If you've been using WordPress for a while, you're probably very comfortable with how your site runs on a day-to-day basis.
We'll talk about how to become a "WordPress Expert" in this piece, and then lead you through some steps to help you get there.
It's vital to understand that we use the word "experts" loosely when we talk about WordPress. WordPress is a huge platform with a lot of features. There's no way to learn everything there is to know about the Content Management System (CMS).
There are, however, ways to learn everything there is to know about WordPress. For the sake of this essay, we'll define an expert as someone who knows how to use WordPress, can create a high-quality WordPress site, remains up to speed on platform-related news and upgrades, and actively engages in the community.
Let's get this party started!
How to Become a WordPress Expert: A Step-by-Step Guide
Here are some suggestions for becoming involved in the WordPress community. At the conclusion, we'll also make some recommendations for learning materials.
Step 1: Evaluate your current knowledge and make a list of any gaps.
Even if you know how to use WordPress rather well, you're definitely aware that you have some gaps in your knowledge.
Consider what WordPress task you now pay someone else to handle for you as a simple method to gauge your current understanding vs where you want to go. Do you outsource tasks such as design, development, SEO, upkeep, or speed optimization?
Learning how to do those activities on your own will help you become a more self-sufficient user.
Alternatively, because it's difficult to know what you don't know, look through an online WordPress course to see if any courses on unknown topics are available. A snapshot of a typical online beginner WordPress course is shown below.
You'll have a better sense of what learning opportunities to seek once you've established what you still need to learn.
Step 2: Confirm that you understand how WordPress' main components interact.
WordPress is made up of many moving elements, but the three most important are the WordPress core, your theme, and numerous plugins. While you may have a rudimentary grasp of each component, you can almost certainly learn more.
CORE OF WORDPRESS
To begin, the WordPress core files are referred to as the "WordPress core." The primary core files and what they perform should be recognizable to you. You should also know which ones you may safely alter and which ones you should avoid at all costs.
Understanding the built-in and custom post kinds, as well as their related template files, is another aspect of WordPress proficiency.
You may design your own unique post kinds once you've mastered the notion of custom post types, and your website's content will start to stand apart. For practically any group of material you want to show on your site, you may construct a custom post type.
For example, you might create a specific page that lists automobiles for sale and connects to each one, which is written as a custom post at the back end. You may have a section of your website dedicated to recipes, events, or movie reviews, each with its own set of features.
Custom post type plugins make it easy to develop custom post kinds, and after your abilities grow, you can learn to code them yourself.
Because the Beaver Builder plugin works with custom post types, you may have not just bespoke posts detailing vehicles, but also gorgeous information layouts. You may also use Beaver Themer to create layouts for the pages that describe the automobiles and categories.
THEMES FOR WORDPRESS SERVICES
Themes manage the layout and appearance of elements on the page that are not part of the text, such as headers and footers. Many themes also include a restricted number of page layouts and certain basic design options. Because using a theme is required in WordPress, it's a good idea to remain up to date on the most popular free and paid WordPress themes, as well as what makes each one special. You should also make sure that your site's theme is up to date with WordPress core changes.
Understanding the WordPress theme framework and the distinction between parent and child themes is also beneficial.
You'll be able to make a better judgment about whether you like a barebones theme that you can further personalize or one that comes with a plethora of options once you get a better understanding of the more technical parts of themes. You'll be able to assess themes for code quality and performance as your abilities grow.
Even if you only want to use the Beaver Themer add-on plugin to design portions of the page that are typically controlled by the theme, knowing what a theme does will help you understand how and where to use a Themer layout to override it.
PLUGINS FOR WORDPRESS DEVELOPMENT
WordPress plugins manage functionality, as opposed to themes, which control layouts and aesthetics. There's a plugin for practically every sort of functionality, from page builders to specialized content design components (sliders, galleries, forms), as well as security, performance, backup, and analytics tools. Yoast SEO, Jetpack, and WooCommerce are all must-haves for every WordPress user.
