If you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS, then this is perfect for you. We’ll also be using PHP through the series, you won’t need prior experience, however, it would be a bonus.
Why WordPress?
WordPress has a relatively low barrier to entry for non-programmers, has a constantly growing and thriving community, and runs on technologies supported by nearly all web hosts. More generally, it’s a Content Management System (CMS) built with PHP, relying on a MySQL database for data persistence, such as on-site content, user account details, and so forth. It’s extremely popular, too, at the time of writing, WordPress holds over 60% of the CMS market share, and powers some 17% of the top 100 million websites.
For Developers
The hard work is taken care of. WordPress is built on PHP functions, and they’ve molded it into easy-to-use WordPress Template Tags and Functions, so while you will write functions from time to time, it won’t be too regular unless you’re doing something requiring considerable customization.
Due to popularity, it’s always under development to fix bugs, work with new versions of PHP, or generally enhance the platform. It also means that if you’ve run into a problem, odds are that someone did before you, so it’s very easy to find solutions.
As mentioned earlier, there’s a thriving community, WordCamps are constantly under way all over the world, and even larger cities are having monthly meetups, checkout Meetup.com for one in your area.
And with all of this comes an economy. As a WordPress developer you can sell themes as stock on a marketplace, do client work, or work for a company, or even a combination of. There’s also a market for premium plugins, because people often need to extend the functionality of their theme.
For End Users
The barrier to entry for content producers, such as bloggers or photographers, is also low, as the back end is very easy to use, making it an extremely popular choice for these users. The what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor isn’t too far removed from feel and function from, say, Microsoft Word, which most people have probably used. Content can be dragged and dropped in, so even the behaviors required to use it are similar.
It’s also cheap. WordPress itself is free, and the vast majority of web hosts support it, offer one-click WordPress installs, and often do so for $5 a month or less. Themes range from free to as much as you’re prepared to pay, but it’ll be around $40-$50 USD for a good one, but many thousands of dollars for something highly customized.
WordPress also has an incredible number of plugins, so it’s very easy for those with no technical knowledge to extend their sites function, without the need to code anything.
You Will Learn
The foundations of WordPress development, such that you could follow along with your own HTML/CSS template and still complete. The series is written to be compatible with WordPress 3.5 but will constantly be updated, as it’s important to stay up to date with changes per iteration, as old functions are removed as new functions are introduced.
More specifically, we’ll be covering the following;
- Hosting WordPress online
- Running WordPress Locally
- Theme Structure, to introduce some common layouts
- Basic Templating with PHP, to introduce some basic concepts
- WordPress’ file structure
- WordPress Template Tags and Functions
- WordPress Generated CSS
- The Loop
- Template Hierarchy
- Single pages, Searching, Sidebars, et al.
- Comments
- Menus, and more
What You Need to Participate
You’ll require a text editor of some kind, an extremely popular text editor that works across Mac, Windows, and Linux, is Sublime Text 2. It’s free if you can handle the message every 50 saves to let you know you can buy it, but for its power, and only at $70, it’s worth a look.
A free alternative for PC users is Notepad++. It has loads of development tools built in and is place for beginners to start.
For Mac users, check out TextWrangler. It’s a mini-version of BBEdit, but it’s still a robust tool for development that will get the job done for any WordPress work you need to do.
You also need to have an installation of WordPress to develop on, online or running locally, which we’ll be covering in the next part of the series.
What The Series Will Not Cover
What We’re Building
A simple blog built with FlatStrap, a HTML & CSS template built off Twitter’s extremely popular Bootstrap.
Browser Compatibility
I always test my themes on multiple browsers. I have Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari, and Opera on my computer at all times and view my themes in all browsers for testing purposes. But there are some browsers that I use every day.
Chrome is my browser of choice for minute-by-minute testing of results and general web browsing. It has a number of extensions that I use for testing, but the primary reason I use it is the ability to right-click and “Inspect Element”. A developer view pops up and gives a host of real-time info about the page. And you can edit the CSS/HTML in the developer window and see changes live on the page.
Firefox is my second choice, and it comes in as a close second. I use Firefox every day as well for the huge selection of add-ons that are incredibly powerful testing and debugging tools. Specifically, I HIGHLY recommend Firebug – a debugging add-on that is second to none for figuring out why a page isn’t do what is expected. If something is behaving, Firebug comes to the rescue. Many software development forums require that you attempt to debug with Firebug before asking questions…
Table of Contents
This is the table of contents so far, and it will be updated as more and more posts in the series are published.
- Part 1: Setting up Self Hosted WordPress
- Part 2: Grasping Theme Anatomy
- Part 3: Templating with PHP
- Part 4: Beginning Our First WordPress
- Part 5: Preparing The Loop with Test Content
- Part 6: Learning The WordPress Loop
- Part 7: Getting Familiar with the Template Hierarchy and Building Pages
- Part 8: Creating an Easy, All-in-One Archive Page for Your Theme
- Part 9: Building Comments into your Template
- Part 9: Build a Dynamic, Customizable Menu
- Part 10: Widgetized Sidebars
- Part 11: Implementing Search
- Part 12: Your 404 Page
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