# Monday training — suggested outline *Written overnight 2026-07-25 alongside the pattern-library rebuild. This is a proposal, not a script — cut whatever doesn't fit the room.* --- ## The one idea to land **"You don't build sections. You pick one and replace the words."** Everything below is in service of that sentence. If the admin leaves believing it and having done it once unaided, the training worked. If they leave with a list of 40 block settings, it didn't. --- ## Before they arrive (15 min, you) - Open the site and confirm the three pattern categories appear in the inserter: **Brentwood — sections · — photos and links · — basics**. - Have **TEST — pattern library** (draft page, `/test-real-patterns`) open in a tab. It shows all 21 patterns rendered on one page — a good "here's your palette" opener, and a safe sandbox. - Pick one **real upcoming page** they actually need. Building something they want beats a demo. --- ## Session plan (~90 min) ### 1 · Tour, no clicking (10 min) Front end first, not the admin. Scroll a couple of finished pages and name the sections out loud — "that's a dark panel with a wide photo, that's three photo cards". You're teaching them to *see the page as sections*, which is the vocabulary the rest of the session runs on. ### 2 · The three-step loop (20 min) Do it once yourself, slowly, then have them do it. 1. **Add a section** — `+` → Patterns → a Brentwood category → click one. 2. **Replace the words** — click the heading, type. Click the paragraph, type. 3. **Replace the photo** — click the photo → **Replace** in the toolbar → choose or upload. Then stop. That is a finished section. Say so explicitly — people expect a fourth step and go looking for one. ### 3 · The four buttons that cover the variations (20 min) These live on the row toolbar and are the reason the library is 21 patterns instead of 60. Show each on the *same* section so the point lands — one pattern, four different looks. | Button | What it does | |---|---| | **Swap sides** (↔) | Flips a two-column section left-to-right. Photo on the left instead of the right. | | **Background** (palette) | White / light blue / light grey / dark grey / none. | | **Card style** (page icon) | Rounded corners + soft shadow — the "raised panel" look. | | **Curved edge** (on a column) | The signature curve on the photo edge. | Worth saying plainly: *if you want the same section facing the other way, don't go looking for another pattern — press Swap sides.* ### 4 · Build a real page together (25 min) The page you picked earlier. They drive, you sit on your hands. Target: 4–5 sections. Expect this to take them 20 minutes the first time and 5 the second. ### 5 · The rest (15 min) Only what they'll actually need in week one: - Publish / draft / preview, and **revisions** (the undo of last resort — show where it lives). - Adding a page to the menu. - Where the guides are. Deliberately **not** in this session: Kadence's full settings sidebar, theme options, plugins, forms. Every one of those is a place to get lost, and none is needed to add a section. --- ## Things to say out loud - **"Patterns are starting points, not templates."** Once inserted, a section is yours — change anything, delete anything. Nothing is locked. (This is a change from what the site did last week.) - **"Your existing pages edit the same as always."** The section names now shown in List View ("Dark panel + wide photo") are labels only. - **"If it looks broken, don't fix it — undo."** Ctrl/Cmd-Z, or Revisions. Much better than an admin trying to repair layout by hand. --- ## Rough edges — know about them, don't demo them - **Gravity Forms in the editor** makes the page-background gradient stop short of the bottom. Cosmetic, editor-only, front end is unaffected. Still open. - **"Photo + text in one column"** (~4.5% of the site's sections) has no pattern of its own. Start from **Text section** and add a photo — worth showing if they hit it. - **Offset text rows** (110 of them, the leftover of the removed red rule) aren't in the library on purpose; they're being converted to plain one-column rows. - Patterns are on **staging (brentwooddev)** only at time of writing — push to dev before Monday. --- ## The library (21 patterns) **Brentwood — sections** — the designed, photo-led ones Text + photo · Photo · text · photo (curved) · Dark panel + wide photo · Text panel + photo (panel left) · Two photos + dark panel · Three photos · Blue highlight band · Quote + photo · Staff + text **Brentwood — photos and links** Three photo cards · Photo card + text · Wide photo card · Three link cards · Text panel + three link cards · Text panel + photo cards · Page links **Brentwood — basics** Text section · Two columns · Full-width photo · Video + text · Latest news Between them these match **85% of the real sections on the published site** (637 of 750). Every one is a copy of an actual row from the site, so it arrives already looking like Brentwood.