Whether you’re thinking about starting a website on WordPress or if you already own one, you’ll benefit from the information below. To enhance your knowledge of WordPress, you must begin with the fundamentals to learn how WordPress operates, troubleshooting issues, and practicing your newfound knowledge.
Four Steps to Advance Your Expertise in WordPress.
Step 1: Understanding the Languages
Before getting into the basics of how WordPress works, it’s essential to understand what HTML, CSS, and PHP are. Knowledge of these critical codes will improve the control of your site to make the modifications you desire, and readily troubleshoot whatever issues emerge.
- HTML is known as the “language of the internet.” It is what structures every web page on the internet.
- CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, is what styles simple HTML pages to look different from one another. CSS impacts various areas of a web page such as the color, size of your text, font, and numerous other components on the page. It can also make animation effects.
- PHP is used by WordPress. It isn’t necessary to become a professional programmer but learning this specific language can be of great significance.
Step 2: Comprehending What WordPress is and How it Works
WordPress does not solely use HTML to develop websites; it also uses PHP to collect information from a MySQL database.
The PHP and HTML code is structured together to build your webpage; where the PHP is embedded in the middle of the HTML code, and separate CSS files concludes the designing. Whenever you or a visitor is viewing a post on your page, regardless of the post, you’d be seeing the same file. The contents of the page, in comparison, changes.
Step 3: Troubleshooting Measures
Being able to distinguish and solve problems by learning the basics of troubleshooting in WordPress single-handedly can feel incredibly rewarding. If there’s an issue, you still cannot explain, at least these necessary steps will assist you in finding the underlying problem to seek support better.
A few of these steps may look disorderly, if so, do not panic as it may be because of the particular functions and appearance of your site.
- Did you make any new changes?
If you’ve updated or installed plugins, core files, themes or even adjusted a code, undo them or restore your recent backup. If this step is successful, look carefully into what caused the issue for future purposes.
- WordPress DeBugging Setting
The debugging setting on WordPress help users identify the mistakes. The debugging mode can be turned on through the main directory. After taking a backup, enter these lines to the bottom of the troublesome file
define ( ‘WP_DEBUG’, true );
define ( ‘SCRIPT_DEBUG’, true );
After entering the code, refresh your web page and look for any errors, old or new, along with any notices or warnings that may appear on the screen.
- Disable All Plugins
Unfortunately, plugins are generally the leading cause of any errors. Taking this step will allow you to refresh your page and notice if the error is still occurring; if it isn’t, then you know one of your plugins is the cause of your issue.
- Backtrack to Default Theme
If the above step did not work, then it may merely be the chosen theme. Each theme has a specialized developer support team you can contact for assistance while reverting to WordPress default theme or another theme until the problem gets resolved.
Step 4: Creating Your Plugin or Theme
If you’d like your website to be unparalleled, then designing your own theme or plugin can accomplish just that. By utilizing the framework of Genesis, you can create your own theme. Your new founded CSS knowledge with core framework assistance like Bones or Underscores can help you create your own theme entirely.
Are You a Master on WordPress?
It’s honestly your choice whether you feel comfortable enough to call yourself an expert on WordPress, but if not, at least these steps made you one step closer to becoming one!
