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Need Wordpress Crash Course ASAP!


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hey all I just got a web dev job using wordpress? never used it before its just an edit and fix job... 

I need a accessing databases and displaying them crash course... maybe more soon (in wordpress obv)

 

and most of the basics :D any help would be great thanks! bullet point it for me ;D lol

 

just realised i derped and put it in the wrong thread.

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Read the wordpress codex and dev docs. They're are pretty good at describing the functions

Also you don't really access the DB as you would normally. Most of the database interaction is done through The Loop, WP_query and query_posts.

 

http://codex.wordpress.org/

http://codex.wordpress.org/Developer_Documentation

 

Also one of the most important things to understand is The Loop

http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop

 

Have a look how it uses themes too, while you might not be doing big theme changes, you might find wordpress does a lot of the things you want automatically.

 

If you know PHP then you should pick up wordpress pretty quickly.

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Typing a thread title in all caps is lame. You are no more special than anyone else here.

 

You dig?

I am more special the doctor said so.

Read the wordpress codex and dev docs. They're are pretty good at describing the functions

Also you don't really access the DB as you would normally. Most of the database interaction is done through The Loop, WP_query and query_posts.

 

http://codex.wordpress.org/

http://codex.wordpress.org/Developer_Documentation

 

Also one of the most important things to understand is The Loop

http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop

 

Have a look how it uses themes too, while you might not be doing big theme changes, you might find wordpress does a lot of the things you want automatically.

 

If you know PHP then you should pick up wordpress pretty quickly.

thanks! i hope it wont be to much of a cluster ... need to get this job done right its a big client 

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Sign up to Team Treehouse. Thats where I learn WordPress. It was pretty hard for me until I watch the video. They talk slow and make you feel like your retarded but I learn it really quick. You just need to know HTML and CSS and a little bit a Javascript.

 

http://referrals.trhou.se/richardfeinburg

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Sorry but most real web developers don't use wordpress. Sounds like someone lied in their interview and on their resume. I suggest grabbing a "wordpress for dummies" book at your local bookstore and get to crackin'

Hmm...can't even google - i don't think he'll survive long at this gig.
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Best place to start is the WordPress codex as already stated.

It all depends on what you actually want to achieve but 90% of database work is done via 'The Loop'. http://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop

 

When you learn how to use Wordpress you learn why you shouldn't use it.

 

 

Sorry but most real web developers don't use wordpress. Sounds like someone lied in their interview and on their resume. I suggest grabbing a "wordpress for dummies" book at your local bookstore and get to crackin'

Hmm...can't even google - i don't think he'll survive long at this gig.

 

Ignore these two users. WordPress is one of the most powerful and flexible open source CMS systems available currently and is used by many large scale developer teams and companies. If you're looking for work in the web dev/des world then a good knowledge of WP is essential.

You can get a fair bit few WP questions answered here http://thewebdesignforum.co.uk/

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Typing a thread title in all caps is lame.

Agreed, it adds nothing to the content of the thread. As is usual, I've edited it to a more reasonable size.
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Sorry but most real web developers don't use wordpress. Sounds like someone lied in their interview and on their resume. I suggest grabbing a "wordpress for dummies" book at your local bookstore and get to crackin'

Yeah I mean its just the most popular CMS out there but it not for "real" web developers lol.

 

To the OP. Give us an idea of your current knowledge. Assuming you know HTML/CSS but do you know PHP/MYSQL and working with locally hosted dev environments?

WordPress is incredibly easy to get a basic site up and running with the basics, but you can do a lot more knowing the latter. 

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I am more special the doctor said so.

thanks! i hope it wont be to much of a cluster ... need to get this job done right its a big client 

 

Like i said, if you have a grasp of PHP then you should be fine. It isn't difficult at all. That's what makes it so popular. Plus the community.

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Read the Loop entry on the Wordpress codex, then read it again.

 

Wordpress is a perfectly good CMS, and will serve a lot of needs, and even works as a halfway not-terrible framework for general PHP sites. It gets a little hairy if you really want to dig into it, but it's no worse than say, Drupal, which can quickly become a bloated horrorshow of code, and 9 times out of 10 if you Google your issue, someone else has had it.

