What Is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) first introduced by Matt Mullenweg. It can be used to create almost all types of websites including blogs, businesses, eCommerce, forums, magazines and others. Every WordPress developer loves it because of its flexibility to build websites with less effort.
It uses PHP for server-side scripting and MySQL/MariaDB for databases. WordPress is the most used and widely known Content Management System (CMS) across the globe. In this article, we are going to learn about how to be a WordPress developer and some other basic matters relevant to WordPress.
Who Is a WordPress Developer ?
A WordPress Developer is a person who develops WordPress Theme, Plugin, Page Builder Etc. In short, A WordPress Developer is a person who develops WordPress websites and it’s relevant products.
As of today in 2024, there are more than 810 million websites run by this Content Management System (CMS). Therefore, there are very high demand for WP developers nowadays. By learning WordPress development, anyone can build their future in this industry since there is no sign of having any downfall of it.
The Future of WordPress and Its Developers:
WordPress was first released in 2003 and now it is on its 21 years of journey. WordPress has continued its journey and still, it is being grown with the contribution of its millions of users. It is estimated that the demand for WordPress developers will rise day by day.
As of now, there is Nooo way to say there will be any disaster in WordPress with the touch of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) since there are many reputed companies including CNN, Sony, and Time Magazine have been using WordPress. Millions of websites across the world have been using WordPress and the number of WordPress users is increasing every day.
What is a WordPress Theme?
A WordPress theme is a bunch of files that work together to create the design of your website. A Theme includes template files, stylesheets, images, PHP and JavaScript files. Some popular WordPress Themes are Avada, WoodMart, WPLMS etc.
How Does WordPress Theme Work?
A WordPress theme provides its users with control over how it will be visually presented to the front-end users of the website. It provides seamless options to manage websites depending on the theme that used in that website.
In general, developers create websites for specific purposes as well as we often see some multipurpose WordPress themes in the marketplace that can be used for various purposes for different industries.
What Is a WordPress Plugin?
A WordPress plugin is essentially a bit of code that “plugs in” to your self-hosted WordPress website. In human terms, that means a WordPress plugin is something that extends existing functionality to your WordPress website or adds new functionality to your website.
Some popular WordPress plugins are Jetpack, Yoast SEO and W3 Total Cache. WordPress is widely so popular because of the power of its plugins. For instance, someone is going to use WordPress for the first time and he/she needs to add a new functionality to their website. There are thousands of plugins that can be used to extend the functionality of their website.
This is why, people say WordPress is famous for its plugins. According to a statistic conducted in October 2024, there are over 70,000 plugins available on the internet.
What Is WordPress Page Builder?
Page Builder is a WordPress plugin that lets you easily build web pages for your WordPress website. Some popular WordPress Page Builders are WP Bakery, Elementor and Divi. WordPress Page builders allow people to create new pages without having any knowledge about custom code.
In most cases, page builders provide a group of demo web pages that may be used to create your brand-new website. While using a demo template, you even don’t need to create any page by drag and drop features of the page builders. This enormous opportunity of designing websites made the world easy for us.
Page builder came up with the concept of changing the web overnight. However, there are some disadvantages of using page builder as well.
How to become a WordPress Developer ?
Step 01 : To be an experienced WordPress Developer, The first thing we need to understand is the Web Design concept in a proper way. We should have the ability to create an HTML Template using HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JS, jQuery, RWD (Media Query), PSD to HTML Etc. This helps us to design pages and then convert them into dynamic web pages. This is the initial process we should go through to be a WordPress Developer.
Step 02 : In this step, We should learn about how WordPress works. Initially, this might be an ideal option to work with the dashboard of WordPress. Maybe creating some posts, and pages and using the options of editing posts/pages, how to add and edit categories, tags/taxonomy. In a word, we should learn everything that is available on WordPress’s dashboard by default.
Step 03 : From this step, The real matters of WordPress will appear to work with WordPress. We can start customizing WordPress free and Paid Themes. Reading the documentation of the free and paid themes that you are customizing. Check all the functionality of Free and Paid Themes and try to understand how the theme works that you’re customizing.
Step 04 : In this step, you will be ready to become a real WordPress Developer to develop WordPress Themes and Plugins. To build a new theme or plugin you must learn PHP & SQL (MySQL, MariaDB). By this time we will have to learn PHP fundamentals and then PHP Object Oriented Programming (OOP).
Step 05 : In this step, We will start learning to develop our own WordPress Theme. To develop your very first theme, the first thing we need to do is how to built/develop a theme and how it works. You will find a lot of content on the internet to learn how to develop a basic WordPress Theme.
You may try to find a good source of content from where you will find at least basic and intermediate-level content about how to developer a WP Theme. During this learning period, download a basic WordPress theme from WP depository and try to see their code and then try to make a similar WordPress theme.
Step 06 : In this level, Please try to follow some standard premium themes and try to develop a theme like the premium WP theme. You will learn a lot in this step. You should also follow WordPress’s official Developer Resources and Codex WordPress when you work with WordPress.
Step 07 : In this step, We should give the support of the most popular plugin like WooCommerce in your theme so that your theme users can easily integrate popular plugins into your theme to extend their website functionality.
Step 08 : Develop your plugins to extend the functionality of your theme. Since you have learned about customization, you might have seen that the authors of the premium themes, they have used their own plugins to extend the functionality of their themes. Try to build your own plugins to extend your theme functionality.
Step 09 : This is the final and traditional last step, in this step, you may try to build your own page builder for your theme. This step is formally the last step. But in reality, there is NOOO last step to learn. You should have to continue learning to keep yourself up to date with new technology to survive in this modern world.