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Modern WordPress Fast Track

Modern WordPress Fast Track

Overview
Curriculum

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.

Full course details →

Curriculum

  • 9 Sections
  • 93 Lessons
  • 8h Duration
Expand All
How WordPress Runs the Web
12 Lessons
  1. HTTP request and response lifecycle
  2. Content and template types (index, single, archive, REST API)
  3. WP admin and editing overview
  4. Editor evolution: TinyMCE vs. blocks, widgets, customizer and shortcodes
  5. The magic powers of WordPress multisite
  6. Headless vs. coupled overview
  7. Accessibility and user experience
  8. Semantic markup, structured data and SEO
  9. Performance and Web Vitals
  10. Debug WordPress requests and responses
  11. Browser console and other critical tools
  12. Helpful AI prompts for debugging WP requests
Set Up Your Development Environment
10 Lessons
  1. Powerful local environment setup (wp-env, Local, Docker)
  2. Dependency management with Node, NPM and Composer
  3. VS Code setup and extensions
  4. Configure your AI assistant with GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT
  5. WP-CLI power moves and terminal basics
  6. Introduction to Git and GitHub
  7. Automation locally and with GitHub Actions
  8. Scripting with JS, PHP vs. Bash
  9. Project organization without a headache
  10. Top 5 problems during WordPress development and how to debug them with AI
WordPress Under the Hood
11 Lessons
  1. WordPress request lifecycle and rewrite rules
  2. Theme and plugin loading order and how to debug it
  3. WP queries and request types in-depth – index, single, archive, REST APIs
  4. Content model – posts, taxonomies, metadata, options and users
  5. WP database and content architecture
  6. Anatomy of themes and plugins, and how block themes change everything
  7. Top 10 ways WordPress gets hacked and how to avoid it
  8. Internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n)
  9. User roles and capabilities and how they work in WP multisite
  10. Application passwords and secure REST API access
  11. Tools for analysing and debugging WordPress requests
Giving WordPress Superpowers
8 Lessons
  1. Hook system with actions and filters in PHP and JS
  2. WP “main” content queries and available filters
  3. Custom post types and metadata
  4. Post settings with meta boxes and block editor sidebar controls
  5. Extend WP core blocks with styles and variations
  6. Child themes and when not to use them
  7. Global options and settings pages with the Options API and JS APIs
  8. Deprecated APIs: customizer, widgets and shortcodes and their replacements
Create Block Themes
9 Lessons
  1. The importance of composition and component thinking
  2. Full-site editing (FSE) concepts and theme.json
  3. Design systems and tokens, fonts, colors and spacing
  4. Global styles and style variations
  5. Template parts, patterns and theme structure
  6. Layout blocks vs. content blocks
  7. Reusable block patterns and starter templates
  8. Static vs. dynamic blocks
  9. Migration strategies from classic themes
Blocks for Everything
13 Lessons
  1. Block attributes and markup
  2. Block attribute storage options – inline vs. post meta vs. APIs
  3. Static vs dynamic blocks and how to strike a good balance
  4. Block controls: toolbar and sidebar inspector
  5. Inherit block features for alignment, style and behaviour
  6. Block display and edit contexts, and the associated scripts and styles
  7. React fundamentals for block edit experience
  8. WP wrapper libraries for React primitives
  9. *.asset.php and dynamic script data
  10. Block render logic and available hooks
  11. PHP data structure of blocks, attributes and inner blocks
  12. Custom REST API endpoints for block data
  13. Using @wordpress/scripts for everything
Performance and Caching
10 Lessons
  1. Ten ways to slow down WordPress (and how to avoid that)
  2. Performance budgets and how to identify critical elements
  3. How to lazy-load almost everything
  4. Frontend asset loading strategies for scripts, styles, fonts, embeds and media
  5. Image, embed and media loading optimization
  6. Object caching for runtime and persistence
  7. Transients API and external object cache for persistent caching
  8. Database query optimization tips and tricks
  9. Full page caching approaches and gotchas with personalization
  10. Performance testing and measurement
Power Tools for WordPress Development
11 Lessons
  1. Modern dependency management with Node, NPM and Composer
  2. PHP autoloading and dependency isolation to avoid conflicts
  3. Coding standards and linting for PHP, JS and CSS
  4. Easy setup of PHPUnit for testing PHP
  5. JavaScript testing with Jest for blocks
  6. End-to-end and integration testing for PHP and JS using Playwright
  7. Continuous Integration workflow with GitHub Actions
  8. Automating development tasks with WP-CLI
  9. Release automation and version management
  10. Code review workflows and best practices
  11. Managing technical debt in WordPress projects
Ship It: From Local to Git to Production
9 Lessons
  1. Git branching strategies for WordPress projects
  2. Handling environment-specific configuration and secrets
  3. Managing database migrations between environments
  4. Deployment strategies: direct, staged, and Blue-Green
  5. WordPress.org plugin submission process and requirements
  6. SVN for WordPress.org plugin repository management
  7. Implementing continuous deployment with GitHub Actions
  8. Monitoring WordPress sites in production
  9. Documentation for the future and peace of mind

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