The Path to a Career in WordPress Development
WordPress has been around since 2003, and powers nearly half of the websites built on the web, and with that comes a massive market of people looking for WordPress-specific solutions to get the most from their websites. It's no surprise that this demand has created an influx of good paying jobs in programming.
But what do you need to know in-order to earn a living from WordPress as a developer? Well, aside from the obvious (see: WordPress itself), you'll need to know a handful of programming languages, web technologies, and some of the basics of the web itself. Let's get into the path that I recommend to get into WordPress
How to Use This Guide
This guide is intended to help walk you through what I feel is the ideal path to get into WordPress, but remember it's just a guide. If you need to spend more, or less time on these resources, do what works for you. Wanna learn more PHP than JavaScript? Do it! Wanna take a crazy detour into machine learning, or Python? Go for it. all of these things are practice, and will make you a better developer. At the end of the day, the only way to get good at programming is to spend a lot of time actually doing it. Exactly what you're writing isn't important, as long as you're learning, and applying skills.
What Technology Does WordPress Use?
But, at the end of the day, WordPress uses 4 key technologies that you'll need to know pretty darn well to succeed:
- PHP
- JavaScript
- CSS
- HTML
So, if you focus on resources that help you do those four things really well, you're going to find yourself in a great job in the WordPress space.
Bonus points if you learn these, but they're not necessary in most situations.
- Nginx
- Apache
- MySQL
- Bash
The Process
The learning process that I've found to work best is a mix of "watching", and then "doing". This approach has allowed me to learn just about anything, and it looks like this:
- Take a course. If it's a video course, write your code along with them. This is way slower, but it helps make things stick.
- Do something on your own using what you learned in the course. Refer to the course when you get stuck.
- If needed, take the course again, and repeat. (I watched React For Beginners and Learn Node by Wes Bos THREE times before it finally stuck.)
- Repeat for the rest of your damn life! (albeit less-frequently as time goes on).
One more thing - Be sure to join our Discord Community. There are plenty of places for you to ask questions
Ready? Okay! Let's do this.
The Basics. HTML & CSS
If you're getting into web development, you absolutely have to learn HTML and CSS, at least on a basic level. These two markup languages are responsible for describing the content on a web page, as well as how that content should look. All web pages, from the simplest pages you can imagine to the most-robust of web applications all use HTML and CSS.
They're also relatively easy to learn, and will help you get familiar with other things, like your code editor, troubleshooting, and other skills that will serve you well regardless of what role you fill.
When learning both HTML and CSS, don't fret too much over memorizing every single thing. The key here is to know what HTML and CSS can do, and learn it well-enough to at least be able to find what you're looking for with a Google search.
I think Codecademy is a wonderful place to start these paths. All of the lessons are built directly into the browser, so you don't need to figure out what software you want to use or anything right away. This helps keep the learning curve as shallow as-possible.
Build some things using HTML and CSS. Practice is what will help you learn these skills. If you want to share snippets with other people, CodePen is a pretty awesome place to write up HTML and CSS, and make it share-able online. Otherwise, you can build it on your computer directly and open the html files in your browser.
If you feel ready - I encourage you to push yourself to build a very basic, 1-2 page website using just HTML and CSS. It could be a fake website if you want, or you can build something you need - such as your own website. The key here is to keep it simple, at least at first. Odds are anything you build in this phase is going to get blown away and replaced with something more-robust in the future, but it's good to start thinking through these things now.
JavaScript
Once you've got a little practice with HTML and CSS under your belt, it's time to move on to JavaScript. JavaScript is a programming language that runs in your web browser, and allows you to-do interactive things, such as opening a menu when you click on a button, or creating a pop-up on the page. However, that's just scratching the surface. Advanced JavaScript can actually build mobile apps, computer software, web applications, command line tools, and server software. You name it, JavaScript can probably do it.
In the future, you may find that a different language suits your needs better for a specific purpose, but no matter what - if you're in web development, you're probably going to touch JavaScript somewhere along the way. In-fact, many people make a good living writing almost nothing but JavaScript, so as far as first programming languages go, it's a good fit.
