Learning how to code with WordPress may seem difficult, but it all comes down to getting started. This article has everything you need.
Learning how to develop with WordPress may seem like a difficult thing to do, but it all comes down to getting started. So we’ve put together in this article what we think is necessary to help you get off to the right foot.
About WordPress
WordPress is content management software for creating websites and blogs, basically WordPress is whatever you want it to be. It is the most intuitive and responsive platform for building websites and blogs in recent times and, in addition to providing the best experience when it comes to developing your own themes and plugins, it also gives you autonomy to implement security certificates in WordPress, data integration and content management on your blog or website.
With WordPress it is possible to create and recreate what you want from a business website, e-commerce, magazines, newspapers, portfolio, project manager, event directory, showcase of products and services, and other content due to its extensibility through plugins, themes and PHP programming.
Structure
WordPress is fundamentally divided between the core, themes and plugins and to understand how we can develop WordPress, it is necessary to have an idea of how the software structure works. Let’s take a look at these three components?
Core
The core is responsible for the WordPress infrastructure and its functionalities. It contains all the codes that make up the software, including, from the simplest to the most advanced functions. And most importantly, this code is open source.
Themes
Themes are responsible for the front-end, the design and your visual experience with the website and/or blog. We can use WordPress administration to create posts, pages within the site, and other content within the site, but we can also modify in our own way how our posts and pages are displayed to visitors. This definitely gives you considerable power over your website. In addition to having the autonomy to install and activate pre-built themes, you can completely step out of the box and develop your own themes from scratch.
Plugins
Plugins, to put it simply, provide additional functionality for WordPress. A plugin can, for example, modify the back-end and/or the front-end of a website. A good example is the Share to Facebook button.
A new settings page is created in the back-end administration menu where you can configure some options for sharing on Facebook via website\blog, adding it to the front-end of your website.
WordPress Development
Regardless of what you want to do with WordPress, we recommend that you take a path to do well in your studies.
We’ve made descriptive blocks that will help you familiarize yourself with the platform and we’ll help you with what you need to know before choosing WordPress.
Themes
Learning how themes work and how to develop them will allow you to create blogs, one-page sites and dynamic content sites and whatever else is related to the WordPress front-end, it will also allow you to get more\better customers (if that’s it that you really want) or even develop themes for the WordPress platform.
You can learn more about WordPress themes by visiting the themes directory, where everything is free. Many front-end developers post their themes in the directory. Gives just pass there and check if this is your area of interest, we assure you will like it!
Plugins
What are plugins? They are practically the soul of WordPress! But, first, to develop plugins for WordPress it is necessary to have basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP. If you already understand what they are and what each one is responsible for, it’s easier to understand why it’s so important to specialize and start developing with WordPress.
Plugins are tools to extend WordPress functionality. They give full control over all aspects of the software and allow for back-end modification and development of the software. Learning how to develop plugins in WordPress can be decisive when solving your client’s problem, just by adding a feature or another that he is needing.
With them, you can customize functionality, such as a Share button to Facebook or Twitter, a custom form , a button to print or generate PDFs, among others. In addition, there are plugins that help WP management, helping to verify and analyze your own website’s SEO, generating visitation reports, optimizing it for online search engines and improving your website’s positioning in these search engines.
WordPress also has a Plugins Directory with over 40,000 plugins. It’s a great source of tools, inspiration and examples of how to develop great plugins.