One of the great things about WordPress is easy to learn. You can use WordPress to build a successful website with no technical knowledge. Let’s explain, how to become a WordPress developer with only PHP.
With WordPress being the most common content management system, users will still be searching for developers to help improve their websites. By becoming a WordPress creator, you can monetize your work or distribute it for free.
In this article, we’ll describe exactly what a WordPress developer is doing and all the details you need to know how to become a WordPress developer. Then we’ll explore six important steps that you need to take to become both a WordPress expert and a proficient platform developer.
What Does a WordPress Developer Do?
A WordPress developer is a specialist who deals with the simple coding and technology of the WordPress website, improves WordPress itself, or creates completely new products. Typically, WordPress developers execute all or more of the following tasks:
- Create and customize plugins and themes.
- Developing WordPress Core Code and Troubleshooting (that is, the actual software of WordPress).
- Work closely with clients to help develop and design their WordPress websites.
- Ensure the client websites are managed effectively.
- Improve the functionality of the WordPress website.
In order to do these things properly, the professional developer must also be a WordPress specialist. In other words, they should provide clear knowledge of each aspect of the platform, as well as the different programming languages required to run it (which we will discuss in greater detail further).
Read More: How to Create a WordPress Plugin
Types of WordPress Developers :
In fact, the word WordPress developer is really large. There are various kinds of WordPress developers and WordPress is a content management system that can have a number of different moving parts and components working together.
- Core Developer – The core developer is someone who currently works on the WordPress core software. These developers go through the code and render or suggest a series of modifications to the WordPress core that impact WordPress as a whole.
- Theme Developer – Theme developers create WordPress templates for WordPress websites. This helps users design their WordPress blogs with a unique look and feel and pick the colours, theme, and design of all their posts and pages.
- Plugin Developer – Plugin developers are creating WordPress plugins for the website. Plugins are programs that can improve and add features to the WordPress website.
WordPress developers are essential to the success of WordPress since, without WordPress developers, there will be no plugins or themes. Besides WordPress developers being essential to the WordPress process, you need to love WordPress. Job just sounds like a job if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, and if you love WordPress, you must make a living creature for it.
There are many technical challenges of WordPress, and developers take the time to solve the difficulties of creating aesthetically appealing and interactive WordPress websites. As WordPress already covers tens of millions of websites, a lot of money needs to be made and shared by WordPress.
From e-commerce stores to service-based websites, WordPress websites are required, and salaries for WordPress developers are also attractive.
How do I become a WordPress developer?
So you’re going to be a WordPress developer. Where are you starting? WordPress occupies nearly 80 million websites, and that number is rising all the time. Also, website owners are still searching for WordPress developers to develop their websites.
There are six basic steps to becoming a WordPress developer. It all begins with understanding the basics of WordPress and applying those skills. Also, choose a developer’s expertise to work on, realize that you’re going to run into issues, and support a WordPress group.
1) Understand the skills needed
You need to learn the basics of WordPress, and then your ability on the content management site is limitless. WordPress developers can do this by learning HTML, CSS, PHP, MYSQL, and more. Knowing at least one of these languages is going to be very useful.
2) Learn what you can about WordPress
There’s almost a wide range of WordPress courses you can take online, including topics like how to upload and configure plugins and themes, the various types of plugins, and how all aspects of the WordPress website function together.
3) Choose the Area of Development that You Want to Focus on
There are various types of WordPress developers, so it’s important to choose the one you want to work on and become a specialist. People tend to want the best, and if you’re the best at creating plugins or themes, you’ll always have work to do.
WordPress is a flexible platform that needs a lot of technical knowledge. The trick to success is being a WordPress expert in one section, instead of being all right in all areas of WordPress. WordPress developers work hard and have a lot of obstacles to tackle, so choosing one region and overcoming it would lead to WordPress success.
4) Prepare for challenges
It’s still difficult to work with apps. You will run into problems that will cause problems with the display and functionality of your websites. This can lead to website downtime, code glitches, and even major server crashes. There are skills to learn how to try to avoid bugs or to fix problems more quickly, but security issues are still a problem.
Security and having hacked websites or stolen information is a big part of the ownership of a website in the modern era. There are steps that you can take to prevent this from happening and make your website as secure as possible. Also, it’s vital to back up all your records, so you don’t lose hours and hours of work.
Read More: Are WordPress developers in demand?
5) Create an Environment for Plugin Development
Practice by doing so. Once you’ve learned plugin or theme creation, you can use what you’ve learned through testing and troubleshooting to make the most of your success. Working on live websites can produce bad results, so it’s better to test in a more managed environment to avoid causing new problems.
If you want to get some experience developing on a live site, don’t plan on paying for web hosting. It’s not too costly and there are a lot of hosting reviews and consulting sites where you can get licensed, discounted hosting for $5–$8 per month.
