WordPress Development LiveLessons (Lesson 1-4)

Your hands-on video guide to WordPress.org development: take total control over WordPress, customizing any site to your unique requirements!
These easy video tutorials show how to unleash the full power of WordPress.org’s open source code and customize WordPress to your precise requirements. WordPress for Developers LiveLessons walks you through mastering all the development skills you need to make visual, structural, and functional changes that are impossible with packaged solutions. Top WordPress expert John LeMasney walks you through setting up your WordPress development environment, including a complete LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP); working with WordPress databases and configuration files; safeguarding WordPress from hackers and spammers; controlling the WordPress engine through functions, hooks, classes, and methods; defining the structure, appearance, and behavior of new themes; using plugins to add powerful new functionality without changing the WordPress engine; and finding the resources and mastering the terminology you need to become an advanced WordPress developer. In just seven hours, you’ll learn how to bend WordPress to your will—and build sites like nobody else’s!

What You Will Learn

How to master the terminology and key concepts of WordPress development
How to install, test, and secure WordPress in a self-hosted environment
How to perform key WordPress file and database server administration tasks
How to manipulate WordPress functions, hooks, classes, and methods
How to develop WordPress themes, structures, plugins, and functions
How to use cutting-edge WordPress information resources

Course Requirements

Basic web development skills using HTML, CSS, and PHP and/or JavaScript scripting
Experience with hosted WordPress.com or a local WordPress.org installation
Familiarity with WordPress concepts such as themes and plug-ins

Lesson 1: Setting up Your WordPress Environment
Install and optimize your WordPress.org self-hosted environment, including a complete LAMP stack: Linux operating system, Apache server, MySQL relational database, and PHP scripting language. Plan for a development environment that protects your production system from downtime caused by testing or configuration errors.

Lesson 2: Installing and Testing WordPress for Development
Install WordPress for development, learn how WordPress uses each element of the stack, check for functional issues after an install, and review key challenges in protecting WordPress from hackers and spammers. Get your first look at WordPress’ database structure and create database backups, then explore WordPress configuration files and their capabilities.

Lesson 3: Information, Articles, and the Codex
Explore the resources, sites, and publications you need to do WordPress development well, especially the WordPress Codex and WordPress developer documents.

Lesson 4: WordPress’s Functions, Hooks, Classes and Methods
Explore the building blocks that enable rich development in WordPress: the functions, hooks, and PHP classes and methods that control how the WordPress engine behaves and displays your content.

Lesson 5: WordPress Theme Structure and Development
Start developing WordPress themes! Understand the structure of themes, and adapt a well-documented theme to create your own; review the theme stylesheet, and use it to define look and structure with CSS; examine and call theme functions; use PHP and CSS template files; discover how themes use javascript to define WordPress behavior; and discover resources and references for professional theme development.

Lesson 6: WordPress Plugins and Functions
Use plugins to extend WordPress functionality without affecting its core code, deeply modifying and customizing your site while protecting the WordPress engine. Understand the WordPress plugin API, and the files that WordPress expects in any plugin; use headers to share licensing and other information; program your plugin, using hooks, template tags, database entries, and options; and discover resources for advanced plugin development.

Lesson 7: The Language of WordPress
Review the basic terminology you’ll encounter as a WordPress developer, so you can speak, write, and think with other professional WordPress developers.