WordPress can easily boast a bright and sustainable future, with more than 43 percent of all websites on the internet and consistent growth.

It’s worth noting that WordPress has an even higher market share of 66% when only looking at websites built on CMS solutions. With WordPress, you can add various functionalities such as e-commerce, multivendor marketplaces, ERP, website analytics, SEO, and more through plugins, themes, and core features.

The rapidly evolving WordPress ecosystem is attracting web developers and programmers to pursue amazing careers. However, possessing a remarkable set of skills is essential for success.

Here, in this article, we are going to show you those must-have skills to be a full-stack WordPress developer.

Why you should develop WordPress skills

Do you think that WordPress developers are underpaid? No, not at all. Give a read to these data to learn about the highly paid hourly rates for WordPress developers at CodementorX.

At CodementorX, the average and median WordPress developer hourly rate is $61 to $80 per hour globally.

More importantly, if you limit the search to just North America, the mean becomes $81 to $100 per hour (you can see an uptick in people charging $141+, which brings the average up):

You should be learning WordPress development because:

• More and more websites are adopting it as their CMS. This increased number of WordPress websites will require more WordPress developers.
• Now, desktop applications are also becoming online-based. This means more people will try to solve their problems using online tools, which are surging in popularity nowadays. And WordPress is a great tool to create a full-fledged website or application into an online application.
• WordPress is open source. So, you do not have to buy it to see its code structure.
• The WordPress community is enormous. You will never feel stranded if you need any assistance while writing codes to develop a theme or plugin

Must-have WordPress developer skills

If you are a singer, dancer, painter, or photographer, you must know the basics. Otherwise, you can not take your work to the next level, which is called “art.” The same thing goes for WordPress too! In WordPress’s atmosphere, you can develop either themes or plugins.

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Whether you are a theme or plugin developer you should have the following series of skills.

1. Technical competence

With a view to becoming a WordPress developer, you should have solid know-how in some particular languages and tools. Otherwise, you’ll not be a skilled WordPress developer.

Here are those:

Text editor

If you want to learn how to code, you must first select a text editor that meets your requirements. But for beginner-level learners, it is recommended to use Notepad ++ which is very simple to use.

In order to speed up your coding skills, you can use an extension called “zen-coding” for Notepad++, which will help you write repetitive codes with a single click!

After becoming an advanced code writer, you can use more advanced tools like VS Code editor, Sublime, Atom, Brackets.io, and so on. Choose an editor that fits your taste.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language)

If you are new to WordPress development, you must know how to play around with the elements of a webpage. HTML is not a programming language, but it displays the contents of a webpage.

If you want to be an HTML expert, it will take about 15–25 days and 7 hours per day to excel. You can learn HTML either from the Khan Academy from the W3School on YouTube, or anywhere on the internet.

Knowing HTML is mandatory for WordPress front-end developers.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Next up is CSS, which is inevitable for becoming a WordPress developer. The CSS properties are aimed at controlling the way an element looks on a webpage. Knowing CSS is mandatory for WordPress frontend developers, and it will take up to 25 days to learn it.

You can also learn CSS from the same resources that I mentioned in the HTML section.

Basic Photoshop

If you are designing a WordPress theme or any webpage, you may need to convert PSD files to HTML. To do so, you will have to know the use of the Move tool in Photoshop. You will need to know how to enable the autoselect and layer option, select a layer, and trim a photo.

To learn how to convert PSD to HTML, you can watch YouTube tutorials.

JavaScript

If you want to be a front-end developer and make your WordPress products interactive, you must know JavaScript. It’s a programming language for the web that is often called a scripting language. Because the browser renders it, it is also known as the client-side language.

In WordPress development, you not only have to know this programming language but will also have to know one or two JavaScript libraries like Angolia Places, Anime.JS, Chart.JS, Bideo.JS, CHOREOGRAPHER-JS, Cleave.JS, React, and frameworks like Angular, VUE.JS, Next.JS, etc.

Typically, it takes up to 2 or 3 months for a person who doesn’t know a programming language but wants to learn it. You may also have to take 3 or 4 months to get accustomed to using libraries and frameworks.

Bootstrap

Who likes to code everything from scratch? If you code from scratch every time, you won’t be able to complete your project in time. To meet the deadline, you should be learning Bootstrap, a framework that includes common HTML components like Navigation Bar, Carousel, Breadcrumbs, Forms, Progress Bar, Modals, Accordions and so many more.

All of the components are actually built-in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This means that you just need to copy and paste the code from their documentation and do a little customization as per your client’s needs!

This is a very important framework for WordPress front-end developers. An alternative to Bootstrap is w3.css.

PHP (Hyper Text Preprocessor)

This is a server-side programming language. You must be familiar with this language because it powers WordPress’s backend. If you are developing a website outside of WordPress, you can also develop it using programming languages like Python, Rubi, Pearl, etc.

You will need to spend approximately 3 months learning PHP if you are completely new to the programming language. To carry out your projects quickly, it’s recommended that you learn a framework like Laravel so that you can complete as many projects as you can and earn a handsome salary.

Please note that you may need to set up a local server to learn PHP or the backend of WordPress. If you are using a Mac, then you can try out MAMP. For Windows, you can give it a shot at XAMPP. You can also try Flywheel and AMPPS as your local servers.

MySQL (Database)

If you want to be an expert in WordPress, then you have to know a bit about MySQL. You don’t have to be an expert in this field. This is for people who want to work on the backend areas of a website.

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Usage of Github & BitBucket

If you want to be a WordPress developer, you must have a growth-hacking mindset. meaning that you will always have to think outside the box. For example, you should not always code from scratch. You can save your projects in the form of snippets online and later use them to boost your speed on another project.

You should learn how to use the online services GitHub and Bitbucket so that you don’t lose your work progress and can resume the last changes that you made to your codes.

2. Business skills

All of your hard work will go in vain unless you develop a product that has no demand in the market. For instance, you need to conduct a proper market analysis to know whether your product is a market fit or not. Getting to know about it is also a vital part of WordPress developer skills.

Suppose, if you want to sell drinking water where everyone has plenty of it, you cannot sell it there. You must sell drinking water to customers where they cannot avail themselves of it.

This is where business acumen and a growth-hacking mindset come into play. You must research the market with questions like, “What if I solve your problem with my tool?”

Then, after developing and beginning to solve your customers’ problems, you must ask them, “What if they do if you stop developing your tool further?” to check product-market fit.

Wrapping up

Keep learning new things about WordPress. Free and paid tutorials are available online. Remember, knowledge is power, and staying up-to-date will benefit your website.

Always strive for progress and never settle for comfort. In the dynamic world of WordPress, staying on top of the latest trends is key. Embrace a growth mindset and continuously seek out new knowledge to elevate your skills and stay ahead of the game.

Finally, you have to hone your WordPress developer skills on a regular basis and, above all, communicate with the WordPress community as much as you can so that you can cherish your love for WordPress in your soul.