Most in the WordPress community are self-taught. They played around with their first WordPress website until they broke something, and worked on it until it was fixed.
Doing this over and over again, they became extremely proficient. And it is probably the best way to learn. However, you can kickstart your learning, or even augment it, with some online courses.
I’m going to show you some of the courses I took that helped me level up my WordPress development skills, as well as some I plan to take in the near future.
I’ve divided them by the each language/skill, and listed them all here. You can also skip below and read the explanation of each course and language/skill.
(P.S., I recommend you go in the order listed)
- HTML & CSS
- jQuery
- PHP
- Advanced WordPress Courses
HTML And CSS
For anyone new to WordPress development, this is a must know.
Almost every developer got their start with HTML and CSS. It’s what is used to display both the structure and style of web pages in your browser. In fact, entire websites can be built using HTML and CSS alone.
Luckily, they are relatively easy to learn. There are two courses I recommend you take.
The first is Codecademy’s HTML & CSS course. It is a crash course in how both languages work and lets you do some quick practice problems.
Next, take Udacity’s Intro to HTML and CSS. This course dives more in depth on the in’s and out’s of HTML and CSS. Plus, the final project will give you a PDF mockup and have you create your own web page from it.
jQuery
This is one of my favorites. It’s a foundation to modern websites, and yet most people new to building websites don’t know it exists, or at the very least, aren’t sure what it does.
jQuery is responsible for moving elements of your webpage after the webpage has completed loading. This includes drop-down menus, toggles, and even drag-and-drop effects.
At first glance, it may seem complex, but it is much easier to learn than it seems.
Now, before you can really dive into jQuery, you need to understand the basics of JavaScript (jQuery is just a JavaScript library).
So, there are two courses you can take at Udacity. First is the JavaScript Basics course.
Once you complete that, you can move on to Intro to jQuery.
PHP
Now, let’s get into the language that builds the backbone of WordPress.
HTML, CSS, and jQuery are all used to code the front end of a website (basically, what you see).
PHP, on the other hand, handles more of the back-end functions. If you want to build themes and plugins that communicate with WordPress, then you’ll need to know PHP.
One problem I ran into when learning PHP was that I couldn’t find a great PHP course.
So instead, I took a course on the basics of computer programming; Udacity’s Intro to Computer Science. Although this course was taught using Python, it taught me a lot of what I needed to know to program.
I then took those skills and took Codecademy’s PHP course. I already had the basics of computer programming, and Codecademy helped me translate these skills into PHP’s syntax.
Advanced WordPress Development Topics
Knowing HTML, CSS, jQuery, and PHP will give you a great foundation. But it’s also important to learn how to use these within WordPress.
That’s why I like the courses at WP Sessions.
The top WordPress developers come together and teach specific topics, such as how to build plugins, how to make a WordPress site secure, and how to develop a theme using underscores.
What Courses Do You Recommend?
I know there are tons of courses out there on WordPress and web development. But I’ve picked the ones that I found the most helpful.
Perhaps you have some you’d recommend. I’m always looking to take new courses. And I’m sure other readers would appreciate it.
Please list them in the comments below.
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