What is WordPress, you might be wondering? What purposes does WordPress serve? Nearly one-third of all websites run on the WordPress platform.
This robust site builder and content management system (cms) aims to make it easy for anyone to establish an online presence in a matter of minutes with options for everyone from small businesses to individual bloggers.
WordPress is a flexible, scalable, and always free-to-use platform. Here are some of the main characteristics of the most widely used website creation tool in the world.
Everyone Can Use WordPress as Software
Mike Little and Mike Mullenweg founded WordPress.org, a corporation that makes WordPress open to anyone who wants to create a website or blog, back in 2003 as a piece of free blogging software.
The goal of creating WordPress and making it eternally free was to “democratize publishing” by creating a website creation tool that would enable anyone to have a voice and an online presence. A much bigger audience, including some of the most well-known companies in the US and around the world, were drawn to WordPress by the same qualities that made it so appealing to bloggers and other types of Internet publications.
Now, a vast list of well-known figures chooses WordPress as their platform of choice including Sony Music, Variety, Time, Inc., and the Disney Company, along with millions of smaller business and personal sites. The most recent version of the platform has been downloaded over 22 million times so far, and new versions continue to be developed by the large WordPress user community.
WordPress Is Open Source and Free to Use
WordPress is a PHP-based open-source website construction tool that is free to use. It is distributed under the General Public License, which enables anybody to use, modify, and distribute the software as needed to meet specific needs.
WordPress can be downloaded at any time or deployed as part of a web hosting plan thanks to the public availability and perpetual freeness of “open source” software.
WordPress enjoys the backing of a sizable and expanding community of designers, developers, and software enthusiasts since it encourages modification and improvement.
The core code of WordPress is constantly being improved by these WordPress community members, who also plan events and “WordPress camps” to assist others in learning about WordPress and resolving issues related to its use.
All WordPress users are encouraged to join the community and participate in any way they can to help other users and maintain the program’s stability and current state.
Starting a WordPress site is as simple as downloading a copy from WordPress.org and installing it on a platform for hosting, or by utilizing the WordPress installation option that is provided by the majority of web hosting companies. Whatever method is used to obtain or install it, WordPress is totally free.
WordPress Functions for Every User
WordPress may be used by anyone, from a total novice to an experienced developer, as intended by its founders. A WordPress website can be set up as a “one-click install” on a hosting provider for new users without any design or development skills using one of the thousands of free WordPress themes. Without knowing any code, these themes let users to change a number of aspects including the site header and colors directly from the dashboard.
In order to enable for customization of the software to meet the requirements of any site, WordPress provides access to all components of the software, including its theme and plugin systems, application framework, and scripts, for users with experience in website design or development. WordPress can be adapted and adjusted to grow and evolve to meet the changing needs of an expanding business because it can be modified in a variety of various ways.
WordPress Is Versatile
WordPress’ essentially limitless versatility is one factor in its popularity. Users of WordPress have access to a large selection of free themes from which they can at any moment alter the appearance and functionality of a website.
Beyond that, anyone can purchase and install a unique WordPress theme made by international designers. With a large selection of plugins, WordPress can also be customized for a wide range of extra purposes. These features include online stores, magazine layouts, and galleries.
Third-party developers’ WordPress plugins can also be purchased and installed via the website’s WordPress dashboard. Even novice users may install and utilize plugins with just a few mouse clicks, allowing site owners to customize their websites and expand their services.
look into WordPress development
WordPress is a well-known CMS, and developing WordPress-based websites is currently one of the finest jobs in the world. Many aspiring young programmers are looking for chances to study WordPress programming and produce original themes and plugins.
But there aren’t enough resources available to aid them. Despite the market’s abundance of courses, many are still unsure about where to begin.
Therefore, we have created a guide that will assist them in learning from scratch and quickly become knowledgeable WordPress developers.
Let’s get going.
How WordPress Works
We’ll begin by quickly examining how WordPress functions in order to gain an understanding of what and how we may design for WordPress.
