It’s actually common for programmers to learn PHP before they start developing for WordPress. Why? Because a lot of the WordPress platform is based on the popular server-side programming language. Why would you want to learn WordPress before learning PHP? Here are a few reasons why it might be an easier route for your learning experience.
There are Thousands of WordPress Resources
WordPress has grown to be the biggest Content Management System on the planet with more than 75 million website owners choosing the CMS over the many other options. This means that there are millions of resources when it comes to learning how WordPress works. Millions of resources that can be accessed for free and don’t take a lot of effort to learn thanks to the massive support following that WordPress has.
It’s the Most Cost-Effective Way
Learning PHP from scratch not only takes time but it could cost you a small fortune in classes and courses. Many PHP masters have been able to earn the language for free or with little effort, but this isn’t always the case for everyone. WordPress is completely free to use and, what’s more, it can be set up on a local server so you can easily edit and view changes made just by simply refreshing your web browser. This makes learning how to use WordPress easy and as cheap as possible. You can take a look at this great article on WP pricing to see for yourself just how cheap/free it’s easy to access WordPress.
WordPress Isn’t Just PHP
WordPress developers have had help from numerous other programming languages to succeed in building the most powerful CMS out there. Although HTML is not classed as a programming language but rather a frontend format used to put the visual effects of a website together – it’s one of the other popular languages used to style the WordPress platform. This means that there’s a chance to learn much more behind closed doors in WordPress and not just PHP.
WordPress is Completely Open Source
The great benefit of learning WordPress and its functionalities before PHP is simply because you have full access to the code, giving you more details of how a great CMS is put together. The code is far from simple to power WordPress, but it can be dissected easily enough if you’re willing to take advantage of the thousands of resources out there. Having access to all the files used to program WordPress will give you more inspiration when it comes to building your own applications using PHP and the many other programming languages out there.
Learning WordPress before the language it’s mainly programmed with may be weird to some, but when you look at the above benefits of doing so, you may find this route is much easier to digest. You could end up creating your own themes and using the WordPress features to customise plugins – there’s much to do to help you learn PHP.
