My Journey with WordPress

 Previously (the background)

Previously I have been working as a marketer for several companies since 2013. It was an interesting and creative kind of area, but after a while, everything became centralized around ROAS. So creativity just died. As a part of my job, I have created many email campaigns and some client processes based on if-else statements. This I what I liked the most. But nowadays, everything is about PPC and profit. Also, it takes a full-time job (and a bit more ) to keep up with the continuous daily changes of the ads manager applications. I've wanted some changes wanted some challenging and creative things to do.

I have started my journey with WordPress back in 2016. I've finished a web design course that worked with WordPress templates. 

We simply just modified the template. No child theme, no CSS frameworks just some little modifications. 

After I have finished the course, I have started to apply to companies for a job. I thought I know everything about WordPress. I was so naive. 

Now

Unfortunately, I could not apply for the Computer Science department of the university or college in my studies.  But I have been always interested in programming since I have created websites with Yahoo's Geocities application back in the 2000s. So I wanted some changes. I had less interim in the marketing industry.

So, besides my regular job I've started the create websites for my clients after my work hours. I have learned a lot about coding, clients, running a business, using tools, etc. Of course, first I've started with free templates and the "Elementor and Divi" period came up. Also tried several other builders, but later on, I have started to learn theme and plugin development via code. 

Today I am still on the (beginning of the) road to mastering WordPress theme and plugin development. But now I know a lot more. Nowadays I am already working with CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, Tailwind, Automatic, and so on. Have some knowledge of PHP, Javascript, MySQL, Node.js, npm, gulp, yarn, etc. 

For client sites, I use Oxygen Builder as my main tool because it is more flexible and more developer-focused (and faster to work with). 

The future

For this year I've decided to get back to finish the two-years programming school (second year), and also to develop my skills to become a full-stack developer. Also want to dive in more deeply into custom WordPress development. I hope I do it all the way through.

Only a few weeks passed in 2022, but I can see that this will be a much harder year than it was before. But It will be a cool journey anyway :)