6 Things You Need to Know to Be a WordPress Developer
If you’re thinking about learning how to code or getting a job as a web developer, you’ve probably done a Google search to find out where to start. But the internet is full of opinions. You’ve got a lot of well-meaning developers with their mega lists of things you need to know just to get started. The truth is, you don’t need to know everything to get started.
Depending on what kinds of software you want to do. If you want to be a web developer and make WordPress websites, there are only 6 topics you need to know really well to start building great websites for small businesses. I’m currently working as a web developer for a local nonprofit, and these are the 6 technologie that I use everydat.
1. HTML
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It’s the raw content and structure of every web page. When you visit a web page, the server where the site lives, sends your browser a plain text file with some HTML code. Your browser interprets that code and displays the page for you.
As a WordPress developer, part of your job will be to build out the structure of your web pages. That means you’ll need to know:
- How to use HTML tags
- How to add attributes to HTML tags
- How to link other kinds of files to your HTML documents.
If you have no idea what I’m taking about, that’s OK. You can learn all of this stuff on FreeCodeCamp in their Basic HTML & HTML 5 Course in the Responsive Web Design Certificate
2. CSS
On its own, HTML is pretty ugly. You need CSS to make it look good. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It tells the browser how to display each element on the page. With CSS, you can tell the browser:
- How to layout the elements on the page
- What fonts to use
- What colors to use
You can also learn these things on FreeCodeCamp in the Basic CSS couse in the Responsive Web Design Certificate
3. JavaScript
JavaScript is what makes a website interactive. When you click on a button, like the menu button on a mobile web page, JavaScript is what tells the browser to show the menu. There’s a lot you can do with JavaScript, but there are only a few things you need to know to build WordPress websites:
- DOM Manipulation: How to build a mobile navigation and modals (those boxes that pop up when you click a button)
- Form Validation: How to check that a form was submitted correctly.
- Ajax: How to submit the form information to a server.
You could learn all of these things on FreeCodeCamp, but you don’t need to learn everything they have there. It’s a lot. I’d say you only need the Basic JavaScript course under the JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Certifacate
4. Basic PHP
WordPress is written in a language called PHP, which stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor (the PHP here, stands for Personal Home Page). It’s a server side language. That means that you’ll be programming the computer that sends web pages when people visit your site.
Modern websites have a lot of information to share, it would be impractical to write an HTML file for every blog post and page. That’s where PHP come in handy. You can embed PHP code in your HTML code so the server can generate the content of the site as visitors request it. Basically, you’re making a template that the server fills out when a visitor requests a page.
Here are the things you need to know about PHP:
- Variables: storing and working with different kind of data.
- Conditionals: if, else, else if and switch statements
- Loops: for, foreach and while loops
- Classes and Objects.
These are the same concepts you would have learned in the Basic JavaScript course on FreeCodeCamp. They work the same way, but the code you write to use these concepts will be different. Unfortunately, FreeCodeCamp doesn’t have a PHP course, but you can learn all about it on the W3Schools website
5. WordPress
Now for the fun part. Once you’ve go the hang of PHP, you can start learning WordPress specific things. As a WordPress developer, your job is to create plugins and themes that can be installed on a WordPress site. Plugins add new features to a website while themes give each site a unique look and feel. Here’s what you need to know
- Escaping and sanitizing data: making sure everything is clean before you save it or send it out.
- Templates and the WordPress loop: this is how you’ll be inserting data into the HTML pages.
- Hooks: These allow you to inject your own code into different parts of the WordPress process as it builds the pages.
- Classes: Widgets and Nav Walkers are the two most common.
- Custom Post types: WordPress comes with Posts and Pages, but you may want to make your own post types for different kinds of content.
- Blocks: you can make your own custom blocks to use in the page editor.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to find a good resource to learn WordPress. The documentation seems to be inconsistent and confusing (to me anyway) and courses can be outdated. The best course I’ve taken for WordPress is this one by Luis Ramirez Jr (not affiliate).
6. Tools
In order to build WordPress sites, you need to have a local website on your computer. I recommend Local by Flywheel (not affiliate). It’s free to download and use, even though flywheel’s services are not. You can have multiple sites running on your computer within minutes. It’s the easiest method I’ve found.
You’ll also need to know how to move the local site on your computer to a live server. For that, I recommend learning a little bit about cPanel. cPanel is the software that most web hosts use to give site owners access to their services. Typically, you can setup a WordPress site with just a click of a button.
Once you have the site running, you can install your themes and plugins and import your content. The process of importing content can be tricky and may vary on different hosts, so be sure to try it a few times.
Wrapping Up
That’s it! That’s all you need to now to get started building WordPress sites. Once your comfortable doing using these technologies you’re ready to start looking for a job or clients. Happy coding!