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Read the Loop entry on the Wordpress codex, then read it again.

 

Wordpress is a perfectly good CMS, and will serve a lot of needs, and even works as a halfway not-terrible framework for general PHP sites. It gets a little hairy if you really want to dig into it, but it's no worse than say, Drupal, which can quickly become a bloated horrorshow of code, and 9 times out of 10 if you Google your issue, someone else has had it.

ive only ever used CMS I have written ;( my company would write CMS down to each individuals needs to keep it light weight ...so never used a frame work :P but i suppose I should and its time

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ive only ever used CMS I have written ;( my company would write CMS down to each individuals needs to keep it light weight ...so never used a frame work :p but i suppose I should and its time

 

Lightweight is relative. Wordpress isn't a monolith of code (unlike Drupal, which, at its default install size, likes to throw not enough memory errors). Also, if you come up with a bespoke CMS and then the client says "hey, I want to add this to the page," with Wordpress you can just throw them a plugin that will do it.

 

I've said this in other threads, but if you're going to be doing a lot of database transactions (e.g. a job site or a real estate website, where you're pulling / sorting a lot of records with specifically curated entries), Wordpress is not ideal. Something like Drupal or a framework like Yii is better. Anything short of that, why not use Wordpress.

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Sorry but most real web developers don't use wordpress

 

Utter utter nonsense.  In a team of 5 VERY skilled developers, 4 of whom (including myself) have been developing websites and web applications (and desktop) since the mid 90s - we would ALL choose Wordpress as a blogging platform.  Why?

 

1) We work in the real world with real timescales and real costings/time

2) It's an agreed and known platform, no cross training

3) It has a rabid development community, who spend much more time on it per day that we could dream of

 

Yup, in a business environment, unless there's a genuine reason to not use it for an additional blog to add to a site - there's very few real reasons to not use it.

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WordPress is one of the most powerful and flexible open source CMS systems available currently and is used by many large scale developer teams and companies. If you're looking for work in the web dev/des world then a good knowledge of WP is essential.

 

So much false in 2 sentences.

 

You seem to be confusing "plugins and widgets" with "power and flexibility". The proliferation of plugins and widgets shows that Wordpress is indeed extendable but also shows that it lacks so many features out of the box forcing you into the hands of often suspect plugins. Why is this? The rookie often makes the mistake of thinking Wordpress and "Powerful CMS" belong in the same paragraph. It isn't a proper CMS but rather a blog engine with some CMS-esque functions dumped in afterwards. It tries to be all things to all men and ends up being mediocre at everything.

 

Every plugin introduces a new potential for your site to be hacked into or for unintended consequences. Digwp did a poll (a few years back granted) and just 4% of users had no plugins installed. 4% is actually quite impressive when the system, by default, has a couple waiting for you as soon as you've installed it. Two thirds of those polled used 6 or more plugins. Given that any wordpress update can break plugins at any time due to the hodge-podge of coding it's far from robust. Maybe a year or two down the line something you've come to rely on stops working and the developer of the plugin is long gone. What do you do? You're kinda screwed unless you're actually a "skilled developer"...which would pose the question of why you were using wordpress and its plugins in the first place. Having half a dozen or more 3rd party code items hanging around your site is something few proper developers or designers would be comfortable to allow. Before long you look at your code and see dozens of javascript files, functions and stylesheets (bad practice) have been included to allow all the new features to work. Then you decide you want to alter something as simple as padding or the colour of something and you go hunting through the files to work out where it's being specified from. Then you change it and find it doesn't work as intended because your styles have turned into a specificity blackhole.

 

In addition it's apparently running on millions of websites and has been around for years but Wordpress doesn't even have quality SEO functionality built in. It's why everyone with a "good knowledge" of web development and design just goes off an installs Yoast (yay plugins!) and thinks they're coolio.

 

It's been a few months since I was forced to look at a Wordpress site. Generally the only time I experience wordpress is when a client calls in and says it's broken - aka they tried to do something innocent and it shat itself. Does the WYSIWYG editor actually load the styles when you're editing? Or is that another obvious feature that it still lacks?

