Tag: WordPress (Page 1 of 205)

TL;DR: The rest of this stuff is just a short list of other things I would tell my previous self (or maybe someone else just entering the industry) if I were just getting started.

At the beginning of the month, I started writing a few articles rooted in the idea of if I knew then what I knew now as a software developer working in WordPress. And in the first post, I wrote:

So in the next set of posts, I’m going to talk about a few different things that I’d tell my past-self – or The New Class of WordPress Developers – on what to expect or how to process things when working in this industry.

WordPress Then, WordPress Now

If you’ve not read any of the other posts, you can find them all here:

1. WordPress Then, WordPress Now
2. Where to Start With WordPress Development?
3. You Should Write About Your Work
4. Play By The Rules and Be Careful What You Write
5. Know Your Strength, Hire Your Weakness

And this will be the last post I write in this series (and if you’ve been subscribing to the podcast, then it’s going to be the last episode for this ‘season’ of episodes).

TL;DR: Though it’s obviously possible to be a full-stack WordPress developer (that is, someone who is capable of working on each level of the stack with complete competency), it’s more common to find people who are stronger in one area than in others.

And if you’re working on a project and know someone who’s stronger in an area than you, it’s often worth partnering with them to complete whatever it is on which you’re working.

But weaknesses aren’t always in the form of knowing a language or an aspect of the application.

TL;DR: If you’re going to write about WordPress, it’s important to determine about which you primarily want to write. Is going to be less subjective material such as code or more opinionated material such as op-eds?

Further, know that whatever it is you share online is up for grabs for conversation, and sometimes it can go in unexpected directions. Be prepared for this to happen regardless of your intent.

To some degree, you get to pick the game you want to play. But when you do that, know the rules, play by them, and be careful what you write.

In the last post, I stated the following:

Since I don’t think someone should go into writing about their experiences blindly (especially when it comes to the negative that may come from it), it seems only fair to also share what that looks like.

You Should Write About Your Work

And the reason I think this is deserving of its own post, perhaps now more than ever, is because whenever you publish anything regardless of its a blog post, video, podcast, there are obviously going to be people who are going to read and respond (even if they don’t do it directly to you).

After all, what’s the purpose of publishing things publicly if you don’t want people to hear them?

Years ago, I learned this the hard way. And I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t talk about the less flattering side of when you write about your work.

TL;DR: Despite the fact there are more resources that ever for learning how to accomplish what it is you want to accomplish within WordPress, it’s less common to find someone who is facing the same problem under the same constraints with the same voice you have.

Write about your work. Include the problems you’re solving, and the thought process that’s going into their solutions. Though you may be describing a common problem, you’ll be describing them from your perspective.

TL;DR: WordPress has both an active economy and a large community. Often times, you’ll hear the phrase “WordPress community” to encompass both facets. A case can be made as to how this has given WordPress such a massive level of success over the past decade and a half.

But finding your niche can be tough and you shouldn’t expect it to happen quickly. So this raises the following question: Where to start with WordPress Development?

When I first started working in WordPress, it wasn’t in an official capacity. As I mentioned in the previous post, it was all about making minor tweaks to a site on which I was blogging while I was in college.

Even after that, despite having doing some course work in PHP, MySQL, and the usual front-end technologies at the time, this was not where I was headed in my career. Instead, I focused more on .NET and doing a lot of server-side work (with a fair amount of front-end work) for a few years.

When I wasn’t on the clock, though, I was still using WordPress to blog about my experience in working in the field of software development. But as I began to get more into web application development and using tools such as Ruby on Rails, PHP, and MySQL, I also began to see how WordPress could be used to do a lot of the same things I was doing with these technologies.

Even still, it took years before I finally started to make enough money to move into the WordPress economy.

Looking back, and considering where WordPress is now, what advice would I give to myself if I were starting out now. What advice would I give to others who are starting out now?