WordPress is the number one Content Management System in the world. You will always find a job if you have enough experience with WordPress. Due to the endless resources, almost anyone can become a WordPress developer. He or she doesn’t necessarily need an IT background. With the right guidance and resources, you can become a WordPress developer if you have the talent.
Regardless of your educational background, you can try to be a WordPress developer. In addition to that, you don’t need to process remarkable coding skills for this. In this article, we are going to share the roadmap to becoming a WordPress developer. So if you are dreaming of becoming a developer for WordPress, then you have come to the right place.
The Definition of a WordPress Developer:
A real WordPress developer is no joke. They are professionals with an extraordinary level of coding skills. They mainly focus on improving the ecosystem and infrastructure of WordPress.They can specialize in improving the core of WordPress. Otherwise, they can also focus on developing WordPress themes and plugins.
A WordPress developer is needed to build exclusive themes and plugins for WordPress in most cases. In order to become a WordPress developer, you must have decent skills in HTML, CSS, SQL, and JavaScript. And it is better to have a deep understanding of PHP. They should also research a variety of WordPress products to measure how themes and plugins work cohesively on WordPress.
The Responsibilities of WordPress as a WordPress Developer
Do you know?
WordPress is currently running the world’s 37.8% of websites
WordPress is powering 33.72% of the top 1 million websites
WordPress has a market share of 62% in terms of web development
Amazing, right? These statistics prove that WordPress is becoming popular each day. And there is no chance of getting unpopular. So, you don’t have to look back if you are pursuing a career in WordPress development. You just need to make sure you are doing your job right.
As a proficient WordPress developer, your employer will assign you many tasks. You need to handle them with responsibilities. Therefore, we will break down some of the responsibilities of a WordPress developer.
You should remember that these responsibilities are considered on the basis of an overview. There might be specific responsibilities according to the type of your project and your level of expertise.
The Responsibility in Front-End Development
As a front-end developer of WordPress, you may need to gather knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Your responsibility is to make sure the front-end of the program is working according to the back-end. They are mainly needed for developing WordPress themes and plugins.
The Responsibility in Back-End Development
Back-end developers are also needed for WordPress themes and plugins. Compared to front-end developers, a back-end developer should have deeper coding skills. They are responsible for the functionality of a theme or plugin. They can also be responsible for further development or upgrade of the theme or plugin.
Build the Wireframe of a Website
Aside from the responsibilities as a front-end or back-end developer, a WordPress developer may be required to create a sitemap for a WordPress site. A WordPress developer may also be responsible for creating wireframes for a new website.
Customize or Redesign an Existing WordPress Site
The roles of a WordPress developer are vast. Aside from building themes, plugins, or creating sitemaps; you may be asked for support and website maintenance. You may also have to migrate an existing WordPress site from one domain to another. That’s not all, you may require to redesign an existing website with a better look.
Develop New Products
As a WordPress developer, your main role is to develop products for WordPress. Now, don’t let the FOMO start from a primitive age. If you are new, try to focus and take time on developing a particular product. Once you successfully create a few WordPress products, you will have the confidence to create more.
Build and Implement New Features on Existing Products
Usually, the back-end developers are responsible for adding and implementing new features to an existing product. As a developer, you ask to increase the total number of features of a particular product or update an existing theme. No matter what the task is, you should do it with prior responsibility.
Research and Design
Last but not least, you need to keep yourself updated with the latest WordPress products, their designs, and their functionalities. Having an extraordinary skill in coding won’t do any good if you can’t implement a feature that is unique and trendy. To gather ideas, you need to do extensive research on various WordPress products and build something that is totally unique from others. Otherwise, it will be hard to get customers.
The Core Types in WordPress Development
The “WordPress Developer” is a vast term. For WordPress, we can come to a conclusion that there are 3 types of developers. As far as we are concerned, these are the main 3 types of WordPress developers –
Core Developer – These developers are responsible for the most crucial part of WordPress development. They are not someone who builds themes and plugins for WordPress. They are engaged in the core development of WordPress. They go deep into the codes and make changes to upgrade WordPress.