 

It lacks simple social media tools/integration or even the ability to easily add and edit web forms. All very run of the mill stuff but not what Wordpress was designed to do. You'll need an actual CMS for such things.

Utter utter nonsense.  In a team of 5 VERY skilled developers, 4 of whom (including myself) have been developing websites and web applications (and desktop) since the mid 90s - we would ALL choose Wordpress as a blogging platform.  Why?

 

1) We work in the real world with real timescales and real costings/time

2) It's an agreed and known platform, no cross training

3) It has a rabid development community, who spend much more time on it per day that we could dream of

 

Yup, in a business environment, unless there's a genuine reason to not use it for an additional blog to add to a site - there's very few real reasons to not use it.

 

Fine for a blog.

Not fine for a CMS. A team of "5 VERY skilled developers" would have their own CMS which they could tailor to each client.

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Utter utter nonsense.  In a team of 5 VERY skilled developers, 4 of whom (including myself) have been developing websites and web applications (and desktop) since the mid 90s - we would ALL choose Wordpress as a blogging platform.  Why?

 

1) We work in the real world with real timescales and real costings/time

2) It's an agreed and known platform, no cross training

3) It has a rabid development community, who spend much more time on it per day that we could dream of

 

Sorry mate if your team of "5 VERY skilled developers" could not come with a robusts CMS in a couple of weeks or months, hell I'm undergraduate of CS degree and I made from scratch my own robust, secure, escalable, fast, heavy tested 5000 views/day blog CMS in 2 months or so, I only have 3 years of experience and not considered "VERY skilled developer". After reading the excelent Trollercoaster response, looks like wordpress is for wannabes lol. I always can identify wordpress sites... they are all look the same and have a bogus and f****d up source code.

 

And for the OP, good luck with your work :) but buit dont get stuck with wp!!1

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Fine for a blog.

Not fine for a CMS. A team of "5 VERY skilled developers" would have their own CMS which they could tailor to each client.

 

Uh huh. Let me know what the update cycle is on that bespoke CMS you've created. :laugh:

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So much false in 2 sentences.

 

You seem to be confusing "plugins and widgets" with "power and flexibility". The proliferation of plugins and widgets shows that Wordpress is indeed extendable but also shows that it lacks so many features out of the box forcing you into the hands of often suspect plugins. Why is this? The rookie often makes the mistake of thinking Wordpress and "Powerful CMS" belong in the same paragraph. It isn't a proper CMS but rather a blog engine with some CMS-esque functions dumped in afterwards. It tries to be all things to all men and ends up being mediocre at everything.

 

Every plugin introduces a new potential for your site to be hacked into or for unintended consequences. Digwp did a poll (a few years back granted) and just 4% of users had no plugins installed. 4% is actually quite impressive when the system, by default, has a couple waiting for you as soon as you've installed it. Two thirds of those polled used 6 or more plugins. Given that any wordpress update can break plugins at any time due to the hodge-podge of coding it's far from robust. Maybe a year or two down the line something you've come to rely on stops working and the developer of the plugin is long gone. What do you do? You're kinda screwed unless you're actually a "skilled developer"...which would pose the question of why you were using wordpress and its plugins in the first place. Having half a dozen or more 3rd party code items hanging around your site is something few proper developers or designers would be comfortable to allow. Before long you look at your code and see dozens of javascript files, functions and stylesheets (bad practice) have been included to allow all the new features to work. Then you decide you want to alter something as simple as padding or the colour of something and you go hunting through the files to work out where it's being specified from. Then you change it and find it doesn't work as intended because your styles have turned into a specificity blackhole.

 

In addition it's apparently running on millions of websites and has been around for years but Wordpress doesn't even have quality SEO functionality built in. It's why everyone with a "good knowledge" of web development and design just goes off an installs Yoast (yay plugins!) and thinks they're coolio.

 

It's been a few months since I was forced to look at a Wordpress site. Generally the only time I experience wordpress is when a client calls in and says it's broken - aka they tried to do something innocent and it shat itself. Does the WYSIWYG editor actually load the styles when you're editing? Or is that another obvious feature that it still lacks?