There are numerous free plugins available, as well as commercial plugins with more extensive features. Many of the plugins, especially those that assist with content management and design, have unique post types.
The WooCommerce plugin, for example, adds a Products menu item to the WordPress admin panel, where you can click the Product button to create a custom post for each product.
It's not difficult to turn your custom code into your own custom plugin as you learn to code and create multiple sites. If you find yourself adding the same custom code to the functions.php file for the majority of your sites to create the same custom functionality, it's not difficult to turn that into your own custom plugin.
Step 3: Learn how to use the Customizer and other WordPress settings effectively.
Anyone may use WordPress to construct a website by using templates, themes, demos, and other prebuilt pieces. WordPress professionals, on the other hand, can take websites to the next level with extensive customisation.
There are a variety of approaches to building a custom WordPress site, including using plugins or custom code. However, it's critical to begin with a deep understanding of WordPress' natural customization options.
To call yourself a WordPress expert, you'll need to know how to use the Customizer and WordPress' major settings.
Despite the fact that each theme's Customizer settings are different, you should be able to rapidly alter the parameters of the theme you're working with to build a unique-looking site that satisfies the demands of end users.
Here's an example of the Twenty Seventeen theme's Customizer options.
You should also be able to add some structures and features to a site using conventional WordPress settings. To mention a few fundamentals, you should be able to:
• Make a static home page for your website.
• Keep track of memberships and comments.
• Hide a website from being found by search engines.
• Create a standard permalink structure.
To some extent, using these things is the greatest way to learn them. A little practice may go a long way in improving your skills. The WordPress Codex, on the other hand, has important material about Customizer and WordPress settings.
Step 4: Research WordPress's Technical Underpinnings
Understanding how WordPress and its themes and plugins are made is an important element of knowing them thoroughly, which necessitates learning a little programming. Now, we're not claiming that becoming a WordPress expert necessitates extensive knowledge in many coding languages.
On the contrary, even if you can't do much more than experiment with WordPress, you may still be an expert.
WordPress doesn't need coding skills by default, but knowing the fundamentals of the languages that make up the platform's core can aid you in troubleshooting, answering inquiries from other users, and advanced customization.
This necessitates a fundamental understanding of how WordPress use HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript. Suggestions can be found in the learning resources section at the bottom of this page.
Step 5: Educate yourself about databases and database maintenance.
One of WordPress's most significant characteristics is that it is a database-integrated content management system (CMS), which means that pages are dynamically transformed to HTML and provided with material drawn from the database.
Learning how information about posts and custom posts is kept in the database might help you troubleshoot if you run into issues. Themes and plugins save their data in the database with their own unique prefixes, which are useful to distinguish for troubleshooting purposes.
One of the numerous advantages of this design is the ability to construct custom fields in the database that can be used with both regular and custom post types.
Returning to the example of a custom post type for cars, you could include custom fields for all the information you want to appear with every car, such as year, make, model, condition, and so on, which you can then display in a uniform way on the page when authors fill out the post with car descriptions.
Beaver Themer can link to custom fields in WordPress, Advanced Custom Fields, and Pods, allowing you to effortlessly add custom fields into your Beaver Builder layouts.
Here's a screenshot of an event from the Events custom post type. The Beaver Themer Singular layout is used on the single event pages. Various custom fields may be found in the date, time, and the complete Special Notes sidebar, ensuring that all event pages have the same information in a consistent location.
The Pods plugin built the CPT and custom fields in this example, and the custom field connections were made available via the Pods interaction with Beaver Builder.
Normally, you won't deal directly with the database unless you're troubleshooting, but WordPress specialists should be able to undertake a few fundamental maintenance chores. For example, while manually installing WordPress, you should understand the roles of phpMyAdmin and the database:
To enhance site speed, you need also know how to execute basic database maintenance, or at the very least, how the database impacts performance so you can utilize a plugin to do this process.
