Our Mission

Our mission at WP Academy is to provide high-quality, affordable training on website development and internet marketing to entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals. Website development and internet marketing is no longer a rare, highly technical and expensive skill — hundreds of people from all walks of life have had their businesses and lives transformed by our courses.  We also believe that while books and training videos are valuable, there is no substitute for direct one-on-one and group coaching by an expert.

Our Team

Marc Beneteau, Founder.  Marc is a trainer, software developer, internet entrepreneur, website developer, and internet marketer. He ran a successful web design business for 3 years prior to starting WP Academy, and was Chief Technology Officer of an internet startup before that. For his full professional profile see Web Technology Guru.  When not staring at a computer screen, Marc enjoys playing the banjo, dancing, and adventure travel.

George Plumley, Instructor. George Plumley is a respected WordPress author, trainer and coach.  He is the author of WordPress 24-hour trainer and other website development books, and also writes articles and shoots videos from his popular site SeeHowTo. George has a background in philosophy and broadcasting and lives in Western Canada.

Our Story

In 2005, after a 25 year career as a software developer, project manager, and entrepreneur, Marc started a web design and development business “from his basement”. We hired a bunch of offshore web designers, sent out a few emails (Marc was always a big networker and community-builder), and we were in business. The business ran for 3 years and during this time we produced over 150 attractive, affordable web sites for small business and self-employed professionals. We particularly specialized in business- and life-coaches, which fit in well with Marc’s interest in human development and spirituality.

The way websites were designed in those days (not so long ago!) — and is still the way that higher-end websites are designed today — is that the web designer produces what’s called a “mock-up” in Photoshop, which is a snapshot of a website. The customer suggests changes and the design goes back and forth until it’s finalized. Then the customer sends in all their content, the mock-up is “sliced” (converted to HTML), and the designer applies the content. Finally, after quite a bit more back-and-forth, the site goes live.  The entire process is really quite cumbersome and fraught with possibility of errors and miscommunication.

Fast forward to 2009…

In early 2009, Marc started blogging and got re-acquainted with WordPress.  WordPress had gone through dramatic development during the intervening years, with an estimated 26 million websites being hosted on WordPress by 2010, thousands of themes and plugins (many of them free), and a very active community. Marc had the kind of “aha” experience that many other users and developers felt when first meeting WordPress — this was the “shangri-la” of website development. This was “power to the people” in terms of developing websites and marketing products or services online. While web designers were often still needed, they no longer held a monopoly over the web.

We immediately got to work and put together our first webinar series. Within two months, we were in business. The first webinar was very successful, and we continue to develop more accurate, targeted and valuable content with each course iteration.