Hey everyone!
I’m familiar with WordPress and have made a few basic websites for a few family members with elementor and free themes. I’m also in the last year of my computer Engineering degree.
My friend and I really want to get into freelancing and eventually building an agency some years down the line. After doing a bit of research and reading a lot of helpful posts on this subreddit, it’s quite obvious that the way to thrive is to differentiate ourselves from the randos that install a bunch of plugins and add a few template blocks and call it a day.
At uni, I do more hardware and ML related studying so my knowledge of html/css/php is little more than a beginner. I was hoping someone could provide a rough road map or a few good resources to get us started down the path of WordPress development. I’m fine with doing the basic page builder thing to start out and get some work and experience and a passable portfolio while I up my skills on the side, but I’d also like to know exactly what to aim for in the next year or so.
For instance, should I learn to create my own themes from scratch? That seems the best if one can do it but frankly looks really tedious and time consuming when there are already good lightweight themes such as Astra. So for now should I learn to customize free themes and be able to make my own plugins where possible? I’ve also seen people using oxygen and that seems a lot more bloat free and an easier transition from something like elementor. I understand questions like this get asked a lot, but I’m motivated to learn and would like some opinions on which direction to go moving forward.
Thanks!
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Can’t really differentiate yourself from other devs if you’re not actually developing…
Totally depends on the client, which makes it hard to answer your question. The more variety of projects you work on, the more experience you’ll have with a variety of different systems and technologies, and the more valuable you will be as a developer.
Someone who is a one-trick-pony and only has built portfolio sites, is probably going to struggle if a client asks them to build a searchable content library, and then restrict certain articles behind a paywall, and set up a subscription login system. That “struggle” will lead to bugs and delays, and will “set you apart” but not in the direction you’re hoping for.
One good way to get acquainted with the wide range of applications people use WP for is to survey the plugin landscape: what are the most popular plugins and, more importantly, *why* are they the most important plugins? What functionality are they bringing to the table? Do they have competition? How is the competition providing this same functionality?
And as for theme and plugin development: I would always recommend looking for a paid plugin that has a company behind it that is committed to regularly updating and maintaining this code. If you custom-code all your own stuff, you just made it next to impossible for the next poor developer who has to maintain your stuff when PHP gets updated or something.
I manage a handful of sites that are each pretty complex in different ways. And some of these sites have such complexity that there’s really no feasible way I as a solo developer I could make it from scratch. So plugins make my job actually possible.
There is a time and place for getting under the hood and writing your own custom stuff, but it’s rare. For instance, one of our sites wanted to hit a database that was coded in the 90s with CARS. I had never even heard of CARS, and certainly no plugin exists to interact with it, so it had to be done from scratch.
I know this is a lot, but hopefully it helps.