WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems that run the web. Both normal users and programmers rely on it to build websites very efficiently.
In addition to WordPress, professional web developers normally have plenty of advanced tools to opt for. Most of these tools are more powerful to build complex websites than WordPress. Thus, WordPress is not always at the top of their list and this actually depends on many factors.
The majority of web developers do use WordPress to build websites, BUT not all websites. WordPress is an excellent solution for creating specific types of websites, but it may miserably fail if not used as intended. It is only the experienced web developer who really knows when to use WordPress or not.
We explore why web developers use WordPress, when they use it, and why they need to learn it for their careers.
1. Why Do Web Developers USE WordPress?
WordPress is the dominant content management system on the web. Since its creation in 2003, It has been able to accumulate more than 65% of CMS-based websites and a market share of over 43% of all websites on the internet. The remaining share is distributed among other custom-built websites and content management systems.
Here is an overview of the usage statistics of the top 5 web content management systems according to w3techs.com.
These numbers clearly indicate that WordPress is the most dominant tool for websites and it’s widely used by both non-tech users and experienced programmers.
Nevertheless, contrary to normal users, most web developers are usually experienced in many alternative web development platforms. Which tend to be less restricted and more powerful than any other content management system.
With that in mind, what drives professional web developers sometimes to stick to WordPress?
Quite simply, even experienced web developers do use WordPress because they don’t need to reinvent the wheel!
To elaborate on this, all content management systems aim at providing solutions to do common and repetitive tasks. Similarly, the idea of WordPress is to bring ready tools to dynamically manage the content of particular types of websites.
For any professional developer, re-creating or simulating what WordPress does is totally nothing but wasting time and effort. Specifically, if the targeted website functionalities perfectly fit into what WordPress and its plugins tend to achieve.
Nevertheless, the decision to go for WordPress or not is totally up to the developer. Which is often driven by the requirements and size/type of the anticipated project.
2. Should Web Developers USE WordPress?
Many inexperienced users unwisely depend on WordPress for any website they are going to create. However, this practice is totally wrong as all content management systems might terribly fail if used outside their context.
Choosing WordPress among other available web development platforms relies on many factors. Primarily the ability of WordPress structure and its add-ons to fully meet the user’s requirements.
Web developers should use WordPress if they think it will be able to perfectly meet the website requirements. Either through its build-in functionalities or by using trustworthy third-party or custom-developed add-ons.
WordPress is originally a blogging management system and website builder. It’s a perfect solution for managing blogs and general-purpose websites. It is not suitable for creating custom web applications.
You can NOT use WordPress to create the next Amazon, Netflix, or Facebook!
This means even expert web specialists shouldn’t use WordPress to develop complex web applications with custom logic and advanced online services. Among many other reasons, this limitation is one of the top aspects some developers hate about WordPress.
3. Should Web Developers LEARN WordPress?
Broadly speaking, WordPress helps users build websites using interactive user interfaces and drag-and-drop features. It doesn’t usually require advanced coding and technical skills.
WordPress Without PHP: Does WordPress Require Coding?
In this article, we discuss to what extent PHP and other coding knowledge are required to run a complete WordPress site.
Of course, anyone who wants to use WordPress needs to learn it to leverage its capabilities. To do so, the skills required to deal with WordPress vary depending on how we are going to use the platform.
Skills required to use WordPress:
This includes how to install the platform and create the website, how to use its built-in functionalities, and how to download and activate plugins and themes. Such skills are easy to learn for anyone and don’t cover manually altering WordPress functionalities or developing customized add-ons.
Skills required to code in WordPress:
This includes how to develop custom plugins, alter the default behavior and add extra functionalities to the website that are not supported by add-ons. This requires additional coding skills and advanced programming experiences in multiple languages and techniques, such as PHP, HTML, and MySQL.
In light of this comparison, Do I need to learn WordPress as a web developer?
In most cases, web developers are required to learn at least how to use WordPress but not necessarily how to code with it.
Instead of coding a website from scratch, web developers can easily depend on WordPress for creating maintainable and secure solutions. For this reason, most of them will be required to learn how to use it at some point in their career.
4. What Do Web Developers Use to Build Websites?
For most skilled web developers, WordPress is just a tool among many others that can be utilized for building websites.
For building websites, web developers depend on a variety of development tools, frameworks, and libraries to build websites. They can use content management tools or build their custom solutions using other programming languages and techniques.
Experienced web developers usually choose their development stack based on multiple things, including their technical experience and knowledge. However, as most websites can be created by multiple means, the client’s requirements are usually the key factor in determining the used web platforms and techniques.
In this table, we mention some examples of what techniques can be used according to the website type and requirements.
| Website Type / Requirements | Tools & Techniques | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Basic and static web pages | Plain text-based files | HTML, CSS, JavaScript |
| Simple dynamic web pages | Lightweight CMS platforms | Grav, Jekyll, Textpattern |
| Advanced dynamic web pages | Professional web CMS platforms | WordPress, Joomla, Drupal |
| Custom services-oriented websites and web applications | Custom-built solutions using dedicated web frameworks | React.js, Laravel, Django. |
Additionally, according to the 2021 developer survey by StackOverflow.com, the following is an overview of the most popular and commonly-used web frameworks by professional developers:
5. Why To Learn Web Development When There is WordPress?
Besides WordPress, many other web development tools are also available, and most of them are ready to use by non-technical users. This makes it easy for anyone to run his/her own website.
That being said, why should we learn web development when we can just use WordPress or other ready-to-use tools?
Learning web development is still required for developers who want to expand their capabilities beyond what WordPress and similar CMSs offer. WordPress is just a tool, and it’s only suitable for standard websites with typical functionalities.
On the first hand, WordPress is a web CMS platform that anyone can use to build a website. Regardless of your technical and coding skills, you can learn WordPress and use it to create a website in a very short time. But in most cases, you will definitely stick to what the platform brings to you.
On the other hand, web development is a broad field that involves developing websites and web applications. It ranges from creating a simple static page to professional web applications. Web development has its scientific bases, methodologies, languages, techniques, and standards. It is not something that you can learn in a short time. Instead, it often requires years of studying and training to obtain sufficient levels of knowledge and expertise.
To this end, having skills in WordPress means being able to build a WordPress website, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you are a web developer. To expand outside of what the platform does, you definitely need to learn web development.
6. Conclusion
WordPress is among the most powerful tools to create websites, both normal and experienced users do use it to create modern websites. In this article, we discussed if web developers use WordPress and why, when they should use it, and why they have to learn it.
To sum up:
- The majority of experienced web developers use WordPress to build websites.
- Web developers should avoid using WordPress to build custom web applications.
- Web developers are required to learn at least how to use WordPress.
- Professional web developers choose their techniques based on the client’s requirements.
- Learning web development is required to expand outside of what the CMS platforms provide.
Thanks for the information, it’s really helpful.
I was thinking if I should learn WordPress in conjunction with my web development courses (front and back end).
Thank you Kelvin for your feedback, we are glad we made it clear to you. You can just focus on your web development course first then it will be easier to learn and code with WordPress.