What does it mean to be a WordPress expert?
It may seem like a given, but there are a lot of misconceptions about what it means to be a WordPress expert. That doesn’t mean you’re an expert on the WordPress platform, server, or coding. It doesn’t mean that you are the most qualified specialist in the world. What it does mean is that you are more than capable of helping people make their WordPress website shine.
Every WordPress website needs a WordPress expert to provide quality assurance and expert support. A WordPress expert is a person who creates, designs, and configures WordPress websites, in addition to providing technical support to clients. The services of a WordPress expert include website design, development, content management, and search engine optimization. It is important for WordPress experts to stay up-to-date on the latest WordPress features, plugins, and security risks.
The answer is simple: you are a WordPress expert if you know how to create content from scratch and troubleshoot issues that may arise. You can be a WordPress newbie or an experienced coder, but if you need to take care of your website, you are by definition a WordPress expert.
Mastering WordPress completely can take time. WordPress editors have a vested interest in making WordPress as user-friendly as possible, but to become a WordPress expert, you’ll need to spend some time learning. This learning process is usually through trial and error, and there’s always a chance that mistakes will be made along the way, which is why it’s so important to learn through careful research and the support of others.
However, what makes someone a true WordPress expert is that they have years of experience in the field and have taken the time to study all the complexities that come with running a WordPress website.
WordPress’ experts don’t become experts overnight, just like most professions. In addition to the fact that it requires patience, determination, and hard work, it also requires a lot of time.
Understand how WordPress works
WordPress is a free, versatile, powerful, and straightforward content management system that allows users to create websites and blogs, publish articles, write pages, send e-newsletters, and more. It is popular because it is an open source platform that is easy to understand and control. WordPress can be used for personal blogs, corporate websites or any other type of website. It is based on PHP and MySQL and has a large community of contributors.
You can use WordPress to customize the look of your website. You can choose from thousands of free (or paid) templates.
Because WordPress is so popular, there are a lot of myths about the software that need to be dispelled. Perhaps the most common myth is that WordPress is difficult for people who are not developers. In reality, WordPress is very easy to use. This misconception probably comes from the fact that WordPress doesn’t require any customization. All users have to do is install the software and enter a few parameters.
But how does it work? Essentially, WordPress is a blogging tool that has been customized for all kinds of applications.
WordPress has an administration panel, so you don’t have to spend money on needing a developer to make updates to your site.
Step 1: Assess your knowledge and eliminate gaps
Familiarize yourself with the basics
Of course, you’ll need to learn some basic things in the beginning to know how to work with WordPress.
The first thing you need to do is register and create a web address. The next step is to choose a hosting and appropriate hosting plan for your business needs.
Secondly, you need to learn how to create a homepage, in other words, how to easily turn your blog into a website.
Identify and acquire essential skills
WordPress is the most popular CMS (Content Management System) in the world and powers more than 40% of all websites on the Internet, from simple business sites to e-commerce sites.
Of course, if you want to become the best at using WordPress, you should identify and acquire some essential skills. The first skill is technical proficiency. In other words, depending on the type of work you are doing, you should know various acronyms, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, JS, maybe some MySQL.
Something else is the learning/growing mentality, which means that you should keep up with everything that is happening in the technological world. From front-end design to eCommerce, from plugins to themes, the WordPress platform offers a wide range of areas that require different types of specialized knowledge.
In addition, you should have some basic marketing knowledge, which means knowing who your customers are and providing great customer service accordingly, which includes receiving feedback.
Step 2: Understand how the key elements of WordPress work together
WordPress Core
For beginners, WordPress Core means the WordPress Core files. You should know what the main Core files are and what each of them can do.
Another part of WordPress to take care of is built-in and custom post types and their associated template files. Once you know this, you can create them yourself, which will be different compared to other websites.
There are custom post types plugins, thanks to which you can create custom post types and then code them yourself. 
WordPress Themes
Since using a theme is a must with WordPress, it’s good to know which themes are most popular with WP and what makes each theme special. A number of different premium and free themes are offered on WordPress. Also, make sure that the theme for your website stays current with WordPress Core updates.