6) Connect With A WordPress Community
Connections with other WordPress users are of high significance to success. WordPress has millions of websites, so millions of users are behind these websites. A group of WordPress users will provide project development and assistance, as well as create a forum for WordPress developments and community outreach.
These skills and steps of WordPress learning are indispensable to becoming a developer of WordPress. In addition, there is no set time limit for being a WordPress developer. It’s never too late to discover anything new.
Here are a WordPress developer’s top five creations:
There are main types of extensions created by WordPress developers, as below –
1. Themes
To sum up, themes define a WordPress website’s layout and style. The overall look and feel of the site are responsible. A theme for WordPress is a combination of several elements, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, JQuery, and others.
With over 31,000 options available, space remains to display the high demand for your creation. In addition, it can be a great way to raise your name as a developer to developing a free theme for the WordPress repository.
The current trend among developers is to create a responsive WordPress theme. WordPress site with responsive themes looks good on every device, including mobile phones, tablets, monitors, or large screens with fluid workflows for grid systems, imaging usage, and CSS media queries.
Themes can be created from scratch or starting themes like OceanWP, Divi, or Astra can be used. In essence, they are blank linen or themes that you can improvise and develop with minimal lines and basic elements.
2. Plugins
The WordPress plugin directory currently has over 54,000 plugins. It’s by far the most popular and widely used WordPress feature. Take advantage of the opportunity to contribute to the pool as well.
Plugins allow you to change the way WordPress behaves without touching the core code. Users can also add many of the new features to their website with little or no programming experience.
When creating a plugin, PHP hooks are heavily used. It’s a technique that allows an application to automatically execute a function or class. Hooks are divided into two categories: action and filter. To make a working plugin, you’ll need to master both of them.
While many popular plugins, such as WooCommerce, Yoast SEO, and Google Analytics Dashboard, are built with complex programming and hooks, there is a wide range of simple WordPress plugins, such as Search & Filter and Easy Google Fonts, that are extremely useful.
3. Widgets
Widgets are web components that are typically added to websites in order to provide additional content and functionality. They can be used to quickly access specific pages or parts of a website and provide a shortcut to a specific feature.
The default widgets in WordPress can be arranged via the dashboard by going to appearance -> widgets. Third-party widgets can also be obtained by installing plugins such as Simple Page Sidebars or Ninja Forms.
Making WordPress widgets, like creating a plugin, requires a working knowledge of PHP. Start by going to your current theme’s functions.php file, then place together the widget using the functions provided by the WP Widget class.
A custom widget is frequently the best way to create a function that you can’t find anywhere else. This is especially true if you want to make a WordPress theme or plugin.
4. WordPress websites in their entirety
Designing and developing a complete WordPress site involves combining themes, plugins, widgets, and custom codes (SASS, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP) to create a one-of-a-kind website specific to the needs of a client (or yourself).
Despite the availability of website builders such as Website Builder, Wix, and Squarespace, the market demand for hiring a WordPress developer to create a custom website keeps rising.
However, designing an entire website needs more than just technical skills such as writing lines of code—you need to be innovative, know the core principle of UI/UX architecture, and use quality tools such as quick and stable WordPress hosting.
5. Web Applications via Rest API
The web application is a functional, dynamic web page that operates via a web server and can be viewed via a web browser. This application runs well on every operating system or computer, as long as the browser is compatible.
Unlike the website, the web application has a more practical role to play. Though websites are mostly static, the web application performs interactively. Any of the most popular web applications you’ve seen before are Gmail, Google Docs, and Facebook.
WordPress has merged the main files with the separate REST API since 2015. This networking architecture acts like a bridge connecting the WordPress core to every working application on a web server.
By mastering the core concepts in the REST API, you can build a working web application using WordPress.
What do you need to know about being a WordPress developer?
The WordPress core is built using traditional web coding languages—PHP and MYSQL. The front-end design is a collection of HTML and CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX.
Take a closer look at each of them:
1. HTML
The implementation of a valid hypertext -Text Markup Language (HTML) is needed for a smooth user interface. It means that your pages will best fit in whatever web browser you choose. If your code is not accurate, the browsers can mistake it and show portions of your website incorrectly.
HTML5 is the newest version of this markup language. It has some major advantages over its predecessor (HTML4), such as video and audio support, JavaScript compatibility, and lots of new features such as footer, header, track, summary, etc.
Valid HTML is written using the proper syntax, the formula that corresponds to the overall layout of the text, the order of the HTML elements, the nested elements, and the formatting attributes.
The structure should always start with the DOCTYPE declaration, the opening <html> tags, then the header section with the document metadata, such as the title of each page or body section, and finally the closing </html> tag.
In general, HTML is divided into three elements—flow, metadata, and phrasing. Each of them has different application model rules for what is permissible within it.
