What to Learn After WordPress

Knowing how to use WordPress can be an end in itself if your goal is to create websites either for yourself or under the guise of a WordPress Developer. On the other hand, as Dr. Seuss put it, “the more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” WordPress can lead to more knowledge that, in turn, can lead to some interesting places indeed. Most particularly, you can start learning to code in HTML, CSS, JavaScript—and, if you’re especially ambitious and really want to command WordPress, PHP—to open doors to front end development and even building plugins, themes, and applications using WordPress. Or you can tackle the byways of ecommerce through WooCommerce. All this is covered in greater depth below, which should give you an idea of what you might choose to learn after WordPress.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is an extremely versatile and powerful content management system (CMS) that is behind 43% of the sites on the world wide web. Yes, that’s well over a third of the internet. You can use WordPress for everything from constructing a simple blog to setting up a gigantic online emporium. It’s even being used today as a framework for creating new applications.

WordPress is open-source and free software. That means that the code is accessible to anyone interested, and you can download it without cost. (There are expenses involved in setting up a WordPress site, but WordPress.com makes it possible to create a blog or a simple website without any money changing hands.) If you wish to establish an online presence of any size, WordPress can help you.

Learn more about what WordPress is and the benefits of learning to use it.

What Can You Do with WordPress?

WordPress first came to digital life in 2003 as blogging software. It enabled people seeking to establish a voice for themselves on the internet to create blogs without the need for actual coding. As such, WordPress remains extremely popular with bloggers. Indeed, anyone seeking to set up a blog will probably find themselves directed to WordPress for its relative ease of use and wide variety of features that make it possible for lay users to create something “professional” in appearance.

However, 43% of all sites on the web can’t all be blogs, and, indeed, WordPress is currently employed for a great deal more than maintaining ongoing records of what its more casual users had for dinner. WordPress has grown exponentially over the nearly two decades it has been in existence and is used for a variety of purposes today. A range of software plugins allows WordPress to do practically anything. To choose one example from many, the WooCommerce plugin allows the user to turn a WordPress site into a store. As such, WordPress has become the internet’s leading ecommerce platform.

Perhaps the most salient aspect of WordPress is that the software is open-source and free. This has many ramifications, not the least of which is that it opens the software for use as anything a user can imagine. Thus WordPress has expanded beyond blogs and smaller websites and stores into major websites for major companies (zoom.us, indeed.com, and the cryptocurrency site coinmarketcap.com are all powered by WordPress; so is hairwrapsandbrading.au). The software’s server side has most recently begun to be employed as a framework for creating applications. And all these possibilities are within reach of anyone who knows how to make use of the software.

HTML

Without question, the most useful skill to learn after (or as part of) your WordPress education is HTML. HTML—hypertext mark-up language—is the bridge between using a CMS such as WordPress and the coding universe. Although you can build something admirable using WordPress alone, there is going to come a point in your use of WordPress when you’re going to need to bring up the custom HTML block on the WordPress editor. WordPress allows HTML commands, and in a way, WordPress expects its users eventually to employ small segments of code to get their work done.

HTML is easy to learn, probably easier than WordPress. There are only 250 or so tags. Moreover, a lot of the tags are pretty much obvious, such as <i> to introduce a section of text you want in italics. There are plenty of resources for learning HTML: YouTube even has an HTML in Ten Minutes video, while, if you have a day rather than a few minutes, you may wish to consider a class such as Noble Desktop’s Introduction to HTML & CSS. CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is generally taught in tandem with HTML as a means of styling text on a webpage. You can use CSS with WordPress as well.

CSS and JavaScript

While learning WordPress in depth can be a highly valuable transferable skill on the job market, you’ll be a more competitive job candidate if you possess not just WordPress skills but those that can make you a Front End Developer who can work independently from a CMS to build websites from scratch. That entails knowing not only the kind of HTML that can be helpful in using WordPress but also CSS to style what you’ve created in HTML and JavaScript to make your webpages responsive and dynamic.

JavaScript, unlike HTML and CSS, is a fully-fledged computer language. It is, however, a high-level language, meaning that its syntax bears more than a passing resemblance to human languages. You can acquire it more readily than a middle-level language such as C++.

A Front End Developer requires mastery of this triad of languages—HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—although, given WordPress’ ubiquity, you probably can’t become a Front End Developer without it as well. Recall that WordPress is being used for a great deal more than building websites; you can create whole applications on top of WordPress using JavaScript. It all fits very neatly into a package such as Noble Desktop’s Front End Development Certificate, which, in turn, can even lead to learning how to program the more technical back ends of websites and an education in full stack web development.

Managing Ecommerce

A wholly different direction in which you can proceed once you’ve gained a solid foothold in the WordPress universe is pursuing the ecommerce possibilities inherent in the CMS. WooCommerce, the mercantile face of WordPress, accounts for 29% of all internet commerce, according to 2022 figures from BuiltWith. Ecommerce is a whole discipline unto itself, and there is a constant need for professionals who can help manage the more mercenary aspects of a company’s website. There are businesses that put their entire commercial success or failure into WooCommerce’s hands, so learning its ins and outs can help you make a career in the field. WordPress can help you create an attractive online store, but it takes someone to manage it. For that reason, Ecommerce Specialist is an in-demand role and a possible next step for someone who has learned to use WordPress.

Key Insights

• Learning WordPress can open the door to learning other skills that can prove extremely useful, both in terms of the job market and perfecting and maintaining your own website.
• Anyone seeking to be a WordPress expert will eventually need to learn HTML to get the most out of the CMS.
• WordPress can also be the first substantial step to a career as a Front End Developer if it is followed up by learning JavaScript.
• Pursuing WooCommerce, WordPress’ ecommerce plugin, can lead to a career as an Ecommerce Specialist.

Learn WordPress with Hands-on Training at Noble Desktop

A highly effective way of learning to make the most of WordPress would be to take a class in the subject at Noble Desktop, a leading purveyor of live in-person IT training in New York City. Noble teaches extensively online as well, which puts its classes within reach of anyone in the world with internet access. Noble Desktop prides itself on its hands-on learning model, small class sizes, experienced and talented instructors, and a free retake option that makes it possible to cement or refresh your knowledge of what you’ve learned within the space of a year. Noble Desktop offers a wide variety of WordPress classes and bootcamps, one of which is sure to further your goals in using the CMS.

Noble Desktop’s WordPress Bootcamp is designed for students with a background in HTML and CSS who are seeking to learn how to use the system whilst bringing their knowledge of coding to the WordPress table as well. The course of study runs for three weeks, two nights a week for three hours a session, and takes WordPress novices through to customizing a website in ways that aren’t possible if you are limited to communicating in English with the software.

While WordPress can be used to create impressive websites, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in WordPress’ philosophy. For those interested in learning about WordPress in tandem with other tools for front end web development, Noble Desktop also offers its students a Front End Web Development Certificate program that teaches not only WordPress but also HTML, CSS, and the language so essential to the creation of interactive and dynamic websites, JavaScript. Or, if the design aspects of website creation interest you as well, Noble offers a Web Design Certificate program that teaches, in addition to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WordPress, the underlying principles of UI (user interface) design.