 

It lacks simple social media tools/integration or even the ability to easily add and edit web forms. All very run of the mill stuff but not what Wordpress was designed to do. You'll need an actual CMS for such things.

 

Fine for a blog.

Not fine for a CMS. A team of "5 VERY skilled developers" would have their own CMS which they could tailor to each client.

 

You can build any plugin functionality directly into a theme through the functions file.

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Yeah I mean its just the most popular CMS out there but it not for "real" web developers lol.

 

To the OP. Give us an idea of your current knowledge. Assuming you know HTML/CSS but do you know PHP/MYSQL and working with locally hosted dev environments?

WordPress is incredibly easy to get a basic site up and running with the basics, but you can do a lot more knowing the latter. 

 

i am a PHP developer with strong knowledge in css, html, javascript, ajax, jquery etc etc etc :p i just never used these CMS systems before my company have always built their own... i think i may have convinced the guy to pay us more to rebuild the WHOLE thing so i might not even need to use word press :3 

 

and to the people saying I lied on my CV? whhhaattt you make no sense :P 

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So much false in 2 sentences.

 

You seem to be confusing "plugins and widgets" with "power and flexibility". The proliferation of plugins and widgets shows that Wordpress is indeed extendable but also shows that it lacks so many features out of the box forcing you into the hands of often suspect plugins. Why is this? The rookie often makes the mistake of thinking Wordpress and "Powerful CMS" belong in the same paragraph. It isn't a proper CMS but rather a blog engine with some CMS-esque functions dumped in afterwards. It tries to be all things to all men and ends up being mediocre at everything.

 

Every plugin introduces a new potential for your site to be hacked into or for unintended consequences. Digwp did a poll (a few years back granted) and just 4% of users had no plugins installed. 4% is actually quite impressive when the system, by default, has a couple waiting for you as soon as you've installed it. Two thirds of those polled used 6 or more plugins. Given that any wordpress update can break plugins at any time due to the hodge-podge of coding it's far from robust. Maybe a year or two down the line something you've come to rely on stops working and the developer of the plugin is long gone. What do you do? You're kinda screwed unless you're actually a "skilled developer"...which would pose the question of why you were using wordpress and its plugins in the first place. Having half a dozen or more 3rd party code items hanging around your site is something few proper developers or designers would be comfortable to allow. Before long you look at your code and see dozens of javascript files, functions and stylesheets (bad practice) have been included to allow all the new features to work. Then you decide you want to alter something as simple as padding or the colour of something and you go hunting through the files to work out where it's being specified from. Then you change it and find it doesn't work as intended because your styles have turned into a specificity blackhole.

 

In addition it's apparently running on millions of websites and has been around for years but Wordpress doesn't even have quality SEO functionality built in. It's why everyone with a "good knowledge" of web development and design just goes off an installs Yoast (yay plugins!) and thinks they're coolio.

 

It's been a few months since I was forced to look at a Wordpress site. Generally the only time I experience wordpress is when a client calls in and says it's broken - aka they tried to do something innocent and it shat itself. Does the WYSIWYG editor actually load the styles when you're editing? Or is that another obvious feature that it still lacks?

 

It lacks simple social media tools/integration or even the ability to easily add and edit web forms. All very run of the mill stuff but not what Wordpress was designed to do. You'll need an actual CMS for such things.

 

Fine for a blog.

Not fine for a CMS. A team of "5 VERY skilled developers" would have their own CMS which they could tailor to each client.

 

A skilled developer would know what you've said above is absolute pish.

 

A decent dev would also know that the can use any hook without needing to resort to plugins and widgets... widgets are no different to any other CMS either :s

 

Also, what's wrong with a lean core? One of the reasons i use it is because of its lean core.

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A skilled developer would know what you've said above is absolute pish.

 

A decent dev would also know that the can use any hook without needing to resort to plugins and widgets... widgets are no different to any other CMS either :s

 

Also, what's wrong with a lean core? One of the reasons i use it is because of its lean core.

 

Are you a developer? If so, name your employer. I want a laugh.

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