Plugin Developer – A plugin is an application or tool for adding extra features to your WordPress site. These are needed to enhance the functionality of the WordPress site. The person who develops such tools is called a WordPress plugin developer.
Theme Developer – Themes are needed to apply a specific look to a WordPress site. Applying a theme is easy, it doesn’t require any coding skills and you don’t need to hire a designer. Moreover, themes allow users to change the colors, styles, and layouts of the WordPress pages and posts. The person involved in creating such themes is known as a WordPress theme developer. You may have to work closely with the WordPress Theme Directory.
The Opportunities in Recent Times
The WordPress job market is booming. In a few years, it’s likely to be one of the biggest employment sectors in the world. What’s more, it’s going to take a long time for it to shrink—until the day after that, there will still be plenty of developers out there
In 2022, 43 percent of all websites on the internet will be powered by WordPress according to W3Techs:
WordPress is used by over 455 million websites as of 2021, and this number continues to rise. It offers more than 54,000 plugins, which have been downloaded a total of 1.5 billion times.
(Source: WordPress.org)
WordPress 6.0 version has been downloaded over 22 million times updated to the current WordPress version.
There is no accurate figure for the number of WordPress contributors. Given the constant need for fresh contributors, the figure is almost certainly in the 50 thousands.
Source: Make WordPress)
There is no simple way to determine the number of WordPress developers, as some developers are freelancers, others are business owners, and others are employed by agencies.There are approximately 1 million WordPress developers worldwide, with more than half of them working for businesses (such as yours).
The average salary that developers are paid is $15,500 – $90,000 a year. The job market is available in all areas such as IT, web design, and development.
Glassdoor – $68,224
Indeed – $59,987
ZipRecruiter – $71,019
Payscale – $50,447
SimplyHired – $62,164
Neuvoo – $68,250
Sources: Glassdoor, Indeed, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Upwork, fiverr
In the end, it depends on what kind of WordPress developer they are, how many years of experience they have, and what kinds of projects they work on.
The average hourly wage for a WordPress developer is $32.51. Reports of 2,600 salaries as of June 9, 2022. (United States)
Most WordPress Developers on Upwork are paid between $15 and $28 per hour.
In India and other South-east Asian countries, the average rate for freelancers is $25-$75 per hour.
There are also lots of opportunities for new developers in the WordPress community.
In WordPress development, there are plenty of sectors to explore. If you don’t want to be a core developer, then are options that are related to WordPress development. You can choose any career path that you prefer most.
In 2022, here is a list of sectors that are related to WordPress development –
- Full-stack WordPress developer
- Front-end WordPress developer
- Back-end WordPress developer
- Web designer
- Web engineer
- WordPress customizer
- React developer
- PHP developer
- Elementor developer
- Web interface developer
- Webmaster
- Site administrator
- WordPress support engineer
A Detailed Guide: How to Become a WordPress Developer
As you can see there are many departments to choose from in WordPress development. Pursuing your career in any department will be easy only if you have the passion. Although many of us have the dream of becoming a WordPress developer, we don’t know where to start.
But, don’t worry, we will tell you what you need to do to become a successful WordPress developer.
1. Acquire the Required Skills and Knowledge
If you don’t have any previous knowledge of WordPress or what it is, then start by knowing the fundamentals. Start to learn basic HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL. Then, examine yourself to verify how good you are at a specific coding language. This will make you realize that it would be the best department for you to work as a WordPress developer. No matter what you do, you should have sufficient skills in any particular coding language.
2. Learn Almost Everything About WordPress
It would never be enough no matter how much you learn about WordPress. Still, you should keep on learning as long as you are a WordPress developer. It is like learning and growing skills at the same time.
That being said, it is always beneficial to take WordPress courses. There are endless amounts of WordPress courses online. You can learn the basics of WordPress such as uploading and editing a theme or plugin. You can also learn the functionalities of the different parts of WordPress.
Only the ones with genuine interests can become successful contributors to the WordPress community. You should keep an eye on some reliable resources like –
- WordPress Developer Resources: “How to Become a WordPress Developer?” Perhaps, you will find the best answers from the WordPress developer community. If you are lucky, you might just find the code references that you were looking for. Alongside that, there will be handbooks on themes, plugins, APIs, and so on.
