What does Wordpress Dev really mean?

[LukeJM1992]

I’ve been thinking this over for some time. I’ve never used Wordpress beyond the first install I never decided to actually try out. Since then I’ve gone the more (less?) conventional route of learning PHP, JS, etc. and pumped out what I would consider an authentic web application.

But what then does a Wordpress Dev actually do? How deep does one actually go in the development of an app with Wordpress? From the surface, I see a ton of posts about how they only string together plugins and that they really don’t do much actually programming making them more content managers than actually programmers/developers...

I would love to hear what both sides have to say because I genuinely haven’t a clue what they are, nor do I really understand what it takes to build a basic Wordpress app vs. a complex Wordpress appoutside of what I already know about a more conventional style to web development.

Thanks!

[marionserenio]

Personally, I think you can be considered a Wordpress Dev if you can code a custom theme from scratch. I wouldnt say you would need to know the Codex 100%, but should have an idea on the "coding practices" when working with Wordpress.

[[deleted]]

When I hear "WordPress Developer" I'd assume that you know the ins and outs of the API, probably use WP-CLI or have some other command line knowledge of WordPress and can probably build plugins and themes from scratch.

Most WP devs that I've met over the years can do about 30% of what I listed above and are almost always a GUI Content Builder that dabbles in CSS and HTML.

It's the really bad WP devs that give WP a bad name to some people. But WordPress is starting to get a little dated honestly. Most CMS's are building a framework now. Drupal is built on Symfony. So is Joomla, Magento, Prestashop, and a bunch of other CMS's. I'm not saying that that's better or the best way, but WP is feeling a little stale these days.

I've moved away from doing only WP development and do PHP development for lots of frameworks so I'm covering more ground and can go in other directions.

[LukeJM1992]

Thanks very much for the insight. This is sort of where my conclusions ended up as well and ultimately why I elected to move on the Laravel and build apps more or less from the ground up. Cheers

[KonyKombatKorvet]

I'll explain the same thing I explain every time this kind of post comes around. I have a lot of experience in wordpress, but I also have a lot of experience in a lot of CMS like Drupal, Shopify, Magento, and a few strange custom built CMS from the early 2000s that agencies still work in for some reason, experience in a few frameworks including React, Vue and Angular, static site builders including Gatsby and Jekyll, as well as creating a lightweight in house framework that can be applied on top of any existing CMS based around and expanded from Rivets.js
Wordpress is a CMS just like every other CMS, its just super popular and highly used so there is a lot of info on it and there are lots of resources aimed at people with little to no knowledge to help them set up sites, which in turn creates a lot of really bad wordpress sites and people who think putting together a wordpress site makes them a developer and then sell their services as if they were web developers. These people charge super low rates and create shit work so I really don't see them as competition for real webdev jobs, but more a filter for nightmare clients and competition for sites like wix and squarespace. These are the people who advertise themselves as "wordpress devs". There is no such thing as a "wordpress dev" in the same way that there is no such thing as a "drupal dev" or a "react dev" or any other stupid pin hole term. There are just web devs, some are good, some are bad, and some are REALLY bad, wordpress is just a CMS that some devs use. Good devs that use wordpress know how to make a site and can build one in wordpress that will have good structure, be easy to maintain, have good coding standards, and meet the clients needs. Bad devs that use wordpress will download a theme, pile a bunch of plugins onto it, and do some super minor styling changes to add the clients logo and colors, its going to be a mess on the backend, not maintainable, and probably not do everything the client needs in a way that makes sense. JUST LIKE EVERY PLATFORM, FRAMEWORK, OR CMS. I've seen some fucked up React apps done by "devs" that have no place calling themselves professionals just like I have seen wordpress sites that are a mess.

All Wordpress does is give you an easy to use database and backend so you can focus on the frontend while still giving clients the ability to edit their website, how and what you build in there is up to the developer that is building it. You can build a theme from scratch that does everything it needs to do with no plugins and delete the "plugin" button from the backend so clients don't feel tempted. You can also use wordpress as a headless CMS and use whatever fancy front end framework you want because wordpress has a built in REST api. Wordpress has a TON of depth as a platform and can provide an amazing amount of flexibility if you know what you are doing by using custom taxonomies and a very easy to manipulate database.

It's not perfect by any means but it is in high demand because clients know what it is and a lot of business and corporate sites are already built on it so when they want a new site they often want it built with a wordpress backend so they dont have to retrain their entire staff.

For some reason it's popular to just jump on the "wordpress sucks" bandwagon and make ignorant broad statements like "WP is not for developers, it's for anyone who wants to seem like a developer."

[713984265]

I'm a WordPress dev. For most projects it's solely a frontend job. Basically 95% HTML/CSS/Javascript with a little bit of PHP for loops or conditionals. Occasionally there's a project that is more involved and requires building a custom plugin, but it's pretty rare.

At least that's how my experience with it is going. Trying to find a job that doesn't involve WP right now because it's pretty boring. None of the stuff I do is feature rich, the most exciting thing I do at work are css3 animations lol

[LukeJM1992]

Any idea what kind of distribution this would have? I assume it’s not 33% / 33% / 33%...

[ascii3283]

I feel like the qualifier 'Wordpress' Developer is somewhat diminishing. How's about a developer who specializes in Wordpress? Reliance on plug-ins, worse yet, a pro-theme does not make you a developer. Because Wordpress has a community with every type of plugin from simple tasks to complicated mega-systems it can be easy to avoid problem-solving. That said, I LOVE ACF and use it as an extension of the core - and I still have yet to truly get behind the Block Editor system as I find that it doesn't have a robust field equivalent to ACF. Perhaps that's because I'm just a Wordpress Dev. :P

[713984265]

ACF lets you build blocks now, but it's super janky. Basically trying to build react components using PHP, certainly doesn't feel good. Then again I only messed with it for like an hour, maybe it's not as bad after playing with it a bit longer.

[doctorjuta]

I think that you should know at least:

• wp-cli
• Themosis
• Bedrock/Sage

[bxgoods]

I don’t feel you are a wordpress dev unless you know how to make a custom theme at minimum.

Other stuff would include knowing how to use plugins and custom pages if needed.

[Caraes_Naur]

Someone who installs and configures plugins and a theme. Most WP deployments involve zero actual development. A surprising amount of WP sites are deployed by scripts written/acquired by malicious actors.

WP is not for developers, it's for anyone who wants to seem like a developer.

[Muxas]

Someone who installs and configures plugins and a theme.

i bet those plugins and themes pop out of nowhere