Learning new tech can be a daunting task. How do you determine what tech is worth learning? One metric I like to use is how much is this tech being used. If you look at WordPress the data doesn’t lie. Upwards of 40% of the internet is still run with WordPress. That is a large market that you don’t want to miss out on. The value proposition you can offer to potential clients is huge as well. They can add more content without much technical knowledge with a page builder like divi , elementor , or the default WordPress block editor. They can also start their own blog. The reason I created this site with WordPress was to learn it.
The inspiration to learn it came from this video by Aaaron Jack:
Learning for learnings sake is usually a bad thing. If you learn something but never use it then there really wasn’t a point in learning it. So I’m trying to use WordPress to learn it. I don’t want to spend my time creating a content management system for myself when I could learn one that is already widely used. I like gatsby blogs and hugo blogs but I think that WordPress can be a good long term solution. Outsourcing content can be easier and the WordPress community is always growing and building new things for the platform.
Don’t get me wrong though learning other tech is always a great thing. You just need a reason to learn it. If you want to build your resume and put some new skills on there, go learn something. And no technology will replace a good foundational understanding. Even with WordPress you’ll still find yourself messing with css styles here and there. Another webdev path that I came across was Traversy Media’s Web Development in 2021. This one is pretty good if you’re looking into what you should learn: