It is time to have a look at the responsibilities of a WordPress developer. A WordPress developer is responsible for customizing themes and building an attracting, easy to use websites by customizing themes. A WordPress must have complete knowledge about plugins available and about the use and purpose of every plugin. A furthermore, a WordPress developer’s role varies from the company he is working in and the types of projects they usually get from clients.
A WordPress developer is responsible for testing backups of all the WordPress sites he manages and ensures that the software those sites are using is up to date. He also does weekly security scans of the sites as well as performance monitoring. His roles also include site planning, developing custom themes, installing or modifying plugins, building pages, and populating content.
If you want to become a complete WordPress developer, You need to have strong commands on PHP and MySQL. Without mastering these two tools, it is impossible and you cannot customize a WordPress theme that is one of the basic roles of a WordPress developer. Even a novice in this field, who has little knowledge about building websites, can build websites by simple drag and drop and using available themes but he won’t be able to customize them before learning PHP and MySQL.To become a complete WordPress developer is not an easy thing but if you have passion, enthusiasm, ideas and have enough agile mind to know the mechanism of this miraculous tool. To learn PHP, one must have a strong programming background and Object Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts to gain good enough command over PHP and its frameworks as well.
To modify the interface of a theme, a WordPress developer must also have command on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. He must also have an understanding of aesthetics (understanding element arrangements on the screen, the color and font choices, and so on). And the last thing, a WordPress developer must have a creative mind to be able to customize the interface of the themes in order to make the interface and functionality convenient for the user. In a nutshell, a WordPress developer is someone who can understand the code behind themes, and able to modify them.
For a WordPress developer,knowledge of HTML is compulsory.HTML is a hypertext mark up language that helps us to set the front end of any website/blog. Knowledge of HTML is one of the key fundamentals in web designing. Designing the whole website on HTML used to be a very difficult task but WordPress has made it easier now. Still, for a WordPress developer, core knowledge of HTML and CSS is mandatory otherwise customization of theme could not be done. Although in WordPress, we do not have to write HTML tags when we modify our theme then the knowledge of HTML and CSS comes into play. Some times, we have to modify the theme that we bought for our project so the developer has to modify it using HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT,PHP AND MY SQL.
For a WordPress developer, knowledge of Javascript is also necessary. Javascript is also a very powerful programming language and it helps the designers to improve the functionality of the Website. Without having proper knowledge of Javascript, making changes in a theme would not be possible. However, if a theme is designed only on HTML and CSS( which is very unlikely) he might be able to make changes in it.
Now moving on to the PHP which is a server side language and without having a strong command over it, customization in WordPress theme is impossible. It is one of the basic jobs of a WordPress developer to make changes in the functionality of a theme.
With PHP, MySql’s knowledge because mandatory as it serves as a database. If a programmer has enough knowledge about PHP and MySQL, he would be able to understand the theme that he has bought, the first,he will have to understand the theme and then after having a complete understanding of it, he would be able to make some changes in it as per the client’s wish.
A WordPress must have complete knowledge about plugins available and about the use and purpose of every plugin. A furthermore, a WordPress developer’s role varies from the company he is working in and the types of projects they usually get from clients. A WordPress developer is responsible for testing backups of all the WordPress sites he manages and ensures that the software those sites are using is up to date. He also does weekly security scans of the sites as well as performance monitoring. His roles also include site planning, developing custom themes, installing or modifying plugins, building pages, and populating content.
Search Engine Optimization knowledge is considered to be a bonus for any WordPress developer nowadays considering its importance for ranking the Websites. WordPress provides plugins for it, so at least, a developer must be able to use those plugins properly. Some of these plugins are paid and some of them are free.
CONCLUSION
Becoming a WordPress developer demands consistent learning, practice, and knowledge of plugins. And do not forget, without having core knowledge of essential Website development tools HTML, CSS, JAVASCRIPT,PHP AND MY SQL, you can not be called a WordPress developer. These are the prerequisites to become a WordPress developer and in absence of these skills, effective development cannot be done. If you have mastered everything but still you lack knowledge about plugins or SEO, you will not be considered a complete WordPress developer.