- WordPress Codex: Consider it as an online manual that is created by WordPress developers. Along with the basics of creating a WordPress site, you will find most of the technical aspects in WordPress Codex.
- Envato Tuts+: You will find almost any tutorial on WordPress development in Envato Tuts+. This platform is similar to WordPress Codex. The only difference is you will find tutorials with interactive images and videos in Envato Tuts+.
- Know the Code: This is one of the best eLearning websites with detailed video tutorials. Therefore, Know the Code will be preferred by those who like video tutorials. On the other hand, you may not like this platform if you don’t have primitive knowledge of coding.
3. Gather Coding Skills if Required
Well, it is not mandatory to gain extensive coding skills to work on WordPress. There are opportunities in the WordPress sector that don’t require coding knowledge. However, it is not bad if you can acquire a little bit of coding, and at least have some idea of how code works.
WordPress has become the most popular Content Management System (CMS) in the world because users can create spectacular websites with any coding knowledge. But as a developer, you should at least gather some coding skills.
If you want to become a core developer or even a plugin or theme developer, you must have decent coding knowledge. You should be an expert in HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and so on. Along with that, you should have proper knowledge of troubleshooting, debugging, and fixing bugs on a particular WordPress product.
Add link:
4. Focus on Your Area of Development
You will find a suitable area for WordPress development when you are practicing or learning to code. If you think you are good at HTML, CSS, or JavaScript; then you can go for frontend development. On the other hand, you can choose to become a back-end developer if you are good at coding alongside using the frameworks. You can also wish to become a Full-Stack Web Developer if you are good at both front-end and back-end.
And if you wish to be a WordPress UI engineer, you must have the best design principles as well as decent programming skills. If you are only good at one sector, the design won’t be so realistic and it will be hard to implement the design.
5. Establish a Development Environment
Be a Doer! Enhancing your coding skills requires practice. The more you practice, the more you become an expert. But a convenient environment will be a blessing for better practice. You should have a local website or platform for testing.
You should always avoid testing on the live website. You should be generous about taking domain and hosting if it is necessary. The environment should also be perfect for testing and troubleshooting. A controlled environment is good not only for testing but also for having peace of mind.
6. Prepare to Take Challenges
Remember, there is always dynamicity in WordPress development. You may run into problems that you have never faced before. There can be major issues from website downtime to system crashes. No matter what it is, you should always be prepared. You should have the guts to face any challenge.
On top of that, security issues are increasing day by day. You should be prepared to take measurements to prevent security attacks. Keeping your website or system is part of our responsibility and don’t forget to take regular backups.
7. Build a Solid Portfolio
How to become a WordPress developer if you don’t have a solid portfolio yourself? To prove your eligibility for a certain role as a WordPress developer, your portfolio should be enriched with work samples and achievements. Your resume reveals your professionalism for the role if your portfolio can demonstrate your work.
As a WordPress developer, your resume should prove that you are technically sound. Therefore, you should include the necessary information in your portfolio. It should also demonstrate your development and programming skills.
The stronger the portfolio, the better competent you will become for the role.
8. Stay in Touch with a WordPress Community
WordPress probably has the largest communities in the world. These communities are continuously contributing to the improvement of WordPress. You can also be informed about various job circulars from these communities. So, it is a wise decision to join them.
There are millions of members in these communities and the numbers are increasing daily. To know more about these communities, you can knock members through support forums or Slack channels. Moreover, you can meet members face to face in WordCamp conferences, which are held almost every year. These communities are great sources to increase your network.
To Conclude
The demand for a WordPress developer will remain forever. Therefore, don’t think twice if you have decided to become a WordPress developer. Your decision won’t fail. You just need to stay on your track and elevate yourself by gathering the required skills. The WordPress developers are continuously contributing to making WordPress more user-friendly. They are building themes and plugins almost every day.
No matter what your educational background is, you can always become a WordPress developer if you have the passion. Although it will require some necessary skills for development and programming, you can learn them over time. There are people having college degrees in computer science, and there are people with absolute coding skills learned from the internet and themselves. No matter what group you belong to, you can become a WordPress developer if you want. All you need is experience, skill, and confidence.