How to Become a WordPress Developer? 5 Skills You Need to Master to Become One

Become a WordPress Developer


Today, many companies use WordPress as their Content Management System. So, WordPress developers are needed for many growing companies and firms. You may have noticed job postings looking for WordPress developers.

Before anything else, what does a WordPress developer really do? Continue reading to know more about what is it, and what skills are needed to succeed in this career path.

What is a WordPress Developer?

A WordPress developer does not focus on content to add on WordPress, or else, install a basic theme. Yet, it does not define you as a WordPress developer if you only know those soft skills. You also need to be knowledgeable about other plugins, modules, and short coding as well.

They need a lot of knowledge about the entire infrastructure of the WordPress platform, and programming skills to work within that framework. So, having the knowledge of how it works, and an idea about its full structure is very important for a WordPress developer.

It is basically written in PHP.

Skills for WordPress Developers

If you want to be a WordPress developer, as we have always said, you need to get familiarized with it. You have to have a deep understanding of the plugins, themes offered by WordPress.

Since it is a Content Management System, some of its functions are already coded and ready to use. The other stuff you need to know is the common issues that will arise, how to load a website faster, how to optimize and customize pages, how to increase traffic to anyone’s, or your website.

Technical Skills for WordPress Developers

HTML

It is always the basic. HTML or Hypertext Markup Language. You can benefit from the HTML coding skills if you want to become a WordPress Developer. It makes it easy to access the HTML for a page. In the WordPress editor, just switch the editor from Visual to Text. The HTML will be shown, and you can control its overall formatting.

It is not a programming language, but it is a very powerful tool. It can be used to customize a page or add other elements like buttons. You can also embed tweets and YouTube videos in your posts.

PHP

The PHP powers the backend of WordPress. It is one of the most important programming languages for a WordPress developer. It is a server-side scripting language and usually used t by a website to communicate with a server. In short, this is the channel where the content is being passed.

WordPress’s core files are written in PHP.  Codes and plugins that interact with the website are written in PHP.

PHP is an open-source scripting language. It is widely used across the globe. If you want to know more about it, there are many tutorials available on YouTube.

CSS

If you want to change the style of your PHP design elements in WordPress themes, then you have to study Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Basically, it is a style language that is used so you can decide what you really want a website to look like. It is also used for customizing the style for different screen sizes for various devices.

CSS has its own syntax, and the most important language to customize a website design. You can easily learn it since there are many tutorials about it on the web. It has 2 common parts, the selector, which selects which style you want to customize, and the declaration which defines what style will be your website.

JavaScript

JavaScript enables you to interact with a website. It allows adding interactive elements to a website. Also, It can be used to manipulate the behavior and content of your website, defining it as a powerful language. It is used to turn a static or still page into an interactive one.

It runs in the browser, while PHP runs in the server. Meaning, PHP is server-side scripting, while JavaScript is client-side scripting.

MySQL

The system will not be complete if the website has no server. Although PHP is needed to relay information to the website’s server, the server runs on MySQL. It is a server query language. Almost all relational databases use languages are based on SQL.

If you do not know how to create a table in MySQL, we have created 3 Easy Steps on How to Create a Table in SQL.



If you want to know how the website brings you the searches you have, you will need to know MySQL. Having this skill brings your portfolio to the next level.

Final Thoughts

As we have stated beforehand, many websites today depend on WordPress as their CMS. This results in increasing demand for WordPress developers.

Yet, basic knowledge about WordPress is not enough to become a WordPress developer. You need to be able to program within the WordPress platform itself. Meaning, the ability to create custom themes and plugins, or customizing a page by editing the code.

The key to becoming a WordPress developer is having the following programming skills; HTML, PHP, CSS, MySQL, and JavaScript. If you’re a beginner, HTML is the perfect place to start.


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