My boss recently asked me if I would be able to create a site in Wordpress for an upcoming local festival. I feel pretty comfortable with node/ javascript but I haven’t been exposed to wordpress before.
For those of you who have experience with this, what is needed to build a site from the ground up?? How much php would I need to know? Also if anyone can recommend some resources that would be great.
I told him I would take the weekend to play around with wordpress/ php before giving my answer as to whether or not I believe this is something I will be able to do…
I’ve had years of experience with wordpress. ~25% of all sites in internet use wp so there is huge amount of themes and plugins both free and paid You can use when creating site. Usually You don’t even need to code if You don’t need something custom/special from site. There are quirks and legacy stuff in wp but i think for experienced js developer it will be piece of cake…
Good luck!
@tdreid well I kind of regret this now but I ended up declining. I’ve been having a hard time focusing on just one thing to learn, I keep bouncing between fcc projects and have a hard time finishing things to the end so I was really worried about adding wordpress/ php and not being able to finish in time.
I was intimidated by the project (the website needed functionality where people could register and then pay) but in hindsight I think it would have been a good learning experience.
It sounds like you made a considered decision which is all anyone can do. It’s a balancing act: study vs practice. WordPress does have a number of plugins and themes that make even paid membership sites and shopping carts straight forward.
Offers can sound daunting, but I’ve found that somewhere between half and all the projects I’ll be offered in a year involve figuring out how to do at least one thing I’ve never done before. If you can take at least a few of these on when opportunities arise then you can add them to your capabilities.
I personally don’t like WordPress. WordPress is dangerous if you don’t know how to hack it, a lot of people download a lot of templates and plugins and then they don’t know why their site crashes or how to fix it when the plugin is no longer supported.
Don’t get me wrong , it’s a great CMS for managing a blog but I would build my site ground up before I used WordPress.
If it’s the PHP attributes that pulls your boss to WordPress, have him check out CakePHP. ( https://CakePHP.org )
This is going to be a site for a local festival so a simple html/CSS/JavaScript site sounds like it would suffice.
If you have to use WordPress , download it and play around with it. If this site is not going to be anything complex with high loads of traffic, then plugins and a nice theme will work fine.
(Please don’t misunderstand me, I have seen people do some pretty awesome stuff with WordPress) if you want to learn how to hack WordPress checkout https://codex.wordpress.org
Wordpress sites can be pretty easy to hack to. A friend, who runs an education centre, used WP for his website. He’s in the know for tech, but his site was hacked and replaced by usual crap (viagra adverts). Luckily, he kept backups and had it restored quickly.
