WordPress is the dominant CMS on the web powering nearly 40% of all websites. Learning WordPress is a great way for programmers and non-programmers alike to get started in web development, but where do you begin?

1. Read the WordPress "Where to Start" Guide.

WordPress has published a Where to Start guide on their website. It is highly recommended reading before you dive into your first WordPress website. The quick guide provides 4 steps to getting your first WordPress website up and running and customized.

2. Find a great WordPress theme.

To really make your WordPress website your own, you should use a theme that has a lot of the custom CSS styling and optimized code already included. WordPress themes largely come in 2 varieties; Free and Premium. The WordPress Theme Directory includes a lot of great themes that are all open source and free to use or modify. This is a great place to start and will give you the opportunity to experiment with customizing your theme using custom written code or via custom CSS.

There are various places to find Premium WordPress themes. One of the most popular is Themeforest's WordPress category. A simple search on Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo will reveal various other places where Premium themes are sold. Becareful of a few things here. First of all, there is a difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org and themes created for one may not work on the other. If you are hosting your WordPress site elsewhere do not use WordPress.com themes.

3 Use Plugins for An Amazing Experience.

Make your website come alive with full functionality typically reserved for large brands by leveraging the power of WordPress plugins. Like Themes, WordPress plugins come in Free and Premium varieties. Free plugins are required to be open source to be listed on the WordPress plugin repository.

Premium plugins do not have to be open source or follow other rules set by WordPress. This allows premium plugin developers to create amazing experiences wtihout losing ownership of their code. You can find an big selection of Premium WordPress plugins on Code Canyon.

Another great resource for discovering new plugins is this list of top WordPress plugins which includes both free and premium plugins for various needs. The list only includes plugins reviewed by WordPress experts and is broken down by functionality along with various pieces of information to help you make a decision.

Beware of using too many plugins or using the wrong plugins. Some WordPress plugisn can slow down your website reducing sales and causing other issues. Others can cause conflict with your theme's code breaking parts of your site. And, still others can stop being developed and get overtaken by malicious hackers. Read up on a plugin, review the changelog, and examine the code yourself to ensure security and eliminate negative impacts on your website.

4 Update and Experiment.

WordPress is constantly being updated by the open source development team and by employees of Automattic, the founding company behind the CMS. WordPress is also a PHP-based system and relies on MySQL/MariaDB which are also always updating. This means for successful WordPress development, you likely need to stay up-to-date on the changes to the WordPress core, PHP, and MySQL/MariaDB. You can see a list of WordPress versions on the Codex here.

You may also find it useful to build out a dev or experimentation server. Replicate your hosting environment on a new server and copy your WordPress install over to there. Use this to test new plugins, experiment with custom code, and test new layouts for your content.