I’ve been working in I.T. and web design for a number of years, specifically with WP, learnt HTML and CSS and am confident in hosting (debian/ubuntu CLI), DNS etc.
I have done some app design and use DnD tools and can create and use APIs to connect and automate data (WP/mobile apps/ other and custom APIs)
I tried learning JS, many times, but I’m not great at it (can’t learn online – ADHD issues)
Is it worth learning PHP (probably an in person course) to be able to manage WP better and provide better services to clients?
Part of the reason is I want to get back into it after several years of moving put of the industry is, after seeing on this sub-reddit:
1) how many potential clients there are, even on here who need help and in some cases bespoke solutions that I can legitimately do and non-tech people or busy business people don’t have time for.
2) how some people call themselves ‘web designers’ i.e. they install Elementor and fuxking call it a day, but have no idea about CPTs, 404s, redirects, security, backups, or even PHP settings, let alone .htaccess, DNS and stuff like that 🤦
_(For example; I’ve literally seen people move the DNS over and not copy over MX records, so the entire company’s email goes down for DAYS and these so-called ‘web professionals’ have no idea why…)_
3) how much people charge for a website (i.e. thousands) that is frequently a barely customized (bloated) template on an overloaded shared sever and they wonder why it’s slow AF.
Sure, if that’s all the client needs, great but don’t install a template and call it your own design lol
4) I want to be able to make changes (like snippets and mu-plugins) that actually help people
5) now we have chatGPT, and Stable Diffusion content (or external SEO) can be an add-on that will boost the monthly income and help their ROI.
Okay, so already it looks like I know what I want to do, but I will still ask, is it work learning PHP?
(Especially now that ChatGPT can write an entire WP plugin, and yes I’ve had it write one, and it works!)
Thank you.
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I think it’s definitely worth learning PHP. I am a PHP dev, who works mainly in WordPress. I have recently managed to create a system on WordPress that saved my company literally hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
I did need to do quite a bit of custom development but for one plugin that I needed, I decided to see how well chatgpt can build it for me. Whilst it certainly sped up my development time, I had to give it specific directives so you still need know how PHP works and what the plugin actually needs to do (from a dev point of view), chatgpt alone doesn’t really cut it.
Chatgpt even made some rookie dev mistakes which I had to tell it were wrong and it then apologized and fixed them lol. Still, managed to get a plugin that would have probably taken me almost a week to dev done in a day.