Learning to become a WordPress (PHP) programmer

  • iaw4

    (@iaw4)


    10 years, 9 months ago

    I am an experienced perl programmer. I have written lots of cgi scripts.

    I decided to jump ship. the future lies where 90% of web developers sit, and this seems to be php. and half of those sit with wordpress. I don’t want to have to recode in perl, when there is a CMS that has 90% of what I want—blogs, user management concepts, etc.

    from my perspective, wordpress is like part of php. I am learning the latter in order to program the former. wordpress should be like a library / IDE for php for me.

    Alas, I now need to learn both php and wordpress. are there any focused books for wordpress php programming? I don’t need books on html and css, or what a theme is. I already know this. I also don’t want books using ancient versions with deprecated programming features and styles. I want to buy a book that teaches reasonably current wordpress/php, more or less as an integrated IDE ecosystem.

    the google firehose gives me a lot of old cruft. I purchased “Modern Php”, but it seems to be geared towards improving existing php programmers, and not on teaching the right language for php (much less for wordpress).

    Recommendations? How do I become/learn to be a modern WordPress programmer?

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
  • Moderator bcworkz

    (@bcworkz)

    10 years, 9 months ago

    Welcome to the wonderful WordPress community!

    Books are very personal, what works for me you may detest. I’ve actually learned PHP & WordPress simply by doing custom projects and researching answers to help folks here 🙂 The challenge to find an answer to a hack question where you don’t already know the answer is actually a great way to learn the inner workings of WP. You learn a lot just from reading through source code. I too came from other languages, so reading code wasn’t that difficult even when I wasn’t fully up to speed on correct syntax.

    Besides PHP, knowing some javascript and jQuery is very helpful. With mobiles being ever more important, Java and objective-C are going to start figuring into the picture as well. Still, you’re nowhere if you can’t get your server to do something, so PHP is where everything spins off of IMO.

    You probably already know of some perl books you consider good. See if there are PHP/WP versions from the same series. Otherwise nothing is better than being able to browse through an actual copy to determine if it’s the book for you. Good luck!

    Andrew Nevins

    (@anevins)

    WCLDN 2018 Contributor | Volunteer support

    10 years, 9 months ago

    I would recommend first getting a solid grasp of object-oriented PHP. It’s not necessary to build a WordPress website, but I have a feeling it’s what is expected from a “wordpress programmer”.

    leejosepho

    (@leejosepho)

    10 years, 9 months ago

    …simply by doing custom projects and researching answers to help folks here 🙂

    Definitely. I will never be a coder, but I learn enough to fix my own stuff by trying to help people find answers for theirs.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Learning to become a WordPress (PHP) programmer’ is closed to new replies.