The Best WordPress Tutorials for Beginners and Beyond

Bybomber bot

WordPress is far more than just a blogging platform – it‘s a flexible, open source content management system (CMS) that powers over 40% of the web. Whether you‘re a blogger, freelance web designer, or full-stack developer, learning WordPress is one of the most valuable skills you can add to your toolbelt.

Consider these statistics:

  • WordPress sites receive over 400 million visitors and 20 billion page views each month
  • The WordPress ecosystem is valued at over $10 billion and employs thousands of developers and support professionals worldwide
  • Over 500 sites are built each day using WordPress, and it commands a 64% share of the CMS market

WordPress Market Share

Source: Kinsta

Simply put, organizations and individuals across every industry rely on WordPress to build their online presence. No matter what kind of web professional you aspire to be, WordPress development is an in-demand and highly transferable skill worth investing in.

Fortunately, the WordPress community has created a wealth of tutorials and learning resources for developers of all skill levels. In this guide, we‘ll round up some of the best WordPress tutorials for:

  • Complete beginners looking to create their first WordPress site
  • Web designers wanting to learn theme development and customization
  • Intermediate/advanced developers seeking to extend WordPress with plugins and APIs

Whether your goal is to build your own portfolio site, launch a side project, or level up your career as a WordPress developer, these tutorials can help you get there. Let‘s dive in!

WordPress Tutorial Basics

Before you can start tinkering with themes and plugins, you need to learn how to install and run WordPress on a web server. If you‘ve never done this before, have no fear – WordPress is famous for its "5 minute install" process, and there are plenty of tutorials to walk you through it:

Once you have WordPress running on a local or remote server, you‘ll want to familiarize yourself with the WordPress admin dashboard. This is where you‘ll spend most of your time writing content, installing plugins, customizing your theme, and managing your site.

Here are a few comprehensive introductions to the WordPress dashboard and its features:

The best way to learn your way around WordPress is simply to create a sandbox site and start experimenting. Follow along with these tutorials to create pages and posts, install a new theme, customize your site‘s navigation menus, and more. Don‘t be afraid to break things! The more hands-on experience you gain, the more confident you‘ll become.

WordPress Theme Development Tutorials

One of the first things you‘ll want to learn after getting comfortable with WordPress basics is how to customize the look and layout of your site. While there are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available, learning to build your own custom theme is an essential skill for WordPress developers.

Theme development requires some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and basic PHP, but you don‘t need to be an expert to get started. Here are some of the best tutorials and learning resources for WordPress theme development:

While learning the fundamentals of WordPress theme development is important, many developers find it more efficient to start with a pre-built theme framework or parent theme. Some popular options include:

  • Genesis Framework – a popular parent theme framework from StudioPress known for its SEO-friendly code and extensive hooks and filters for customization
  • Themify Builder – a drag-and-drop theme framework for quickly building custom WordPress sites without code
  • Underscores – a bare-bones starter theme from Automattic designed to be easily customized with your own styles and template files

To dive deeper into WordPress theme development with these frameworks, check out the following tutorials and resources:

WordPress Plugin Development Tutorials

In addition to custom themes, WordPress‘s massive ecosystem of plugins is a big part of what makes it such a powerful and flexible CMS. Plugins allow you to add custom features and functionality to your WordPress site without modifying core files.

If you‘re comfortable with PHP, you can learn to write your own plugins to extend WordPress. Here are some of the best tutorials and resources for WordPress plugin development:

Some key WordPress plugin development concepts to learn include:

As you gain more experience with WordPress plugin development, you may want to explore starter boilerplates and frameworks to jumpstart your projects. Some popular options include:

Headless WordPress with Frontend Frameworks

As a full-stack developer, you may be interested in using WordPress as a "headless" CMS, with a decoupled frontend built in your JavaScript framework of choice. This can provide the authoring and content management benefits of WordPress with the flexibility and performance of a modern frontend stack.

