Hi, I'm studying a software development degree, but months ago I got into the world of WP and I think I'd rather spend my time on that, but I'd like recommendations and advice from people with experience developing websites with WordPress since I have a lot of doubts about it.
For example, I see that many use up to 30 plugins or more on their pages, why so many? Which ones are worth paying for? Where to get clients? Is there a lot of demand for this job? What are YouTube channels or places where I can learn more about all these topics? Where can I find a lot of information about this whole world? I also see people who manage up to 100 clients, how do they keep all the pages updated? At some point don't you have so much maintenance to do that it takes up all your time for new projects? I want to get thoroughly informed about this before I can start selling my services, but I have doubts and that makes me stagnate and not continue.
It would be very helpful, thank you
First time on Reddit, first time on WordPress
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> I see that many use up to 30 plugins or more on their pages, why so many? Which ones are worth paying for?
Signs of lack of experience manageing wordpress and general lack of care. Plugins with good reputation. ACF, Bricks, Gravity Forms, WordFence, AIOWM, Updraft, etc…
> Where to get clients?
Your network, content marketing, cold outreach, referrals, take your pick
> Is there a lot of demand for this job?
A lot of websites are built with WP so that alone creates work. WordPress is popular with but not limited to SMBs.
> What are YouTube channels or places where I can learn more about all these topics? Where can I find a lot of information about this whole world?
Brad Schiff – Learn Web Code, has a channel and comprehensive course covering a lot you should know. Docs are also your best friend.
> I also see people who manage up to 100 clients, how do they keep all the pages updated?
At this point you’ll want to either have employees or have a CI/CD workflow that uses tools like WP-Cli, Git etc to manage things at scale and quickly.
Hope that helps
Thats a lot of questions, the anwser is no body knows all the answers, you have to pick here and there, and be analytical to see which response is true or truthy at least.
WordPress is a market in which each designer-developer move fast, majority of wordpress clients want good enough functionality and websites and fast, so the web devs and designers have to be that way.
So thats when a lot of designers -developers use plugins, page builders, etc. And yes you have to always aim for the less plugins in a website the better, plugins are dependencies and in web development dependencies are tech debt(stuff you have to update or maintain in the future or breaks funcitonality or design).
In general if you want to take wordpress at the best it can offer as a web developer, in the sense of development, design, functionality and maintainbility, you look for doing all your websites in core wordpress functionality: like filter, hooks, metaboxes, custom post types( anyone even wordpress docs says “custom fields” when in reality almost always is reffering to “metaboxes” so keep that in mind because is confusing and you end in using acf for the wrong reasons(acf canbe good if you dont care for dependencies and you want faster development times anything else is better to do it on your own for maintanibility and is cheaper-not yearly subscriptions unlike acf).
At this point you ask why dont develop your clients websites in pure code from scratch, and its a good questions, cause half the time you can and you should aim for doing static informative websites if you want to keep those clients in the long run WITHOUT spending time in maintanibility, aditional subcriptions costs(plugins), and hacking risks. The other half of your clients may want a editable website or custom log ing functionalities, etc, for those wordpress is the best. BUT you still worrying about maintanibility, you develop using core wp code.
In my case i do develop website for my clients and i keep them in a monthly subscription for seo and ads campaigns, i dont develop websites only, so my method is always stability and maintainibility in the long run.
If you only develop websites, may be is a good thing you have to update and keep all the plugins dependencies all the time, people keep paying whenever an plugin update breaks the website, i said it cause i have one or two clients that are exactly that, they keep tweaing their websites functionalities andplugins and always pay me to fix it.
If your a freelancer, in my opinion you have to take in consideration the stability of your products in the long run, cause not all your clients will be happy to pay you to update or fix their websites cause yes is wordpress.
May be you can aim for full php websites, the hosting is cheap(cause wordpress is php too and almost all hosting services has php support for it), and in that case, you dont have to worry about updates may be once each 3 or 5 years(the reality is that majority of business php websites dont update for more than that but isnt recommended).
But for now, start with wordpress, learn wp documentation, difference between classic and block themes(aim for the classic approach your websites will be very stable, and is rare that any update break your website functionality and designs). And use page builders whenever a client is in a rush to have their website.
While you keep learning web development php, nodejs, etc, and explore others cms or custom code.
I read some guy that have more than 10 years in this business and decide to make a custom cms in pure php and he says that the updates are almost none from time to time, very stable and reliable, and he can always add more functionality and reuse the template code for each new website. But remember first is the money, then is the stability plans(whatever it is, pure code or custom wp,etc).
You can adquire clients always in your own town, in internet is very competitive and is unlikely that your first clients will call you just cause saw your website online, start local, then aim in other towns. Start cold calling is hard but very effective( cause numbers: from 100 calls in a day is sure enough that youll have 10 interested people, and three that surely want your services, if you do taht for a week youllhave your first clients, ryan from oakharborwebdesigns did this an now is doing 100k doing different jobs in web development(codestitch, freelancing, day job).
Keep it up the work, cheers.
What services are you planning on selling? It sounds like you don’t have any experience, so I’m not sure how successful you’re going to be. I’d highly recommend you get a job at an agency for min 3-5 years so you can learn how the industry and running a business actually works… and get some strong web development skills behind you. There’s an immense of information that you need to be very skilled with if you’re going to be a freelancer eg HTML, CSS, JS, SEO, image editing, image compression, performance optimisation, hosting, DNS, etc
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This is because each plugin usually only solves one specific problem, such as SEO optimization, security, anti spam comments, cache optimization, etc. Different websites have different requirements, so the number of plugins will also vary. Common and worthwhile plugins include Yoast SEO (for search engine optimization), WP Rocket (for performance optimization), and Gravity Forms (for creating complex forms).
I am also a WordPress development environment deployment tool myself, and my product is Servbay. You can try it out and give me some feedback.
As for the source of customers, you can obtain it through various channels. The most common method is through freelance platforms such as Upwork and Fiverr, which have a large number of clients looking for WordPress developers. You can also establish a personal website to showcase your work, promote it through social media, or participate in local online developer gatherings and conferences to build a network.