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Discussion on: I'm an expert in WordPress Development, Ask Me Anything!

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slacle profile image
Sebastian

Traditional theme development vs headless CMS. What are your thoughts?

PHP has been an important language to know for developing WP themes, but is it still worth investing time in learning PHP better? Or would that time better be invested in learning JS better and start thinking more in the direction of WP as a headless CMS?

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thisisthien profile image
Thien Nguyen

I'm investing time to learn JS.

WordPress has an amazing REST API and if you don't want to develop the tranditional themes, you can use WordPress as a headless CMS, then learn some JS frameworks like Vue.js or React.

That's what I'm following today.

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slacle profile image
Sebastian

Thanks for the answer Thien.

I'm also investing time to learn JS now. But what to do about PHP? Should we just forget about it or is there still place for it even in a headless CMS set up? There's the functions file, but is it worth knowing PHP well still?

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thisisthien profile image
Thien Nguyen

If you want to build a theme or a plugin for WordPress, I think you should take time to learn PHP.

is it worth knowing PHP well still?
The answer is yes.

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jjjjcccjjf profile image
endan

Hi Sebastian. I'm not OP, but I want to start a discussion here. Have you used WP as a headless CMS before?

Do you build your own REST API on top of WP or do you utilize the built in WP REST API? Thanks for your thoughts.

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slacle profile image
Sebastian

I haven't used WP as a headless CMS yet, but want to try it.

I did use the REST API once, but for something small. It was just to get details of events that opened up in a modal of a single page site which itself was built the traditional WP way.

I still haven't actually done much with JS frameworks either. Only did a small thing with Vue once. Me and others that I've worked with are used to the traditional way, but WP as a headless CMS is looking very interesting. Especially with Vue.