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Giles Hales-Tooke
1,888 PointsIs WordPress the best place to start retraining?
Hi,
I've been coding LAMP for over 10 years. I've been a systems manager for four and have worked in some pretty demanding situations. I'm self taught and am aware that I have picked up some bad habits along the way (which means I could well do with revisiting a few tracks to tidy my act up). My long term goals are set, but I need to cover a gap in the short term while financing is secured. I have 4 months until I need to achieve this.
I've made some "in principle" enquires with agencies. They indicate that WordPress development is usually a pretty safe bet to focus on. I've started to cover it here and am finding it pretty straightforward. So I'm thinking about completing that, then brushing up HTML, CSS, Java & PHP before hitting agencies for real.
But before doing all that, I'd like to check with you wonderful people if this seems a prudent approach ... or am I missing something that could bring my plans to a sticky end??
Thanks in advance
2 Answers
Nick Ocampo
15,661 PointsFrom my personal experience working with and for agencies, you're on the right track. WordPress, Drupal and maybe Expression Engine seem to be the most popular CMSs that agencies use (although WordPress is quite a bit more popular while the latter two seem to be fading away).
If you're a PHP guy, I've seen that there has been a lot of interest in people that use the Laravel Framework (there's a course for it here). The Laravel course also introduces MVC concepts and walks you through using Vagrant, which are very both two very good things to know, as they are getting really popular, really fast.
Note: I'm a front-end guy, so I haven't personally gotten very far in the Laravel course, but I've worked at an agency for the last two years and now work at a start-up and have seen growing interest for that in both places.
As for short-term employment, WordPress is definitely the way to go. I've been able to find freelance clients relatively easily for that. I also recommend some of the business courses here to get you started on freelance web development if it's something new to you. I have a pretty sweet contract that I send my clients that you're welcome to check out if you want. Send me your email and I'll shoot it to you if you're interested.
Zac Gordon
Treehouse Guest TeacherI feel that WordPress development is a safe niche on the web to get into. You're right to want to brush up on your HTML, CSS, JS and PHP along the way as well :)
Giles Hales-Tooke
1,888 PointsThanks Zac,
Means a lot to get confirmation from you. Appreciate your response
Giles Hales-Tooke
1,888 PointsGiles Hales-Tooke
1,888 PointsThanks for that Nick - Really helps.
Also appreciate the nod on Laravel. I wrote my own PHP framework years back. Got into Yii a year or so ago. It will be interesting to make the comparison.