I still did not finish my FCC front-end certificate but I am already attracted to WordPress and React Native. However, in short term I am looking for a ROI. I need to monetize my skills as my financial situation is not great.
The issue is that after reading “Developer Hiring Trends in 2017” in Stack Overflow I got quite discouraged. It says that there is a high number of WordPress developers comparing to the job offers.
Meantime, I think that WP will help me practice my front-end skills and also learn PHP. Besides, I will be able to work as a freelance in the local market and why not open my own shop. Besides, I found a few sites that pay well elite WP developers.
So what do you think is WP worth investing in, is it just a necessary step?
I’ve been working on Wordpress customization over last 3 years. I think once you learn the front end and understand a bit of PHP, you’ll find it easier for you to understand the whole workflow of WordPress. So initially its fine to go with the WP track. But in long term perspective, it will better if you choose few track which will help you to work on a full ecosystem (Both Desktop/Mobile or Online/Offline). I made this mistake and suffering now. So don’t do the same mistake. I was solely dependent on WP track that I don’t invest on myself.
Based on my experience from watching others Developer in my community and network, I found two types of people doing better. Like solid understanding in a track or People who have skill in developing both Mobile and Desktop/Web Technology more specifically who know Java and Objective C… So i think it would better if you consider something on large scale. And JavaScript is core skill here…
I’m now fully focusing on Full-Stack JavaScript Track. And then will learn Java & Rupy/Python later once I gained a solid foundation on JavaScript Track.
From my personal point of view and my readings, it is always better to be highly skilled at one thing or two than be average in many. The world needs people who are deeply specialized not generalist. This is what you called
solid understanding in a track
I think anyone can have a great and rewarding career in WordPress if he/ she is able to be a member of WordPress core team. As he/ she will have a thorough understanding of WordPress and his/ her skills will be highly sought after.
As a conclusion, if I will go for WordPress, I will join its open source community and if I am skilled enough I will join the core team.
I was working on wordpress many years ago.and earned some money Today you can still earn money with it. 48% of technorati’s Top 100 blogs are managed with WordPress. and 74.6 million sites depend on WordPress.for more information . that means you can still earn money wtih this
Thanks for the link. Even though it dates from February 7, 2014 , WordPress is still becoming more popular which is better and WP core team and its community are doing a lot of progress, like the integration of WP REST API to WP core and more.
In short, WordPress is evolving and opening the way to many new implementations and functionalities to developers and users alike.
Short-term means preferably 3 years no more (to be a decent WP developer, not in WP core team). I know interesting people in the IT field but I don’t go out or talk to them much.
Bear in mind WordPress is very popular because it’s very easy to bang out basic websites using it. What this means in practice is that there are a vast number of people who can do that and are doing that. This doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to make money (people pay for a website/web app, they don’t particularly care about the technology used, and WordPress is just a tool), just that if you are setting yourself up primarily as a “WordPress Developer” now (as opposed to say 7-10 years ago), then you’ll have an issue with an overcrowded market, which drives the price you can charge for your services down to rock-bottom.
Besides the excellent answers by people above, let me make a distinction regarding WP developers.
The first kind, are those developers that makes their own custom theme, custom plugins, and might even sell these themes and plugins to other developers. That could become a lucrative income stream. For example: Elegant themes have 430,000+ customers, selling themes at either $89/yr or $249/lifetime for access to all their 80+ themes. Do the math.
The second kind are the WP end-user developers. They setup WP, customize it, (maybe even make their own theme), and sell their service to small business owners/companies. Once the site is built, they hand over the keys (Id/passwords) to the company and they go find another client. They may charge hourly rate, or a fixed rate per project.
But there’s no denying that the field is crowded, and you’ll be competing against people living in different countries where standard/cost of living varies. So a person in country A may need to charge $1K for it to be worth it, while a person in country B may just need to charge $200 for it to be worth it. If you’re living in country A, it will be hard to compete against people living in country B… unless, you develop a local reputation and target local businesses in your community (as opposed to competing in Fiverr). These local businesses in your community, the people living in country B won’t have access too… and vice versa.
Now, about working in a startup, or a company providing enterprise solution… will knowing WP be a good career path? Most probably Not.
If you’re looking at what you can accomplish in 3 years or less, I would recommend focusing on the FCC track and joining the January 2018 fCC Cohort. Full-stack JS opens up a lot of doors in 2018. I wouldn’t worry about PHP, Java, Ruby, or anything for native mobile until you’re working full-time as a dev.
I know that JS is becoming more popular and used everywhere, can you be more explicit and explain what I can, cannot do with JS in 3 years.
Does full-stack JS open the door to freelance, startup, large company career…?
Knowing that I live in Tunisia and I am only interested in working remotely, no relocation.
Besides, I read that it is not easy to work as a full-time developer remotely if you are not a senior developer and you did not work with that company before.
WordPress is a Great platform for everyone. Specially the bloggers around the world love it, and it is also the best platform for small business websites, like I too have my small business website in WordPress name D5websoft.
So, IN WordPress you can discover plenty of websites and thousands of plugins. We can make the The word Press website SEO friendly. It’s a best Content Management System, and can be used for the Simple CMS.
Concerning earning, yes no doubt you can earn easily, so don’t worry, Enjoy WordPress.
Your story and perspective pretty much match my own. Like yourself, I started the front-end path with FCC, but I am only half-way through the curriculum. I could be much further, but I just had to many sources to learn from. Books, You Tube, Udemy, Open Source, Codepen.io, Blogs, etc, etc. I still want to complete my front-end certificate here, but there are too many good sources of learning out there to be confined to just one source. I have my mind set on becoming a WordPress developer because I think the ratio of WP sites compared to what else is out there says a lot on your chances of finding work once you become competent as a WP developer. Plus, I keep seeing on employment websites, like indeed.com, opportunities for people that possess React and WordPress skills. React, seems to be gaining favor by the month, so I think you have made a good choice to try and learn it. I’m still trying to get my Javascript skills to the intermediate stage learning ES5, before I try ES6, and then try React. It might be a while yet.
Even non-tech people could build a website with WordPress…it is cheap and more importantly you do not have to wait months before the website could be launched.
I am speaking about developing themes and plugins, these skills need HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP. I am not speaking about being a WordPress user. There is a difference between WP user and WP developer.
In my local market there seems to be much more demand for WP and Drupal compared to say, Rails, and lots of businesses who might need their website supported, customized, optimized, fixed, protected from hackers, etc. If I was going to do WP I would try to service this local market myself by building relationships and providing customer service, which means lots of hustle. I feel the theme and plugin market is really crowded unless your local market needs a plugin that isn’t already available.