The core, themes, and plugins are the three main parts. The whole default functionality of the WordPress content management system is included in the core code. This covers everything from the admin backend to features like scheduling postings, determining the strength of passwords, enabling user creation, and so forth.
Themes are in charge of a website’s front end and how it feels and looks, whereas the core is in charge of a website’s back end and how it functions. To generate posts, pages, and other site content, we utilize the WordPress admin, but the theme determines exactly how our articles and pages are shown to visitors.
You now have a lot of control over your website. Pre-built themes can be installed and activated, or you can entirely step outside the box and use original designs. The easiest way to define plugins is that they give WordPress more functionality.
There are three main paths to take if you are interested in learning about WordPress development.
- Themes
- Plugins
- Core
Themes
You may build websites and create single-page static sites, dynamic content-heavy websites, and everything in between by learning how themes work and how to develop them. If that’s what you want to do, it will also enable you to get better/more client work or perhaps start your own theme sale company.
Even though not all theme developers make nearly that much money and you might not produce themes that instantly make you wealthy, if you do it well, you can still earn a comfortable living.
Plugins
With the click of a button, plugins may turn WordPress into a variety of different things, including forums, social networks, eCommerce platforms, and much more. You have complete control over every element of the WordPress system thanks to plugins, so you can change anything to your liking.
This may be of great assistance in turning WordPress into a white label for consumers, adding the one extra feature you require constantly, and essentially transforming WordPress into your own. Marketplaces for plugins exist and are frequently controlled by the same businesses that hold marketplaces for themes. The largest, offering more than 900 plugins for purchase, is CodeCanyon.
Sales often aren’t as high as they are with themes, but if you can locate the correct market, you can still make a lot of money. Additionally, WordPress includes a free Plugin Directory with 60,000 plugins in it.
It’s a fantastic resource for tools, ideas, and excellent programming examples (and, regrettably, also some bad).
Core
A global community of tens of thousands of volunteers creates WordPress. The hard effort of 624 kind volunteer contributors, in addition to the internal WordPress team led by Matt Mullenweg, was reflected in WordPress’s most recent stable version, 5.9. Not to mention the several additional individuals that contributed to other WordPress features like accessibility and support.
You are always welcome to participate yourself if you are interested. While you require a lot of experience to contribute code to WordPress core, you can submit ideas or work in a variety of other important areas through WordPress’ Get Involved page, including design, support, accessibility, translation, and more.
An outline of the article’s contents is given below.
- Identify a Domain Name
- Create a Hosting Account and Buy a Hosting Plan
- Put in WordPress
- selecting a WordPress theme
- The WordPress Dashboard: Learn It
- Build Pages
- Utilize plugins and other features to personalize your website.
WordPress Development: How to Start from Scratch – Step by Step
It can be challenging to know where or how to start acquiring the knowledge and experience required to create a career as a full-time professional or part-time freelancer in this industry given the diversity of WordPress developers.
We’ll go over the fundamental steps you may take to become a WordPress developer so that you can get started and avoid feeling overwhelmed.
- Learn the basics of coding: WordPress is well-known for being a content management system that doesn’t require users to code or even understand how to code. But for developers, being familiar with the fundamentals of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP is crucial for troubleshooting, debugging, and extending the platform’s functionality.
- Read more details on WordPress in particular: To learn more about what makes this CMS special, start reading resources that are specific to WordPress.
- Choose What You Want to Focus: Basically, there are three paths you can take to become a WordPress developer. You can concentrate on the primary application, plugins, or themes. Even though you might work in all three of these areas, you should be an authority in at least one.
- For testing reasons, create a development environment: Setting up a local or remote environment will allow you to store both the WordPress core files and all of your plugin and theme files. You will be able to test and view changes right away in a browser thanks to this.
- Construct a portfolio.
- Make a resume for technical work.
Let’s see how to create a development environment for testing purposes,
- Step 1: Download XAMPP Localhost Software
- Step 2: Install XAMPP Server
- Step 3: Start the Modules to Test the Server
- Step 4: Download WordPress for Localhost
- Step 5: Create a Local Database Server
- Step 6: Install WordPress for Localhost