This document is not a tutorial on creating WordPress websites. As a matter of fact, you’ll still probably not be able to get a WordPress website live after reading it. Instead, it’s a deep dive into the technical architecture of WordPress.
You’ll learn how WordPress works below the hood. The goal of this document is to give you a deep understanding of the entire system. No matter if you’re a plugin developer, a theme author, a freelancer, or want to contribute to the core – this guide will be the most significant WordPress resource you will ever read – and that’s a promise.
To get the most out of it, I recommend that you play with the concepts described here on a local WordPress install while reading. This will make it more likely that you actually remember these concepts.
The …
This document is not a tutorial on creating WordPress websites. As a matter of fact, you’ll still probably not be able to get a WordPress website live after reading it. Instead, it’s a deep dive into the technical architecture of WordPress.
You’ll learn how WordPress works below the hood. The goal of this document is to give you a deep understanding of the entire system. No matter if you’re a plugin developer, a theme author, a freelancer, or want to contribute to the core – this guide will be the most significant WordPress resource you will ever read – and that’s a promise.
To get the most out of it, I recommend that you play with the concepts described here on a local WordPress install while reading. This will make it more likely that you actually remember these concepts.
The guide is aimed at late beginner/intermediate+ web developers. I’m assuming a certain level of understanding of web servers, programming languages, websites, and other technical concepts. I usually don’t explain things that are outside the scope of a “WordPress Deep Dive”. If you find your knowledge gap prevents you from fully grasping a concept – go fill that gap first.
No prior knowledge of WordPress is required, but I suspect that you’ll be better off if you spend just 5 minutes adding posts and jumping around the WordPress admin panel (or just watch a youtube video). It might help you ground your understanding in something you’ve seen with your own eyes. Having some context, even if minimal, is important for your brain not to have to wander around imagining what the thing looks like.
The guide is structured sequentially – that is, I’m assuming you’ve read chapters 1 and 2 before you read chapter 3. I sometimes refer to previous chapters when explaining new topics. You may try reading the chapters out of order, but to get the most value out of this document, I recommend you follow it from start to finish.
The code snippets in this document are not supposed to be blindly copy-pasted. Most of them are not robust, safe, or following best practices. Some of them may outright not work. They are included for demonstration purposes only, and that requires cutting out all the fluff that might interfere with the topic I’m trying to demonstrate.
This document is not supposed to be a replacement for the official documentation. It is just specific enough for you to understand the topics, but not so much that they become overwhelming. If you are in active need of the most up-to-date information on a given concept – always consult the documentation.
If you’re completely new to WordPress – don’t try to read this in a day. This document has 280 pages of complex technical content. Space it out evenly over some period of time. Otherwise, you won’t remember anything from it.
With that introduction behind us, I welcome you to what I hope is the beginning of a long and exciting journey of discovering the beauty of WordPress.