For example, paragraph tags that have phrasing content (inline) within them, such as <b>(bold), <i>(italics), <a>(links), etc. However, it is not permitted to include flow elements (blocks) such as <ul>, <div>, or <footer>.
How to use the appropriate HTML tags, structures, and layouts can be challenging at first. Luckily, you can download an HTML cheat sheet to help you build a fully functioning line of codes, and then run it through the W3C HTML Validator to see the output.
2. CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will not style the page and its contents. Determines how the HTML elements are shown on the screen. This stylesheet language allows you to easily make major style changes to the entire site.
CSS features a feature called Media Queries, which allows you to define how each part of a page behaves on the precise screen size. This feature is one of the most important parts of making a responsive website — an internet site adapts to support the visitor’s device.
CSS also has its own syntax, much like other languages. There are only two elements to the syntax: the selector and the declaration block. The selector block is employed to pick the part of HTML you would like to style, while the declaration block defines the design you employ for every selected part.
Currently, CSS3 is the most popular CSS sheet available. because the successor of CSS2.1, CSS3 comes with tons of the latest perks, including new layouts, a flexible grid, more text effects, and a multiple-column layout.
In addition, to get a better understanding of this language, you can learn about the basics of CSS with the help of W3Schools.
3. PHP
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) may be a powerful scripting language for web development. It works by performing tasks within the server, and then remitting requests within the HTML. In other words, PHP takes care of the back end, and HTML is employed to present the results of the script after the tasks are completed.
The WordPress core is built on PHP and MySQL. PHP is extremely flexible to use since it’s compatible with most servers and runs on most operating systems.
It has plenty of features. the most common ones you’ll use are:
Variables — store information like strings of text or numbers.
Arrays — collect the knowledge that’s assigned to a variable.
Functions — complete tasks and provide results that may be used later. The result is often assigned to a variable.
Conditionals — define that if 1 == 1 is true, the runtime will do an action, and if 1 == 1 is fake, it’ll run a special response.
Comparison operators — compare values with each other. there’s a difference between =, ==, and ===. They affect the results of conditional statements.
If you propose to use PHP to create Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), the knowledge of PHP classes is required. The classes allow you to neatly group variables and functions that are associated with one another in one place.
The information on PHP classes is often accessed through the WordPress codex page about Class Reference/WP Object Cache. You can learn about the basics of PHP from W3Schools.
4. MySQL
MySQL may be a database used to store all the knowledge of a few WordPress sites. The data inside the database is retrieved dynamically using PHP. The particular content of each page and post on a WordPress website is stored here.
WordPress provides a group of PHP functions to securely interact with the WordPress database and run it through the suitable function. Some functions use standard SQL statements, while others use arrays of data.
On the WordPress Developer Codex list, the SQL functions are described – by wpdb class, which is a database.
5. JavaScript
JavaScript is a web scripting language for the development of a website.
You can modify and manipulate the content’s behaviour on a website, For instance, if you want to point out a running text only after a user presses a button, you’ll use JavaScript to accomplish that.
This language can turn static HTML into an interactive website. you’ll embed the script into a page’s HTML file, and it’ll work automatically when the page is accessed. Also, it’s fully integrated with CSS files.
JavaScript relies on the online browser to perform its functions. It can’t run outside the browser environment unless you employ Node.js, a program explicitly designed to bring the language into broader use, like management, mobile applications, and robotics programming.
Learning JavaScript may be a must for any WordPress developer. For more information, check the Using Javascript WordPress codex page.
Read More: WordPress Interview Questions and Answers
6. jQuery
jQuery is a popular library for JavaScript. This program simplifies the way you utilize JavaScript for manipulating or changing an internet page by allowing you to chain multiple functions directly. The code is going to be “cleaner” and easier to read.
Learning about jQuery will save you plenty of time once you get to creating huge JavaScript code. The library provides various features to ease the method, like hiding a selected part of HTML elements, creating animation, manipulating CSS, and creating a sliding effect on HTML.
Luckily, jQuery has an approved development learning centre. This platform allows you to find out how to use jQuery core functions as well as its practical use, like helping you design UI/UX or create mobile applications. JQuery Learning Platform
7. AJAX
Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a technique that enables you to send or receive data without fully reloading a page. This suggests you modify the content of the page without reloading it.
For example, if you would like to make a live search where the result appears below the search box,. You’ll use AJAX to send the search data to the search script, return the result, and display it without refreshing the whole page.
WordPress makes use of AJAX within the admin control panel. for example, when users write posts. The WordPress system uses AJAX to auto-save drafts without your noticing. That way, the danger of information loss during the writing process is often significantly reduced.
A developer can use either JavaScript or jQuery to run AJAX. But, it’s recommended to use jQuery since it’s more simple and easy.
Utilizing Ajax is useful for making a webpage more interactive and responsive. to find out more about this system. You’ll want to look at the WordPress codex entry in AJAX.