Free WordPress Development Courses

Welcome! Our free online WordPress developer courses deliver thorough, carefully sequenced introductions to core topics in WordPress development. Each one of these WordPress developer training courses will take you step-by-step through a crucial topic that will help unlock the world of WordPress development for you. (Not sure where to dive in? Start with Learn WordPress Development: The Basic Course.)

And if you're enjoying the free WordPress developer trainings here, you'll love Up and Running, our flagship "learn WordPress development" premium course. For anyone looking to learn WordPress development clearly, thoroughly, and quickly, Up and Running is the place to start.

The Best Way to Learn WordPress Development

Get Up and Running Today

Up and Running is our complete “learn WordPress development” course. Now in its updated and expanded Third Edition, it’s helped hundreds of happy buyers learn WordPress development the fast, smart, and thorough way.

Here’s what they have to say:

wordpress freelancer caroline “Other courses I’ve tried nearly always lack clear explanations for why WordPress does things a certain way, or how things work together.

Up and Running does all of this, and everything is explained clearly and in easy-to-understand language.”

–Caroline, WordPress freelancer

Up and Running really brought everything together for me. I already knew of some of the pieces, but the course filled in the gaps and provided a proper understanding of how WordPress really works.

I found it easy to follow, delivering just the right depth of knowledge in the right sequence.”

–Hugues, freelance web developer

Our Most Popular WordPress Developer Training Courses

All Free WordPress Development Courses


Course: WordPress Theme Development (Core Concepts)

person learning wordpress theme development

Welcome! WordPress themes are one of the most important topics that one must understand to be good at WordPress development. Themes underlie the entire visual half of WordPress sites, but often grow to do even more. Because of the visual importance, they’re a great place to dive in if you’re interested in getting to the “code-side” of WordPress. I myself “cut my teeth” on WordPress themes back in 2007 and 2008. WordPress themes were where I started to come to grips with the power (and limits) of PHP, CSS, and HTML. So this course is great for newbies, and those just looking to confirm their understanding of the whole system.


Using Custom Taxonomies and Custom Fields in WordPress Development

This course covers the key points of two of WordPress’s most powerful APIs for defining custom post data: custom fields (also called post meta), and custom taxonomies. The course introduces each tool, and then—since some problems can be addressed by either tool—covers practical guidelines for when to use custom fields and when to use custom taxonomies.





Course: Working with the Command Line and WP-CLI

When we think about “using a computer,” we usually think in terms of graphical user interfaces, or GUIs: interfaces (like Microsoft Word, the Mac OS, or the WordPress admin interface) that are specially and attractively designed, that have programs and windows and tabs that visibly open and close, and that let you click things and drag things and drop things and hover things.


Course: A Complete Introduction to the WordPress Hooks System

wordpress hook | wordpress action and filter

This course covers one of WordPress’s most crucial and widely used systems: Hooks, including both actions and filters. We introduce Hooks as an event-driven system, present the key concepts and terminology you need to understand this system, and dig deep into how to use hooks in your own code—including hooking in your own functions, removing previously hooked functions, and creating your own action and filter hooks for others to use.