I Accidentally Got A Job As A WordPress Dev. Help?

Career Advice
#1

Context
Long story short, my hobby is content writing, along side with learning html and css for a few months now . I’m a complete novice to be honest. Technically, i was taking a gap year after High School and was looking for internships or jobs where were generally related to content writers etc. Got one in Dec, finished in end of Jan.

The current one, i managed to get was actually described as me writing the content for their website, i had assumed they’ll have me only write the blog’s etc. But today my boss just told me i’ll be handling the WordPress thingy. Not going to lie, but I’ve heard what WordPress is but never used it. Their current site is developed using WordPress, now they only need a person to manage that.and improve it further.

Actual Question
Anyways, I’m currently starting off learning it and WordPress actually makes me question why i stressed about html and css, i love back end more, so i wanted to ask if i dropped focusing on the front end, but left it on WordPress due to its theme thing. and focus on java script etc basically back end. Is that a way forward? or should i focus on other front end stuff and then later shift my interest to back end. I’m still a novice, other then html,css, and a single css framework i’ve not done alot in front end.

The job info is rather irrelevant to my question but i wanted to give you the context, and hope that, i accidentally got a technical position without me knowing. So ignorance is bliss, in my case. My boss mentioned he had seen my ugly looking html and css pages and thought i’ll make the cut, course they’re paying me below average but it doesn’t matter, i’ll get a good enough experience letter out of this.

#2

Focusing on javascript would mean a front-end focus, since WordPress is written in PHP (godawful PHP at that, but that’s another story). There are certainly separate niches for theme developers (front-end) and plugin developers (back-end), but obviously a broader skill set that includes both is more marketable. I’m an “optimize for fun” kind of guy and would suggest focusing on whichever end gives you the most satisfaction, though for WordPress jobs, you’re going to be expected to know at least a little bit of both.

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#3

Alright, didn’t know WordPress was PHP related, does that imply moving forward i’ll have to learn PHP for back end purposes?. I don’t mind doing that, because in the end its a tool to get stuff done.

I’ll be honest, there’s no tech guy in the business i’m working at right now. So, they don’t understand what a PHP or front end mean, i doubt they’ll understand that. But that’s not the concern, you’ve cleared my confusion to a certain bit.

So for starter’s i’ll go learn how WordPress works and go from there right?.

#4

My answer would be yes. If you are doing job as a wp dev, you should know first what is wordpress and how to use it. It’s the currently most popular Content Management System , or CMS and it’s great for creating sites where you want to give your client freedom to add/change content on the page(Blogs, small shops, etc.)
On the back side its PHP/MySQL , so if you would like to develop structure that works behind scenes, you should give it a try, although there are many options to choose from.

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#5

If you want to work with WP on the backend then yes, you’ll need to learn some PHP. Personally, I find PHP not at all pleasant to work with, to put it mildly, and I like WP’s ancient PHP and awful DB schema even less. But in the end it’s just a tool, it’s not like we’re doing roofing or scraping up roadkill or anything.

Your first task in doing backend WP programming would be of course to learn PHP. From there, there’s scads and loads and oodles of WordPress tutorials out there for every case you can think of, so your biggest problem will be deciding from the wealth of choices.

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#6

Thank you, for your opinion. I’ll put my mind into learning these now.

1 Like
#7

alright, seem’s like i’m on a somewhat right path. Appreciate the information!.
Now i can stop feeling overwhelmed and get onto stuff that matters. Thank you very much.

#8

Don’t be overwhelmed that you will need to be writing code that does difficult stuff.

In the beginning wordpress was for bloggers who could not code much. They have succeeded in that. All the blogging related stuff is done greatly on WP.

Good news: It is very, very beginner friendly. I was a wordpress user for a 6 months. And I did not have to write code. That is how simple it is.

Don’t worry that you will need to write code that does complex thing. There is website builders and plugins for that.

My advice: learn what is wordpress, what is its infrastructure. Learn to do all the basic stuff on wordpress: how to create, edit, delete a page/post, how to upload/delete plugin, theme. And so on.

If you haven’t used wordpress much yet, tell you boss to give you a week of time. For that time you will be up and running.

BUT if you really would like to become a coder, I would suggest you on learning to code. Wordpress stuff will just teach you wordpress. You won’t be coding much. Really. For every task there is plugins and themes with website builders like wp bakery, divi …

For every new task, you will be using just those stuff. I regret i had not quit WP early enough. My stack is js, vue, php, laravel. Now that I know coding it is easier for me to maintain site I’ve built for my clients. But I rarely have to go under the hood and change some stuff. If would ever like to come back to WP(it is possible as it is great cms for blogging), I will come for headless wp and wp cli.

Learn to take backups. It is very important. It is easy to mess stuff in coding.

If you need help, you can dm me :slight_smile:
If I have time, I will help. Good luck on your new job!

2 Likes
#9

Appreciate this comment, I’m one week deep into this. And your advise was great. I started off slow, my boss realised I don’t have experience with Wordpress but I’m putting in the work.
Things I learned would be, my boss only cares about the solution. Right now, I’ve not been given admin rights (they don’t understand what that is, made an excuse it’s a security threat to give admin right to me) so I hard coded the many css properties. There’s a problem and they need a solution, don’t care about how I got it done but I got it done. That’s the mentality I’m tackling this with. I’m vastly under qualified for this position so I’m grateful and trying to get experience under my belt. The most overwhelming thing is, that google is my senior. I have no one to call, other then a remote developer who made the site initially. (Who doesn’t pick the call up most of the time). But yea, hard coding css is the way :triumph:. If it looks pretty and functional the boss is happy.

#10

hmmm…

op are you actually writing code, or using form fields to create pages with content?

it sounds like you’re using the form based editors to create content with bits and pieces of custom html/css tweaks- which is great for digital marketers, but not really related to backend engineering.

#11

Well, i never said im working as a backend engineering. Only said “I got wordpress dev job” because thats what they are calling it. well, 1 week in i realize, it’s actually mostly like you said. “Tweaking html and css to get stuff done”. Nothing i can do that i’ve signed the contract. Learning experience neither the less for me. Bless you for pointing that out. The business doesn’t understand naming for positions. Neither do i. soo yea.
I’m happy atleast, i get to work on someones website atleast, gotta begin somewhere.

#12

my apologies. i may not have fully understood your post.

cheers!

1 Like
#13

its bless, I’m still a noob technically, but gotta start somewhere. Plus i just graduated High School, so its a nice enough start. Better then being lazy.
Thank you for your question though, your question really made me realize how i would love to grow and not stay at one place. As For now,i’ll stick to this place.

#14