>My origin story is pretty simple. My mom got me a &#8220;Learn HTML In A Weekend&#8221; Book at Borders, I learned HTML, and fell in love with coding. Through the years I have loved picking up books and cliffnotes on coding, it always makes for a good reference or for new ideas that I wouldn&#8217;t know to Google directly. However, most of my what I&#8217;ve learned, has been done through online courses and videos.</p>



<p>Once I got going with coding and Internet in general, I quickly adopted using video and written tutorials online to learn.</p>



<h2>WordCamps &amp; WPCampus 2016</h2>



<p>Starting in 2014 I started speaking at WordCamps. While this may not take the same format as a classroom, I always opted for developer talks, which are dense and tend to be more educational vs. others. I loved the idea of giving a talk, but educating those who attended on some new piece of code or a new way of thinking about WordPress code.</p>



<p>In 2016 I was very lucky to be invited to <a href="https://2016.wpcampus.org/schedule/javascript-applications/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">speak at</a> the inaugural WPCampus in Sarasota, FL. I did not work in HigherEd but had been working at The Walt Disney Company for a bit already and knew I could give a talk about the JavaScript technologies I had been using with WordPress.<br><br>What I learned is that that enterprise and HigherEd do share many of the many of the same pain points when it comes to technology and development, but also that eLearning wasn’t limited to HigherEd. Most of the people I networked with at WPCampus didn’t even have courses online.</p>



<h2>Lynda Course &amp; Teaching</h2>



<p>At said WPCampus I met <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/mor10" data-type="URL" data-id="https://twitter.com/mor10" target="_blank">Morten Rand-Hendriksen</a> over Thai food, and started talking to him about his experiences teaching online for Lynda (now LinkedIn Learning). I wanted to try teaching course style with audio/video vs. blogs and conference talks. I was invited to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/royboy789/?trk=lil_instructor" target="_blank">create my first</a> course on Angular 1.x development with WordPress and created a follow up a few years later as Angular developed into new versions, and the REST API became more popular.</p>



<p>I wish I was able to dedicate more time to creating and updating courses in that format, especially on LinkedIn Learning, it is different, and takes a lot more up front work, but love the end product.</p>



<p>I’ve also volunteered to teach code at schools, including my former High School. This was another experience I will never forget. I had a week long lesson plan starting from basic HTML to a simple WordPress site. We showcased all the students work at the end of the project week. </p>



<p>I hope to do things like this again in the future.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1000" height="665" src="https://arcctrl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/12471802_10101076348156612_2648235632129135133_o.jpg" alt="Teaching a high school class how to code" class="wp-image-2909" srcset="https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/12471802_10101076348156612_2648235632129135133_o.jpg 1000w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/12471802_10101076348156612_2648235632129135133_o-300x200.jpg 300w, https://roysivan.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/12471802_10101076348156612_2648235632129135133_o-768x511.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1000px) 100vw, 1000px" /><figcaption>I really enjoyed spending a week teaching High School students how to code</figcaption></figure>



<h2>Joining Easily Amused &amp; Supporting LearnDash</h2>



<p>When 2020 hit and the pandemic started to take its hold here in the United States, I was furloughed from my role at The Walt Disney Company. While I was very lucky to not be laid off, but knew I had to find some sort of income to subsidize myself and my family till I would return to work.</p>



<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/JamesTryon" target="_blank">James Tryon</a> and I had already worked on small projects together, and had a joint venture, <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://biztender.io/" target="_blank">BizTender.io</a>. I knew that if I wanted to make something out of the time I had, we would need to better team up, and hire people to move fast. All client work went to James&#8217;s company <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://easilyamusedinc.com" data-type="URL" data-id="https://easilyamusedinc.com" target="_blank">Easily Amused</a>, it being an established company in Orlando. Coincidentally, where I was moving to at the time.</p>



<p>James, is a LearnDash specialist and helps support LearnDash users through their Facebook group and webinars, his connecting to LearnDash dates back to the beginning of LearnDash. We had all sizes of LearnDash clients coming in as referrals and saw lots of need within the community to build good products.</p>



<p>It was during this time period we had the conversation to pause our work on BizTender and move all energy to better solutions for LearnDash users, developers, and the WordPress LMS community.</p>



<h2>My Vision for Honors WP</h2>



<p>My vision for Honors WP is to return to my teaching passion, and build a community along the way. While I do not plan to be the only face seen of Honors WP, my vision is that as a community, we can help all developers, users, teachers, students, etc. that use WordPress as a LMS. A community to easily ask questions, get answers, but also have great products that help solve the simple challenges.</p>



<p>If you are a teacher, student, or maintain a LMS site on WordPress, please reach out. As I start to grow a new community, I want to help, and learn as much as I can.</p>



<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://twitter.com/royboy789" data-type="URL" data-id="https://twitter.com/royboy789" target="_blank">Twitter &#8211; @royboy789</a> </p>



<p>Make sure to check out <a href="https://honorswp.copm" data-type="URL" data-id="https://honorswp.copm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Honors WP</a></p>


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Honors WP: A New LMS Community

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