Step 6: Get to Know WordPress's Hosting Options
Hosting is an important part of what happens behind the scenes to keep a website up and functioning. The following are some features of hosting that you should be aware of:
• What to look for in a hosting company and how web hosting works
• What are the many types of hosting services available?
• What are the most well-known businesses?
• What does WordPress hosting with a manager entail?
Knowing these fundamentals can help you choose the best hosting package for your site and handle server-related difficulties. It will also assist you in conversing more intelligently with your hosting company's technical support staff.
Step 7: Participate with the WordPress Community and Volunteer
One of the numerous features that distinguishes WordPress from other platforms is that it is open-source, which means that anybody may see the platform's code. As a consequence, a large number of WordPress professionals and fans have the opportunity to actively contribute to the platform's development.
The next stage in becoming an expert is to contribute to the platform's improvement and expansion. If you have a lot of technical expertise and experience, you might be able to help with WordPress core development.
To be a WordPress expert, however, you don't need to be a developer, as we previously stated. Once you've learned the fundamentals, you may help by contributing your thoughts and ideas in a variety of ways.
Making WordPress Core is most likely the best place to begin. You may leave comments on posts, report issues, and even work on support cases there:
If this isn't your strong suit, there are lots of alternative solutions available. Additionally, you can:
• Become a member of the Theme Review Team.
• Volunteer to be a member of the Plugin Review Team.
• Create documentation for WordPress.
• WordPress should be translated into languages other than English.
• Assist with the creation of the WordPress user interface.
• Maintain WordPress' accessibility.
• Make lesson plans for WordPress training.
As you can see, there are several methods to participate. Being a part of the platform's continuing improvement not only keeps you informed about planned changes, but it also contributes back to the WordPress community and keeps the platform alive.
Sharing your expertise with less experienced users is another duty that comes with being a WordPress expert. The Support Forums are flooded with users seeking assistance with specific concerns, and they rely on generous specialists to respond. Tags: hours, projects, speed optimization, developers, quality, view, service, service or projects, wordpress experts project
Creating blog entries, video lessons, or even a podcast on WordPress-related topics might also aid new users. Consider how much information you might gain from volunteer-written WordPress blogs and tutorials.
To be clear, you don't need to start your own blog or start a YouTube channel to share your expertise. You may always join a larger WordPress site as a contributor or even make guest pieces.
If writing and video editing aren't your forte, consider submitting an application to speak at a WordCamp or WordPress meeting. If you know where to look, you'll find lots of possibilities to put your skills to good use and share your knowledge.
Conclusion
To keep things working well on your site, all you really need is a basic grasp of how WordPress works. However, you'll need to expand your expertise and become a WordPress expert if you want to incorporate more sophisticated features and lessen your need on outside aid. When you need to fix an issue or incorporate some sophisticated features on your site, the effort you spend learning will rapidly be repaid in time and stress saved.
We looked at seven actions you may take to become a full WordPress specialist in this post:
1. Evaluate your present knowledge and make a list of any gaps.
2. Make sure you understand how WordPress' major components interact.
3. Become a master of the Customizer and other WordPress options.
4. Become familiar with WordPress's technological foundations.
5. Get to know your database and how to keep it up to date.
6. Learn about the various WordPress hosting solutions.
7. Participate in the WordPress community and give back to it.
Resources for Learning
If you don't have any prior coding knowledge, a free site like Codecademy can help you learn the basics of coding:
Its entry-level development courses should provide you with sufficient knowledge to do fundamental tasks. Reading blog postings may also help you learn, albeit it does need some trial and error.
The WordPress Codex is also a great place to start learning the basics and work your way up to full WordPress honors if you want to go that far.
You may self-teach by reading blog articles and watching video lessons, or you can enroll in an online WordPress course. See our recommendations to WordPress online training courses and WordPress books if you're ready to invest a little money in your future success.
Have any questions on how to become a WordPress pro? Please post your questions in the comments area below!
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