So, you want to become a WordPress developer? That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while!
After all, WordPress powers over 40% of the web — and behind every great WordPress site and product is someone who knows how to build and manage it. Why shouldn’t it be you?
Now, where do you start?
Well, how about right here? This guide walks you through everything you need to begin developing with WordPress professionally. You’ll learn what WordPress developers actually do, how to gather the right tools, skills, and knowledge, and how to start building a career.
What is a WordPress developer?
A WordPress developer is someone who builds, customizes, contributes to, or maintains websites using the WordPress platform.
If that feels like a rather broad definition, it is. That’s because WordPress is a big ecosystem, and there are many different ways to work within it.
Types of WordPress developers
WordPress developers come in different flavors, depending on what they like to build and how they work. These are some of the most common types you’ll find:
- No-code/low-code site builders: Also sometimes called “WordPress implementers,” these kinds of developers use visual editors and existing themes, patterns, and plugins to create sites mostly using the WordPress user interface without writing custom code.
- Coding specialists: On the other end of the spectrum, developers with deep coding knowledge can build entire websites with custom design and functionality using different programming languages and advanced layout and design tools.
- Theme developers: Create the part that defines the visual design and layout of WordPress sites. You can build custom designs for specific clients or create themes as digital products for sale. Individual themes often focus on particular industries and use cases; making them requires both creativity, design knowledge, and technical chops.
- Plugin developers: Concentrate on extensions that add new features or integrations to a WordPress site. Plugin makers, too, can work directly for and with clients or build their own products and sell them online. This work involves less creativity and more logical thinking and programming skills.
- Technical/maintenance specialists: Handle security, updates, backups, performance, and day-to-day tasks for existing websites. Requires attention to detail and deep knowledge of where to do what in WordPress.
- WordPress core contributors: Help improve the WordPress software itself by submitting updates, patches, and new features to the open source project for the benefit of everyone who uses it.
It’s up to you to decide what kind of WordPress developer you want to become. At the same time, you can wear more than one hat because skills in one role often carry over to others.
What WordPress developers do
Depending on your role, here are some of the core tasks you might handle:
- Frontend development: Means working on the visual elements of a website, like layout, fonts, colors, and all parts of the user experience. It often involves modifying existing themes or building custom ones. In WordPress, frontend work can involve the built-in Site Editor as well as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Backend development: Here, the focus is on server-side functionality; basically, everything that happens in the background of a WordPress website. Typical tasks include using PHP to customize theme functions, create plugins, or modify WordPress core features.
- Block development: This is a growing area focused on creating custom WordPress blocks using JavaScript. It’s essential for both theme and plugin work since most content elements in WordPress now work with blocks.
- Site management: Typical tasks include updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins, trying out new extensions, managing user accounts, doing design and content updates, or running speed tests and acting on the results. You may also do site migrations and deployments.
- Ecommerce development: Involves setting up and customizing online stores. WooCommerce is a great example of this. You’ll handle product pages, checkout flows, shipping logic, and integrations with payment gateways.
- Contributing to WordPress core: You can do almost all of the activities above to help improve the WordPress core software as well.
Assembling your WordPress development toolkit
To become a WordPress developer, you need the right tools for the job. Here are great options to start with:
- WordPress Studio: Free local development tool that allows you to sign up and work on websites on your computer, sync them with your WordPress.com and Pressable account, share live previews with clients, and more.
- Text editor: WordPress development is almost impossible without a good code editor. Check out Atom, Brackets, or Sublime Text for starters.
- GitHub: A platform for version control and collaboration. It also offers a free plan.
- Browser developer tools: Use Chrome or Firefox dev tools to inspect website elements and understand and debug frontend code.
- FTP client: Allows you to access your server directly to upload or edit files. Popular free options are FileZilla, Cyberduck, and WinSCP.
Understanding WordPress basics
As a first step in your developer journey, you need to familiarize yourself with some basic WordPress concepts.
WordPress.org and WordPress.com
WordPress core is the open source software that powers every site built with WordPress. You can download it at WordPress.org and use it free of charge. It includes all functionality and default features.
To run a WordPress website, you need hosting, meaning space on a web server.
There are different types of web hosting, from shared to managed hosting. The latter is what WordPress.com is — a hosting provider that lets you easily build WordPress-based websites while taking care of everything technical, like software updates, security, and performance.
Hosting your own or your clients’ websites on WordPress.com offers the following benefits:
- Unmetered bandwidth and traffic
- WordPress-optimized server setup
- 99.999% uptime
- Free SSL certificate
- Staging sites
- SSH, WP-CLI, and GitHub deployments
- Free domain for the first year
- Expert support
For more differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, check this detailed list.
WordPress admin
The heart of every WordPress site is the WordPress admin dashboard. It’s where you manage content, themes, plugins, and settings.
It goes without saying that, in order to develop with WordPress, you need to know this part inside and out — including how themes and plugins work.
For example, WordPress themes come in two varieties: classic (PHP and file-based) or block themes (built for the block-based Site Editor). Depending on the type you use for a project, the process of customizing it will differ.
In addition, plugins cover a wide range of functionality. They can add singular layout elements, as well as create entirely new content editing experiences. This, too, is something you need to familiarize yourself with.
WP-CLI — The WordPress command-line interface
Finally, WP-CLI lets you manage WordPress sites with terminal commands.
Pretty much anything you can do in WordPress admin (like install, activate, and update plugins, moderate comments, manage users and user roles, change site settings, etc.), you can do quicker and in bulk with WP-CLI.
