WordPress Development

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With the increasing popularity and demand of WordPress websites, the rate of development is also increasing to add more features and functionalities. Whether the development is in the field of creating new plugins, themes, or improving the functioning of WordPress by any means. However, it will take a little time and effort for the WordPress website development. Today, you can see an increase in the demand for experts who can contribute to the development of WordPress. 

If you are looking for a career in WordPress development then you have to focus on identifying what skills are required, how you can start learning, and what platform is good for the development. Although, you will get a great active community supporting you throughout the journey, where you can share and gain information.

In this article, we will focus on becoming a WordPress developer and what necessary steps are required to become one. 

What Does a WordPress Developer Do?

If you want to understand what a WordPress developer does, then you should have prior knowledge of what WordPress is and for what purpose it is used. It is very obvious that WordPress is a leading platform for creating innovative and amazing websites for enhancing your business. It offers you several core tools, themes, features, and plugins that will make your work easier. But the question is where do we need the developers?

A WordPress developer is a skilled professional who has basic coding and infrastructure knowledge of what WordPress is. The developer contributes to the improvement of that platform, effectively improving the user experience via creating new themes and plugins and making them available for free. 

There can be various tasks asked of a WordPress developer, as mentioned below.

• They will be able to create new, smart, and customize the already existing plugins and themes.
• They help in creating new code and troubleshooting issues and bugs for the WordPress core.
• They can easily communicate with the users that utilize WordPress for website building.
• They help in maintaining the websites created by various clients.
• They help in enhancing the accessibility of the WordPress platform.

To achieve these changes in WordPress effectively and efficiently, you will require developers that are skilled and experienced with the WordPress core. They should understand each and every aspect of the WordPress platform and features that fall under the WordPress dashboard for making required changes. 

Reasons to be a WordPress developer

Before we move forward with the simple ways to become a WordPress developer, you should understand the reasons why you should want to be a WordPress developer. Below you will find some reasons making WordPress a highly demanded CMS tool available.

• If you enter a specific niche with limited positions, you will be able to make good money out of it. There is a great demand for a WordPress developer, so you can easily enter the field with the right skills.
• You can work as a freelancer and helps people in creating amazing websites and do not require a large team to achieve this.
• Also, it has a wide, strong, and active community always eager to help with any kind of problem. So you can start working on your own.
• You should require a large skill set as many tools are available that helps in replacing the code with drag and drop features.

If you have a strong will and have good and enough technical skills, you can be a great WordPress developer. Now we will look at various points that are necessary for becoming a WordPress developer. These points will help you get on the right track.

Becoming a WordPress developer

There are various steps that you need to follow for becoming a WordPress developer. For that you need to be updated with the required coding skills, select the niche where you want to start developing, and start working on it. Below are the steps that will help you.

1. Gaining knowledge of required programming skills.
2. Go through various WordPress resources and forums.
3. Choosing the specific niche for development.
4. Start creating a testing WordPress environment.
5. Becoming an active community member.
6. Create a basic portfolio displaying your work.

Let's start exploring each step for getting a better insight into how you can become a WordPress developer.

1. Getting fundamental coding knowledge

WordPress is one of the commonly used available content management systems (CMS), providing you a platform to create dynamic websites. But you do not require to be a hardcore developer as it does not require much coding for adding new features. It already has various drag and drop features that allow you to avoid the coding part. But if you want to develop new functionality then you need to be technically strong. For example, developing a plugin or a theme will require a professional developer having knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and other languages that suits you to code. You can choose your favorite platform for coding.

Various languages help in maintaining different WordPress aspects. So a little knowledge about the most basic programming language is necessary. Like you will need different languages for handling databases, customizing websites, debugging and troubleshooting, server and client-side errors. So choose the best and simple language for coding.

2. Resources for getting WordPress completely

If you get the basic coding knowledge, then you can start going through various resources for understanding the concepts of WordPress. We have mentioned some of the online available resources below that you can consider according to your preference.

• WordPress Codex- this official manual is available online that is written by the WordPress developers. You will get every concept from basic to advance for creating a website and how you can add new functionalities.
• Envato Tuts- you will get various tutorials for various tasks. These tutorials will cover most of the topics and provide you with a better hands-on facility.
• WordPress developer resources- it is a compiled official list of all available developer resources that come with a reference and handbook for all APIs, plugins, and themes development. This is well-suited for advanced developers.
• Know the code- it is a good option for those developers that find the training videos feasible for learning. Using this, you will get an e-learning site with three different learning paths, one is available for plugin development, and two are available for theme development.

3. Select your niche

If you want to be a WordPress developer, then you have three different niches from which you can select. You can either go for core development, plugin development, or theme development. It may be possible that you want to select all of them or anyone as per your choice. Below is a detailed explanation of each niche.

• Core development- the developers in this field will be able to create and edit the WordPress core features and functionalities. You can use the WordPress core for downloading the official WordPress site. It comes with an official core team from which anyone can help you to review, analyze the code, and help in reporting bugs and troubleshooting, and contributing to the code.
• Theme development- this niche will allow the developers to create customized themes. They can create themes for specific clients or can contribute to the WordPress theme directory. You will get an official handbook for the developers specially for creating themes.
• Plugin development- with this niche, you will be able to create customized plugins. Similarly, developers can create plugins for a specific client or can contribute the same to the WordPress plugin directory. Also, you will get an official handbook for plugins.

These are the most common areas of WordPress that require core development. Adding new features is a must if you want to create advanced websites with more features. You can choose any of them as each of them is a vast field and requires proper attention.

4. Creating a development environment for testing

If you are a developer, you know the importance of creating a development environment for testing your newly created functionality. It helps in speeding up the development process and results in a better product without any bugs. You can set up a local or remote environment for storing all your WordPress-related files and core files. This provides an environment for testing and viewing the changes in the browser. It will allow you to check your development on every browser if they are working the same. 

This will also provide a way to collaborate with other developers and help in debugging the bugs you face during your development. 

5. Becoming a member of the community

Among all other content management systems like Drupal, Joomla, etc., available in the market, WordPress shows the largest and active community supporting all its users, developments, and other tools. Becoming a member of the official website, you will get a platform where you can share and gain information and stay updated about new releases of themes, plugins, or any other functionality.

If you are an active member, then you will be able to solve your errors and get to the root cause of that error with the available experienced developers in that community.

6. Creating a portfolio

If you are in the learning phase then you must have a sample website ready with maximum use of WordPress features and plugins. This will help you to showcase your ability and creativity and will help you in getting a perfect job. So start working on your website from day one along with the tutorials you will refer to.

Conclusion 

There is no doubt about the efficiency of WordPress for creating an amazingly attractive website. You can add as many features, tools, and functionalities as you can. WordPress is the most commonly used CMS available in the market. As a WordPress developer, you get to select a specific niche for development and start your career in that direction. It may take time if you start with learning coding. 

In this article, we have suggested to you a guideline that will help you to understand where you can start developing your website using WordPress.