Here are some tutorials and resources for using WordPress as a headless CMS with popular frontend frameworks:

To connect WordPress to a separate frontend app, you‘ll rely heavily on the WordPress REST API. This powerful API allows you to interact with your WordPress data from external clients and services. Here are some resources to get started:

WordPress Deployment and DevOps

As you build more complex WordPress sites and applications, you‘ll need to learn how to deploy your code to staging and production environments. Some key WordPress deployment and DevOps concepts to learn include:

  • Setting up staging/production environments and database migration
  • Using version control (Git) for WordPress development
  • Deploying WordPress with build tools and CI/CD pipelines
  • Configuring WordPress for high traffic and scalability
  • Securing WordPress sites and hardening against attacks

Here are some tutorials and resources to level up your WordPress deployment workflow:

WordPress Learning Roadmap

With so many WordPress tutorials and learning resources out there, it can be overwhelming to know where to start or what to learn next. As you progress on your WordPress development journey, here‘s a suggested roadmap to guide you:

  1. WordPress Basics

    • Installing WordPress locally and on a live server
    • Navigating the WordPress dashboard and admin screens
    • Publishing content with the Block Editor
    • Basic theme customization with Customizer and widgets

  2. Theme Development

    • HTML/CSS basics
    • WordPress template hierarchy and loop
    • Converting static HTML/CSS to a WordPress theme
    • Using a starter theme like Underscores for custom development
    • Developing themes using a framework like Genesis

  3. Plugin Development

    • Writing basic WordPress plugins
    • Using actions and filters to extend WordPress functionality
    • Creating custom post types and taxonomies
    • Developing plugin interfaces and admin pages
    • Integrating with third-party APIs and libraries

  4. Headless WordPress

    • Configuring and customizing the WordPress REST API
    • Developing frontend apps with WordPress as a headless CMS
    • Using frameworks like Next.js, Gatsby, or Angular with WordPress

  5. Professional WordPress Workflows

    • WordPress coding standards and best practices
    • Using Git for version control and deployment
    • Continuous Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) for WordPress
    • Collaborating with other developers and teams on WordPress projects
    • Contributing to WordPress Core and open source projects

Remember, this is just a suggested path – every developer‘s journey is different. The most important thing is to follow your curiosity, build lots of projects, and never stop learning and experimenting with new skills and techniques.

Tips for Learning WordPress Development

Learning WordPress development can be challenging, especially if you‘re new to web development in general. However, with the right approach and resources, anyone can become a skilled WordPress developer. Here are a few tips to make the most of your learning journey:

  1. Practice, practice, practice. The best way to learn WordPress development is by doing. Build small projects to apply each new concept you learn.

  2. Explore the WordPress Codex and Developer Resources. WordPress.org provides extensive documentation for nearly every aspect of WordPress development. Get comfortable referencing these resources as you code.

  3. Join a community. The WordPress community is known for being welcoming and helpful to new developers. Join forums like the WordPress StackExchange or find a local WordPress Meetup to connect with other developers.

  4. Contribute to open source. Once you‘ve built up some skills, consider giving back to the WordPress community by contributing to open source projects like WordPress Core or popular plugins. This is a great way to learn best practices from more experienced developers.

  5. Learn PHP deeply. While you can build WordPress sites without being a PHP expert, a solid understanding of the language will take you far. Consider working through a comprehensive PHP course or book to level up your skills.

  6. Stay curious. The WordPress ecosystem is constantly evolving with new tools and techniques. Follow WordPress blogs and podcasts, attend WordCamps, and always be on the lookout for new things to learn.

Conclusion: Start Building with WordPress

We‘ve covered a lot of ground in this mega-guide to the best WordPress tutorials and learning resources. Remember, the most important thing is to choose a starting point and dive in. Don‘t let the abundance of resources out there overwhelm you or hold you back.

If you‘re an absolute beginner, start with a basic installation and experiment with the admin dashboard until you feel comfortable. Build a simple theme with your own custom styles to get a feel for the template hierarchy. Publish a plugin that solves a small problem on your own site.

If you‘re a more experienced developer, challenge yourself to learn a new part of the WordPress ecosystem. Experiment with the Block Editor and learn to build your own custom blocks. Explore the REST API and use WordPress as a headless CMS for a project in your favorite frontend framework. Automate your deployment process and learn WordPress DevOps best practices.

The beauty of learning WordPress development is that it‘s an infinitely deep rabbit hole. Whether you want to specialize in frontend theme development, backend plugin engineering, or anything in between, you‘ll never run out of new skills to master and contribute to the web.

So what are you waiting for? Choose one of the tutorials from this guide and start building with WordPress today. Happy coding!

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