WordPress Development

If WordPress is a content management system and a website hosting platform, who are “WordPress developers”? Well, WordPress is open-source software, so that means developers contribute to the base functionality to the CMS for free. They work on version control, new features, and fixing bugs. But there is more than that. WordPress is limited because it is meant to be easy for end-users. Easy can be repetitive and people want to be unique. People want their own vision to be implemented, and usually, their vision is too niche and complex to be readily available. The cool thing about WordPress is: it is designed to be easy to use and easy to add stuff on. Because WordPress is so popular, many development tools and a large developer community are available to help you tackle issues when developing with WordPress .

To customize designs and to add functionality, WordPress developers build themes and plugins. Some are free to install, and some are not. It does not matter. If it is not free, you can learn to build something yourself! WordPress is built with PHP and thus any outside developer will have to learn and/or use PHP to create themes and plugins. It is possible to integrate HTML, CSS, and JavaScript too, but PHP is the main language.

The themes are focused on layout and design. WordPress provides template pages to help with customized themes. Creating a new theme will involve a lot of tinkering with CSS. Although there is the option to add functions in themes, it is not recommended. Plugins should be the ones to add more functionality. Plugins have a lot of range. A few examples include: creating contact forms, connecting to Google Analytics, improving SEO, security, and e-commerce functionality. Developing plugins may be considered more intimidating than developing themes, but both can be messy and both can be fun.

Wordpress.com’s current policies do not have a lot of room for third-party themes and plugins., However, the custom developer flexibility is already an option for self-hosted WordPress. If you find the available themes and plugins lacking, find a template and mix it up or build it entirely from scratch. Additionally, if you build a theme or plugin that you believe has potential, you can sell it. WordPress is about making it easier to build websites, but it can also be used to make it easier to learn how to develop different aspects of websites.