26 PART I • Getting Started with WordPress
WORDPRESS AND PHP
From here on, it will help if you know a little bit about PHP, as well as HTML and CSS. If
these are alien concepts to you, be sure to read up on them at least a bit. Two good, albeit
a bit technical, places to start are the official specification documents from the W3C
(www.w3.org) and Zend’s PHP 101 course (http://devzone.zend.com/
article/627). You don’t need to be an expert, but a little knowledge is definitely
needed.WordPress is written in PHP, a popular scripting language offering developers the possibility
to build just about anything. If you’re even the least bit knowledgeable in PHP, you’ll quickly
find your way around WordPress and the various functions that it offers on the plugin and
theme development end of things. That being said, you don’t need any prior PHP experience
to do funky stuff with WordPress. Granted, you won’t be able to create WordPress plugins
without knowing PHP, but you can certainly make things happen with the built-in template
tags used in themes, and that will get you a long way. These template and conditional tags help
developers create things with WordPress without having to write brand-new functions for
everything.Does this sound like Greek to you? Don’t worry, even if you’ve never written a Hello World!
PHP script, you’ll be able to build just about anything content-driven with WordPress before
you’re done with this book.THE WORDPRESS CODEX
The WordPress Codex (see Figure 2-1), which is the manual in wiki form found on
http://codex.wordpress.org, will be very helpful when you start working with the
code. You should become familiar with it and add a bookmark to the main page. Whenever
you branch out from the examples in the coming chapters, or when you want to know
more about a concept, the Codex is where you’ll find the information needed to keep
moving. Whereas the Codex contains basic information and tutorials, you’ll often find
yourself returning to a few reference listings, such as the template tags (http://codex.
wordpress.org/Template_Tags), which are explained shortly, and the function
reference (http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference) for your more
advanced needs.