It is also useful to understand the difference between child and parent themes. As well as the concept of the WordPress theme framework.
WordPress Plugins
Since the purpose of WordPress plugins is to control functionality, you need to know that there is a plugin for every type of functionality in WP. It is very important that you are familiar with the staples like Yoast SEO, All in one WP migration plugin, WooCommerce, and others that are essential for your business needs.
You can choose from a wide range of free plugins. There are also premium plugins, and they offer you advanced features and support. Plugins that help you organize your content and design are also very helpful.
Step 3: Get to know the customizer and WordPress settings
Thanks to the WordPress customizer, you can drastically change the functionality and look of your website. This includes background image, menus, titles, etc.
On the other hand, WordPress settings are something very important because if you get familiar with it, you can configure your website the way you want. Here, there are different sections like the general screen or settings, the writing screen, the reading screen, the media screen, the discussion screen, etc. where you can do different things to make your website as good as possible.
Step 4: Learn the technical underpinnings of WordPress become debugging master
To become an expert in WordPress, it is not necessary to work with different programming languages. It’s more important to understand the logic behind the code than to know in detail how the actual code works. Understanding the basics of HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript can be very helpful for beginners who want to become experts here.
Also, sometimes things don’t work the way we expect them to, and this is especially true for software. After all, the more sophisticated and complex the code you use for your website, the more likely it is that something won’t run the way we want it to. That’s why WordPress offers debugging mode, which can help you identify and resolve different types of errors.
Step 5: Create content – become an SEO master
SEO is all about managing and designing your blog or website to achieve a top position in the SERPs of search engines like Google, Bing and the like without spending money on advertising.
There are some steps that can help you become an SEO master such as using SEO tools and plugins, conducting SEO research, writing a strategy brief, identifying and researching keywords, planning your network architecture, connecting SEO and social media platforms, digital marketing, and inbound marketing, which means promoting a business through blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.
Step 6: Become a security master
Taking care of online security is an ongoing task for any WordPress site owner. Using a secure connection is an essential part of WordPress security. Always check your browser’s location bar before logging in to make sure your site starts with “https://”, it’s usually green.
Some other things you can do are: keep strong passwords, always keep up with all updates, protect WordPress admin access, choosing the right web hosting is also very important as well as knowing the solution if the malware is detected. You should always clean and organize your files, develop a manual spam filtering policy, avoid plugin vulnerabilities, etc.
Step 7: Learn about the database and database maintenance
One of the most powerful features of WordPress is that it is a CMS that is integrated with a database. In other words, pages are dynamically converted to HTML and populated with content from the database.
It’s helpful to know how post information is stored in the database so you can troubleshoot it when problems arise. Also, it’s important to understand how themes and plugins store their information in the database, as this will help with troubleshooting when you spot them.
One of the advantages is you can add your own custom fields to the database and then integrate them into custom posts and default post types.
Step 8: Understanding of WordPress’ hosting options
Since hosting is an essential element that shows what goes on behind the scenes to keep a website running, you should know the basics of hosting options to choose the best hosting plan for your website.
Some of the hosting options to be familiar with include how hosting works, what different types are available, the most popular companies, and managed hosting.
Step 9: Interact with the WordPress community and give back
What makes WordPress exceptional is the fact that it is an open source platform, in other words, anyone can view the platform’s code. In this respect, everyone has the opportunity to contribute something to the platform.
To become an expert, you should know how to extend and improve the platform. However, you don’t need to be a developer. If you have learned the basics, your ideas, thoughts and enthusiasm will be enough.
Step: 10: Practice and practice some more WordPress!
The basic knowledge is all you need to run your website without any hassles. However, if you want to be a step ahead and have knowledge about advanced features, practice is your best friend.
Applying everything you’ve learned in practice from day to day will greatly help you master your skills and become the best at using everything WordPress has to offer.
Of course, this also means keeping up with all the changes that happen over time.