Plus, it has some nifty features for developers, like running and testing PHP code or flushing website cache.
(As mentioned, WP-CLI is included on WordPress.com Business and Commerce plans. You can learn more about it here.)
How to learn WordPress development
With the basics covered, next you need to familiarize yourself with WordPress’s architecture and the programming languages that make up the platform.
1. Learn WordPress development fundamentals
A good starting point to dive deeper is the dedicated Beginner WordPress Developer course on WordPress.org.
It offers a structured path to learn how WordPress works behind the scenes, development best practices, introductions to block, plugin, and theme development, as well as important topics such as the WordPress REST API, multisite, debugging, and much more.
This is a great basis to start from and decide in which direction to take your studies next.
Another frequently recommended option is the course “Become a WordPress Developer” on Udemy.
2. Get familiar with HTML
HTML forms the backbone of all web pages. It defines basic layout elements and content like headings, paragraphs, images, and links.
Knowing it is essential for understanding how WordPress and all other websites render content. That’s especially if you plan to do frontend development or customize themes or blocks.
In addition, it’s a great first language for beginners: it’s easy to read and learn, as well as immediately applicable.
You can start learning HTML for free on Codecademy, Learn-HTML.org, or W3Schools.
3. Dive into CSS
While HTML controls site structure, CSS is responsible for how a website looks. Its role is to define colors, fonts, spacing, layouts, and more.
For example, CSS is responsible for making sure the website design adjusts to different screen sizes.
Again, if your goal is to do frontend work, you won’t excel without familiarizing yourself with this markup language. You can find great learning resources for it at Codecademy, W3Schools, as well as web.dev.
4. Consider learning JavaScript
As the third-most important frontend language, JavaScript’s main purpose is to make websites more interactive. For example, you can use it to create things like sliders, pop-ups, and dynamic animations.
It also plays a role in:
- Form submissions
- Connecting to third-party services like web analytics
- Real-time content updates (e.g., after user interaction)
In addition, JavaScript is important in modern WordPress development. The WordPress block editor is built with React (a JavaScript framework), and custom blocks require working with JavaScript as well.
If you want to dive into this topic, you can do so at Codecademy, Learn JavaScript, or MDN Web Docs.
5. Master PHP
PHP is the main WordPress backend language and what powers most of the platform. It generates frontend HTML and controls how content loads, templates work, and features behave.
Knowing PHP is crucial for plugin development, although not as important for themes as it used to be.
Want to add PHP to your developer toolbelt? Great resources are Learn PHP and the ever-present W3Schools and Codecademy.
6. Be familiar with MySQL
The last skill to consider learning when pursuing a career as a WordPress developer is MySQL. It powers the database system that’s the other half of every WordPress site (the first being the file system).
The database contains all pages and post content, settings, and user data, which is pulled during the rendering process.
MySQL is likely not something you’ll work with every day, but understanding it helps when troubleshooting problems or building complex features.
You can get your bearings in this language at W3Schools, the guide in the MySQL documentation, or at MySQL Tutorial.
7. Other skills to invest in
While the above is essential to start developing with WordPress, there are a whole host of supporting skills you should consider learning:
Please don’t feel overwhelmed or pressured by this list; it’s just an overview. You will pick up many of these skills naturally as you take on more projects and grow your experience.
Build your first WordPress website
Speaking of which, the best way to learn anything is to use it in real life. Therefore, if you want to get into WordPress development, your best bet is to start building websites. Doing it will solidify your understanding of WordPress and give you something concrete to learn with.
You have different options for doing so:
- Use the WordPress Playground to learn in a safe, browser-based environment with no setup required.
- Create a local development environment (e.g., with Studio) and practice there.
- Purchase hosting and build a live website.
For the best results, pick a manageable project, like a personal blog, a portfolio, or a small business site. This will help you focus on achieving something tangible rather than aimlessly experimenting
If you want to focus on designing rather than managing servers, security, performance, or updates, launch your site on WordPress.com. We also have a guided first-website course for this.
Start your career as a WordPress developer
Once you’ve built a few projects and gained some confidence, it’s time to start thinking about how to turn your skills into real-world opportunities. The first step is to decide what you want:
- Do you see yourself working for a company, joining an agency, or working freelance?
- What will be your niche? Frontend development for creative agencies? Perhaps you want to do ecommerce work for small businesses. Think about this both in terms of the technical area as well as the industry.
Once you’ve made these important decisions, an important tool to find employment is your WordPress development portfolio site. There, you can showcase your work, skills, and services to help you attract web design clients. Highlight completed projects, describe the role you played, and include testimonials if possible.
After that, start applying for jobs in places like:
You can also join online communities (Slack groups, forums, Facebook groups) where WordPress work is shared and discussed.
Continue your WordPress development education
WordPress and the web are constantly evolving, and staying current is part of being a great developer. It helps you become faster and stronger, and to learn new techniques and tools so you can offer more services and ask for higher rates and salary.
Here’s how to continue your education:
Start your development journey now
Becoming a WordPress developer is more accessible than ever — even if you’re starting with zero coding experience. There are lots of free learning resources and tools out there. WordPress itself is free, too.
Explore the different areas of development to find the right fit for yourself. Grow your skills with personal projects and gather a portfolio as soon as possible. Soon, it’ll be time to get hired for your first job.
If you want some help with the technical aspects of running WordPress websites, go for WordPress.com.