I recommend a strong focus on JavaScript, taking several courses, and building many things using it before moving on to anything else. If this is your first programming language, be patient. Not only are you learning a language, but you're also going to learn some of the basics of computer science itself. Concepts like loops, arrays, and objects are probably foreign to you, and because of that all of this will take time. When you get stuck, or something doesn't make sense, watch it again until it does. If it still doesn't, ask for help.
When it comes to programming, I find that it helps to take multiple courses containing the same general information. This allows you to hear different people teach the same thing in different ways, and this will help round out your understanding. Where one teacher may have some gaps in what they teach, the other may fill it in.
Once you take these two courses, it would be good to apply some of the JavaScript knowledge you’ve learned on your website. Perhaps it’s time to rebuild a small section that you wish was more elegant, or something. If you don’t feel ready, that’s okay too.
You could also create some little codepen snippet, like this Morse Code Translator I built when I was starting to get the hang of JS, or this SNES controller I built when learning CSS. Have fun with it. Build something that you'll never use in the real world. It gives you freedom to do neat stuff early-on. Either way, building something on your own is going to help you solidify what you've learned in the courses, and it will help you understand how to find the information you need when you get stuck. That's like half of programming right there, honestly.
When you run out of things with which you want to tinker, #javascript30 is a great next step. This is 30 hyper-focused JavaScript videos that teach different parts of JS. These videos were pivotal to my JS knowledge, and I can’t recommend them enough.
React
From here, you should probably learn React next. React is a crazy powerful JavaScript library that and is used in many places to build progressive web apps on the web. One of the apps that is built using React is the WordPress block editor, and if you want to do any serious work with WordPress in the future you’ll need to know how to customize this editor. That means you should know React.
If you really get into this library, learning it is enough to get you a pretty darn good job, both in and out of WordPress.
I usually recommend another Wes Bos course for this, too.
https://reactforbeginners.com/
PHP
If you want in the WordPress space, you’ll want to learn PHP. PHP is another programming language that runs most of the backend portion of WordPress is written in. Most any customization in WordPress is going to touch PHP, at least a little bit. Like JavaScript, PHP on its own can become a career-encompassing language, and powers the majority of the websites on the internet.
Learning the basics of PHP will go much faster than JavaScript because you'll find most of the basic items are very similar to JavaScript. Things get a little tricky when you start talking about more-advanced topics like traits, interfaces, and abstractions, but you don't have to go too deep into those things right away.
For now, a basic learn PHP course should be sufficient, but if you want to go deeper in WordPress customizations, you'll benefit from learning more.
https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-php
WordPress Specific Resources
Once you've taken the handful of basic courses, it's time to build stuff. A lot of stuff. Like I mentioned before, repition is key. Just like an actual language, programming languages will only stick with practice. Build stuff, learn what worked, learn what didn't, and build more stuff. This is the way.
The absolute first place I recommend is our PracticeWP track. These courses are all small, but complete, WordPress plugins. Each course takes between 30 and 90 minutes to view, and are designed to be viewed in a single evening.
Once you get a little more comfortable with WordPress, a great next place to go is our very own WordPress plugin course. This course is significantly longer than any of the videos in the PracticeWP series, and goes deeper than any single video in PracticeWP.
Conclusion
I sincerely hope this resource has helped you. I don't know where you are in your life, but I know that a career change is one of the hardest damn things a person can go through. More than anything, I want you to know that you freaking got this.
- When you can't grasp a concept, it's okay. Happens to all of us. ask for help. Our Discord is a great place for this.
- If you're struggling to make time, make changes. Put yourself first.
- Don't be afraid to go deep, but know that you can't do that forever. Sprints are just that - a sprint.
- Build stuff. Build SO much stuff. At this point I've literally built hundreds of WordPress plugins, and dozens of themes. That doesn't even include non WordPress projects, of which there are numerous. If it sounds fun, do it.
- If after this you can't find a job, post on our Discord. We'll help you out.
And most of all - Keep going. I believe in you!