By now you have certainly heard of WordPress at least once in your life. But, do you know what it actually is and what it’s used for? If you do know what it is and what it’s used for, you could’ve wondered how hard it would be to learn how to use it. To be completely honest, there’s no simple answer to that question. It varies. It varies depending on how you want to approach things. Learning how to use it is easy, many would argue. On the other hand, going into details and really exploring the whole wide world of WordPress may turn out to be significantly harder than expected.
What Is WordPress?
The vast majority of people know about WordPress because of blogging. That was its earliest form, how the whole thing started. Naturally, it has grown significantly over the years and can now be seen all over the internet, powering many different websites. In its essence, WordPress is a CMS or content management system, which allows users of any skill level to publish their content swiftly or easily because virtually no technical or coding skills are needed.
Of course, if you want to get better at customizing and building websites using WordPress, you’ll have to dig a little deeper and work on some coding skills, but for most users, getting familiar with plugins and themes is more than enough, which is why this platform is especially useful to those who are just getting started and becoming more interested in the developing world.
It’s Easy… For Beginners
One of the greatest things about this platform is the fact that getting the basics down is fairly easy. In fact, you could probably grasp the fundamentals in about a week. That was also one of the reasons as to why it became so popular. You see, before this platform was introduced, the only way you could create a website was if you were a skilled HTML or CSS developer or a designer. That made it impossible for a regular Joe to just build a website.
Since WordPress is a CMS, as we’ve previously mentioned – you don’t ever start building from scratch. You actually start with a pre-built page and you go on customizing and adding your personal content from that point on. That’s what makes it so easy for beginners to use and learn how to get better at it. You start by simple point, click, drag and drop interface, you choose from pre-existing templates and if that’s all you need, good for you. You can become good at this in a matter of hours if we’re being honest. However, that would make you a knowledgeable user, not a developer. However, you could use it as your gateway to the developing world and many would even advise you to do so.
Now, we’ve established that learning how to operate a WordPress platform is fairly easy, but how hard and long do we have to work to become actual developers? Well, check this out, according to many, it will take you at least two years to become a full-fledged developer that can develop a bug-free, well-optimized website. How so? Well, let’s find out.
How Long Does It Take To Become A WordPress Developer?
It may seem weird at first, that something that takes a few hours to learn how to operate, can take up to two years to master in its entirety. But, look at it this way, we all know how to use a phone, but, do we know how to make one?
That’s because using something is different than actually making something. To become an entry-level or a junior WordPress developer will probably take about 6 months. And that’s six months of active work and coding, for at least 20 hours a week. You can call yourself a junior developer if you’re able to create a simple project, from scratch, but with an added thing or two. For instance, a sports league website with all the scores, upcoming matches, schedule and so on.
Now, to become an expert at it, as we’ve said, you’re looking at at least two years of constant work and coding. Now, an expert or a senior-developer, however you want to call them, will tackle some of the problems that the non-experienced developers can’t handle themselves. At this point, it’s no longer just about customization and personalization, it’s about the stuff underneath the surface – things like site optimization, migration and bug fixes. At that point, it’s about the things that require additional knowledge and complete understanding of the whole platform.
Why Does It Take So Long?
Well, to make the platform so accessible to regular users and to become comfortable building any kind of a website, you have to learn a lot more than how to simply add and drop the content to a page. You have to be familiar with a lot of different areas and topics of the IT world (and more than that). Just for fun, we’ll name a few.
- PHP
- WordPress PHP Codebase
- CSS
- HTML
- JavaScript
- WordPress’s plugins and themes
- FTP, SSH, CLI, Git and many more
- Webdesign, UI, UX
- Digital Marketing
And so much more than that…
Each and every time you make another website, you could encounter a ‘problem’ that you have to learn how to deal with. Not until you’ve dealt with the most of them will you become comfortable and able to call yourself a full-fledged developer. As you can probably guess, that will take a long time. So, the problem isn’t the complexity of the code or anything of sorts, it’s the fact that it is composed out of a wide variety of different things and that just requires time and effort.
In addition to that, another thing that could pose a problem when learning how to become a WordPress developer is the fact that a lot of skills you need in order to become one are not ‘book-learnable’, but rather come from experience.
With all this in mind, let’s revisit the question at hand – how hard is it to learn WordPress development? Let’s just say it’s semi-hard. It’s not like you’re going to have to drink gallons of coffee and code for 10 hours straight for 5 years to become an expert, but it certainly won’t be a walk in the park either. It’s going to take some time, but if you’re willing to put in work and you’re genuinely interested in it – it should be a much of a hassle.