Beginner
Modern WordPress Fast Track
Learn to build high-value block themes and plugins with AI and automation in a focused 10-week course.
By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:
- Understand WordPress lifecycle, routing, hooks, and potential performance bottlenecks.
- Use AI to assist when building and deploying modern WordPress block themes and plugins.
- Embrace Node.js, Composer, PHPUnit and GitHub Actions for tooling and automation.
- Optimize for scale with caching, dependency injection, and lazy loading.
- Confidently deploy professional-grade WordPress solutions.
Curriculum
- 10 Sections
- 105 Lessons
- 10h Duration
How WordPress Runs the Web
10 Lessons
- Web Fundamentals
- Internet: Tubes and Computers
- Internet Packets: TCP, UDP and Ports
- Domain Name System (DNS)
- Hypertext and the HTTP Protocol
- HTTP Methods and URLs
- HTTP Headers
- Authentication and Cookies
- HTTPS: Securing the Web
- WordPress and the Web
Inside a WordPress Web Server
11 Lessons
- Inside a WordPress Web Server
- From URL to WordPress
- Web Server is a Computer with 3 Programs
- Computers vs. Containers
- Setup a Web Server with Docker
- Nginx and Apache Routing for WordPress
- How Web Server Talks to WordPress
- WordPress Template Routing for Classic and Block Themes
- Block Theme Overview
- Semantic HTML, Accessibility and SEO
- Progressive Enhancement and Web Standards
Set Up Your Development Environment
13 Lessons
- Your Development Environment (Your Happy Place)
- Ideal Development Environment
- Note on Cross-Platform Development Environments
- Developer App Store with Homebrew and Chocolatey
- Required Development Software
- Install Everything Using Homebrew (macOS)
- [Windows] Install Everything Using Chocolatey
- $PATH and Symlinks
- VS Code Overview
- Clone Project Repository
- Project Structure Overview
- Adding WordPress as a Dependency using Composer
- Configure wp-config.php and .htaccess for WordPress in a Subdirectory
WordPress Under the Hood
11 Lessons
- WordPress request lifecycle and rewrite rules
- Theme and plugin loading order and how to debug it
- WP queries and request types in-depth – index, single, archive, REST APIs
- Content model – posts, taxonomies, metadata, options and users
- WP database and content architecture
- Anatomy of themes and plugins, and how block themes change everything
- Top 10 ways WordPress gets hacked and how to avoid it
- Internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n)
- User roles and capabilities (including WP multisite)
- Application passwords and secure REST API access
- Tools for analysing and debugging WordPress requests
Giving WordPress Superpowers
8 Lessons
- Hook system with actions and filters in PHP and JS
- WP “main” content queries and available filters
- Custom post types and metadata
- Post settings with meta boxes and block editor sidebar controls
- Extend WP core blocks with styles and variations
- Child themes and when not to use them
- Global options and settings pages with the Options API and JS APIs
- Deprecated APIs: customizer, widgets and shortcodes and their replacements
Create Block Themes
9 Lessons
- The importance of composition and component thinking
- Full-site editing (FSE) concepts and theme.json
- Design systems and tokens, fonts, colors and spacing
- Global styles and style variations
- Template parts, patterns and theme structure
- Layout blocks vs. content blocks
- Reusable block patterns and starter templates
- Static vs. dynamic blocks
- Migration strategies from classic themes
Blocks for Everything
13 Lessons
- Block attributes and markup
- Block attribute storage options – inline vs. post meta vs. APIs
- Static vs dynamic blocks and how to strike a good balance
- Block controls: toolbar and sidebar inspector
- Inherit block features for alignment, style and behaviour
- Block display and edit contexts, and the associated scripts and styles
- React fundamentals for block edit experience
- WP wrapper libraries for React primitives
- *.asset.php and dynamic script data
- Block render logic and available hooks
- PHP data structure of blocks, attributes and inner blocks
- Custom REST API endpoints for block data
- Using @wordpress/scripts for everything
Performance and Caching
10 Lessons
- Ten ways to slow down WordPress (and how to avoid that)
- Performance budgets and how to identify critical elements
- How to lazy-load almost everything
- Frontend asset loading strategies for scripts, styles, fonts, embeds and media
- Image, embed and media loading optimization
- Object caching for runtime and persistence
- Transients API and external object cache for persistent caching
- Database query optimization tips and tricks
- Full page caching approaches and gotchas with personalization
- Performance testing and measurement
Power Tools for WordPress Development
11 Lessons
- Modern dependency management with Node, NPM and Composer
- PHP autoloading and dependency isolation to avoid conflicts
- Coding standards and linting for PHP, JS and CSS
- Easy setup of PHPUnit for testing PHP
- JavaScript testing with Jest for blocks
- End-to-end and integration testing for PHP and JS using Playwright
- Continuous Integration workflow with GitHub Actions
- Automating development tasks with WP-CLI
- Release automation and version management
- Code review workflows and best practices
- Managing technical debt in WordPress projects
Ship It: From Local to Git to Production
9 Lessons
- Git branching strategies for WordPress projects
- Handling environment-specific configuration and secrets
- Managing database migrations between environments
- Deployment strategies: direct, staged, and Blue-Green
- WordPress.org plugin submission process and requirements
- SVN for WordPress.org plugin repository management
- Implementing continuous deployment with GitHub Actions
- Monitoring WordPress sites in production
- Documentation for the future and peace of mind
