Don't Learn WordPress! Self Taught Web Developers and Self Taught Programmers

I see where you are coming from. I think Wordpress is a good place to begin for a lot of developers. I got a few freelance gigs in it which helped me to become an React/Vue developer. I still do some freelance work on the side in wordpress but it is more custom css/html/javascript than it is simply installing premade Wordpress themes.

But I agree it shouldn't be a main focus and could hidder the growth of a developer.

Author — Michelle Williams

You are absolutely right. If you focus on the fundamentals on HTML, CSS, JS and maybe Angular, jquery and a little PHP you already know WordPress.
It's just a matter of structure and you can pretty much learn that in a day or two.

Author — Morten Pradsgaard

As a starter coming in business WordPress is always a good option. You can understand the flow and function of the websites. Then you can move to some code.

Author — Hammad Shahzad

I completely agree with your points! I was building static websites until about 2011 where the company I worked at was using WP for their intranet sites. I learned it, and it was fine. But I was liking it because WP themes took care of responsive design for me. Something I knew nothing about. Fast forward to now, where I maintain about 10 customer WP sites. They're basically static websites as nobody is updating content on them. They're not blogs. But because every site needed custom CSS to get my customers happy, I find that I need to write about 500 to 1000 lines of custom CSS, mostly over-riding the WP theme. It finally dawned on me that as I'm leaning CSS grid now, where responsive websites are much easier to build, I would be doing much less work if I just built the entire site from scratch. So thank you for this video, and encouraging me to do just that.

Author — Brian Hoard

Dude, thank you for sharing this. I have been learning front end for a while ( html, css, js, react, etc.) And was challenged by someone recently when asked how long it took me to build a site. They told me 'Your wasting your time" and that 'you could build this in WordPress way faster'. I started to second guess myself but I'm glad I didn't take the bait now! Thanks!

Author — Elijah Gundorin

I watched this video a couple of months ago and had to watch it again today to help me from falling into the WordPress wormhole! It's back to studying HTML, CSS and JavaScript for me. Thank you so much for making this video Dorian!!!

Author — Dev Duffy

Dorian did an updated video stating why it is a good idea to also learn WordPress. My first gig while used not only JS, CSS, and HTML but also used Wordpress. Wordpress is part of a development stack LAMP, WAMP, MAMP. Take a week or two with it and open up your opportunities as a web dev.

Author — ComposerO

I'm currently building a WordPress theme which leverages the Vue CLI, ACF and WpGraphQL. The client insists on using WordPress for content management and so WordPress is what they'll get!

I think it's a really interesting project and shows a diverse set of experience, with skills that take years to fine-tune. You can't be a good WordPress developer until you've mastered html, php, CSS and JavaScript (with bundling tools, post-processors and in my case, full blown frameworks being an added bonus) anyway, so why is it a bad career choice?

Author — Richard Cross

it's true for WordPress 'plugging' ou 'no code' developer (using elementor for example), however, a skilled developer coding websites (with front and back-end languages) while setting up a Wordpress environment for his client to use a back-office is very valuable.

Author — Jean-François M

Thanks, after spending lots of time learning Html, CSS, JavaScrip, git, React, Bootstrap but I still find myself stuck for opportunities. I was going to jump and learn Wordpress because the amount of jobs advertised. Much apreciated content

Author — Fabio Freitas

Thanks for your opinion, I'm very hesitant right now because I want to make as much money as possible as a freelancer. I agree, WordPress is boring as hell but it's so much faster than programming in CSS, HTML and JavaScript... Even if you can be more limited in the possibilities and the clientele, you'll be able to get a lot of clients for easy sites even if you don't sell them very expensive, right?

Quantity rather than quality

Author — ikouw

Great video bro, I am a wordPress developer for almost 11 yrs now, I now earn 6 figures, I don't do basic Wordpress setup, but I reverse engineer wordpress plugins and wordpress core, integrating API and other platforms in it, so far WordPress is good, but a developers advise don't become like me, go learn Python instead, the more fewer Wordpress developers are there, the more BIG valuable we become, just like COBOL, I am just waiting for that time to come. so new bees out there go, learn Python, Assembly and C it's for you're own good.

Author — senju chidori

Do you have a video about which would be a better approach in case I have my customers and I just need productivity (like, do all of it faster)?
Not necessarily needing to put that on my resume.

Author — dShap3

WordPress is the leading and battle-tested CMS. It's developed by tons of senior programmers from a huge community. If you leave it, you'll miss the opportunity to learn good practices coming from it. You'll learn how to use the already built-in features: taxonomy, hooks, custom post types, nav walker, settings API, REST API, AJAX..., not even mentioning the newest features like Gutenberg and headless WP.

As someone who's coming from Spring and Laravel, I got tons of lessons from WordPress and how to better structure my projects.

Author — Ihsan Nurul Iman

What about, is wordpress still scalable and as powerful as your standalone php frameworks?
I think it is more important to really understand if wordpress is even able to hold 1000s of users for the same vps costs vs the costs for hosting core php frameworks with the same user load?

Author — Shane Elmer

I wonder if, as a freelancer, I could get away with charging as much for a custom WP site as a web site I build more-or-less from scratch?

Author — Todd Boothbee

I’m an SEO and I can tell you that all 90% of SEOs use WordPress. Been using WP for 10 years.. I’ve been learning HTML and CSS and JS now to not be so one Dimensional!

Author — nmr20067

I use WordPress a lot because most client wants the world in a day, it all comes down to the project to be honest its really just another tool just focus on your stack whatever that and all should be good

Author — shane blackwood

Even if your first job is Wordpress developer you can still learn JS frameworks while you are working then be able to apply with skills and experience

Author — KomlanRaider

I was trynna learn WordPress until I saw your thumbnail. Wordpress is so hard, with the front-end experience that I have it might be even faster to just learn traditional back end to make an e-commerce site than to learn to develop custom themes and stuff

Author — Seong Eun Clara Choi