FREELANCING, HOW TO

How to become a WordPress developer {Complete Roadmap}

Ever since its inception in 2003, WordPress has become one of the biggest content management systems. Since then, the number of WordPress Developers has also grown significantly, with tons of Web Developers looking to utilize WordPress to make their websites.

If you wish to become a WordPress Programmer yourself, here’s a thorough roadmap to go from a beginner to a veteran.

Table Of Content

Understand what a WordPress Developer is
Learn basic coding
Do your research on WordPress and the WordPress Framework
Start experimenting and exploring
Build your portfolio
Conclusion

Understand what a WordPress Developer is

Wordpress Developer|Image: Web design concept with drawings|logic worker — Image by creativeart on Freepik

While WordPress can be used by people who don’t have any technical background, its Developers are famous for a good reason! They can better design the website to fit clients’ requirements, and also have a deep understanding of web structures so are able to develop high-quality content.

A WordPress Developer not only designs new websites for their clients but also migrates, maintains, or redesigns preexisting websites. Furthermore, they also make sitemaps or create wireframes. As you can see, there are lots of different kinds of jobs you have as a developer.

And it’s an excellent job! Currently, over 35% of the world’s websites are built on WordPress, and in the domain of website development, its market claims 62%. In the United States, a WordPress Developer can earn up to $100,000 according to ZipRecruiter.

Learn basic coding

A WordPress Developer is just a Web Developer that works on the WordPress Framework, so if you would like to work on WordPress, you’d have to learn a bit of coding. This means that you would need to focus on programming languages used for web development.

Also, learn how to become a front end developer and how to become a back end developer.

Some that you can pick from frontend and backend development:

HTML
CSS
JavaScript
PHP (this is something significant, as WordPress is based on PHP)
jQuery

You can learn these languages through YouTube tutorials or through boot camps. Some sources you can learn from are W3Schools, Codecademy, and freeCodeCamp. It may seem intimidating but with enough research and dedication, learning to do Web Development would take 3-6 months.

While you would be programming, a lot of time would be spent working on a code editor (like Visual Studio Code) and a local development environment. To keep your sanity while running complex code, programmers use GitHub to manage their programs and a task automation tool such as Grunt.

Do your research on WordPress and the WordPress Framework

WordPress Frameworks are code libraries that developers can use to make WordPress themes. These basically include basic features, and design details and speed up the programming process since you wouldn’t have to code from scratch. Some frameworks you can look into are:

When talking about WordPress development, people usually mean WordPress Theme Development (the layout of the website) and WordPress Plugin Development (functionality of WordPress websites). These are kind of the frontend and backend of WordPress, and you need to be comfortable working in both as a WordPress Developer.

As your learning curve continues, you’ll come across other concepts such as APIs or WordPress hooks, or Internalization.

Start experimenting and exploring

Wordpress Developer|Image: man writing code on the laptop|logic worker — Image by ArthurHidden on Freepik

This is the time you learn different aspects of WordPress and Web Development in general. Newbie WordPress Developers get to explore and learn from a vast ecosystem of concepts and ideas when they begin their learning journey. While this may seem intimidating at first, the experience would be guaranteed to be delightful and exhilarating!

Some platforms you can learn from are:

Udemy
WordPress Developer Handbook/Developer Codex
WP 101
Learn WordPress with Lynda.com

Getting stuck on some code not working might get frustrating. Sometimes, you might even decide to give up programming altogether. But that’s where the memes about Googling for code come from! And for WordPress Developers, there are many forums and resources where you might find helpful developers.

Some exciting places you can receive support from are:

This is the perfect time to choose what you want to focus on. Your niche, your style, what languages you’d want to use, and even what kind of niche you’d like to design for. WordPress is a very vast platform to work on and requires lots of technical skills, so it’s much better to be better at just one thing rather than be a jack-of-all-trades.

Build your portfolio

The final step in the process of becoming a full-fledged WordPress Developer is to build a portfolio of all the amazing WordPress websites you’ve made! You can make your own local websites or staging websites (via XXAMP or WP Engine) for potential clients and employers to see. Your portfolio website would also act as your resume in this sense. It would have your skills, experience, and appraisals, as well as a display of all your work. I’d also suggest that you integrate lots of SEO into your websites, so they’re even easier to find!

Conclusion

Well, now it’s time to begin your coding journey! This roadmap isn’t a strict group of rules that you must follow at all costs – think of it as a set of guidelines. Remember, the most important thing is to keep learning and keep practicing. Computer programming is a field that constantly keeps developing and evolving, so you must keep up so you don’t miss some interesting developments!

The best thing about any kind of software development is that you don’t necessarily require a degree, but is just a set of skills that you can master over time. That’s why regardless of how much time you might need to learn your skills, it’s never impossible to be a WordPress Developer.