How to Become a WordPress Developer: The Basics

WordPress is one of the most popular CMS (Content Management Systems) in the world. Thanks to its incredible scope and flexibility, the platform offers endless opportunities for development, whether you’re looking to create a blog, a landing page, an E-commerce site, or something else entirely. If you have your eye on a career in the digital landscape, then you may even decide that you want to hone your skills in WordPress and become a WP developer. These professionals work with the basic infrastructure and coding elements within the WP platform to deliver unique functionality.

Your career might include developing plugins and themes, creating code and troubleshooting issues, or working closely with clients on custom websites. So, how do you get started on this career path?

Build Your Primary Skills

To succeed in any career, you’ll need to begin by building the fundamental skills for your craft. This could mean taking out a student loan and going back to college if you don’t know much about coding. You can use a student loan repayment calculator to find out how much this is going to cost, and compare what you have to pay back to how much you can earn in your new role. Remember, you’re going to have to learn about things like HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. You don’t necessarily need to become a master of all the coding languages that the platform uses to earn an income, but you will need to be proficient in the basics of at least a few before you begin selling your services to the marketplace. Remember, you’ll also need to be willing to update these essential skills from time to time as new versions and technology rolls out.

Learn About WordPress

Once you’ve built your initial skillset in the coding landscape, you can begin to work on your specialty: WordPress. Unsurprisingly, this will involve learning everything there is to know about the platform and how it works. There are a ton of resources out there that can help you with this, including online courses and articles, as well as vast communities full of experts. To ensure that you’re comfortable in your knowledge, it will be helpful to establish a WordPress sandbox that allows you to get a feel for the dashboard and play around with the platform’s functionality. You may also think about completing one of the official courses for WordPress that are out there on channels like Udemy.

Decide Where You Want to Focus

There are very few people out there that can deliver services that address all aspects of the WP landscape. The chances are that your career path will start with a specific focus on one element, such as the core of WordPress, where you identify and resolve bugs, or address inquiry tickets. If you’re looking to do something more creative, then you might focus on developing themes and plugins that help people to expand the functionality of their site. If you’re a fan of creating websites, then you can build your own freelance career offering your website development services to people all around the world. It all depends on you. Just make sure that you’re ready to keep building on your skills and looking for new ways to accelerate your knowledge. Just as WP is constantly evolving, you need to be ready to grow too.

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