Learning WordPress development starts with a lot of key questions, including this one: “What language is WordPress written in?” Another common one is “Should I learn PHP or JavaScript first?” WordPress programming languages is a big topic, but we’ll cover all you need to get started.
The answer to “What coding language does WordPress use?” is “Four main ones!” WordPress relies on two declarative languages, HTML and CSS; and on two programming languages, JavaScript and (especially) PHP.
Here, we introduce each of WordPress’s technical languages.
- HTML: What the Web is Made Of
- CSS: Making HTML Look Good
- PHP: The Engine of WordPress
- JavaScript: Programming Web Browsers
Enjoy an Up and Running Sample Chapter
This article has been revised and expanded to include material from our multimedia “learn WordPress development” guide, Up and Running. Like all Up and Running chapters, it includes a video summary, Key Takeaways, a Summary Limerick, and a Quiz to test your understanding.
The most pressing question I had when starting to learning WP dev is: “How much PHP should I learn?”. I had taken a PHP for Web Designers course on Lynda. I thought it was enough. Then I wanted to output the posts on my blog page in a cool way. It took me 2 days to finish that. I learned new concepts that I was never aware of, like pagination, offset etc.
So, I think knowing PHP is not enough, because it is a very unforgiving language. At the start of my learning journey, I saw error pages frequently, and it drove me nuts. If I were to go back, I would have learned PHP much deeper.
Whereas you can get by with basic HTML and CSS. Pretty much everything I learned about those markup languages were through hands-on practice, and Google like crazy along the way.
great post. The distinction between the languages used in WordPress ecossystem was very clear! Thanks
Very good tutorial, you guys really know how to teach on top of knowing your stuff. Well done !
[…] sense of how WordPress does its magic. It’s the key to understanding the unique role of the four major technical languages used in WordPress, and it’s an easy answer to a lot of the most common questions you might have as a WordPress […]
[…] is the first language you need to understand to “get” WordPress, the Text editor, or the web in general. Fortunately, it’s not that […]
[…] weeks ago we talked about the languages you need to know to make or modify WordPress themes. This week we’re focusing specifically on the most important of those languages for theme […]
[…] you’re looking for the follow-up to “The Four Languages…“, have no fear. We’ll talk about the three core concepts you want to understand to […]
About the brazilian band CSS, their name is actually “Cansei de Ser Sexy” (Translates to “I got tired of being sexy”). A fortunate coincidence for developers, they’re actually pretty great, even though their lyrics are pretty hard to translate because of their use of slangs and expressions.
Also, CSS is also a Markup language. Cool for pointing it out on the HTML bit, but you forgot on the CSS.