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WordPress

Posted by Ken Chung
Ken Chung
17,585 Points

Does WordPress experience count as Front-End development experience?

Please bear with me everyone (please try and answer all 4, greatly appreciated ),

  1. Let's say I had 1-3 years of experience developing with mainly WordPress, is it still possible to score a job as a Front-End developer?

  2. What does WordPress experience really count for? Count for CMS experience? Magento, Drupal, Joomla CMS experience? What fields am I actually open to?

  3. What fields can WordPress experience lead you to? Can I still get back into the software development industry with this kind of experience?

  4. I'm currently taking the front-end development techdegree, while working as a web/WordPress developer. My goal is to become a front-end web developer, and I'm not sure what good WordPress experience can do for me, my biggest fear is having 2-3 years of WordPress experience and then having 0 front-end coding experience, if that any makes sense, am I going crazy? Or is this just a load of nonsense? Please snap me out of it.

Anyways, I'd love to hear your opinions, please feel free to share your thoughts (please give me a detailed answer).

Thank you all very much,

K. Chung

1 Answer

Craig Watson
Craig Watson
27,930 Points

Hi Ken :)

1 - When developing with WordPress there is two sides to the dev, Front End and Back End, if you spend more time making the Back End functions in PHP creating functional plugins etc. then I would personally say you would be looking to start at a junior level of Front End. This is because you most likely understand the core concepts but you don't work all day every day on them.

2 - WordPress is WordPress to me, and I'm sure is you spoke with a Drupal developer they would say "Drupal is Drupal". If you have been working on WordPress site everyday for 3 years both Back End and Front End they have, again in my opinion, good WordPress experience. However coupled with that comes knowledge of PHP, Databases, MySQL, Servers, Local Development, JavaScript, AJAX, CSS, HTML, Schema etc. It is up to you how you best describe your knowledge of these subjects that WordPress involves.

3 - Referencing the technologies above, to learn WordPress well and execute it well takes time. I think as long as you don't expect to jump in to another subject at a high level straight away there is no reason why it would not lead to anything you like.

4 - To be honest I find myself in a similar situation in some ways. I love WordPress and what it brings to the table but I ask to I want to live in PHP and Databases :S

Well when I read that Chris Coyer of CSS Tricks and CodePen is a big WordPress fan and user then I stopped worrying. Accept WordPress for what it is, a super modern platform to build really cool apps, blogs and more. Embrace it while you learn it and you will come away knowing how to integrate all sorts of technologies with it.

I am loving learning JS at the moment but through the day I work on WordPress sites. If you like Front End try and focus on theme development as it consists of so much more of it that plugins and core functions like post types.

Anyway I hope this was helpful Ken, WordPress to me is awesome and it brings lots of skills together so you wont find yourself in a corner with nowhere to go that is for sure.

Craig