What Programming Language Is WordPress Primarily Built With?

WordPress is the backbone of over 40% of websites globally, powering everything from personal blogs to massive eCommerce stores. So what’s behind the platform’s ability to deliver powerful functionality and ease of use that users enjoy today? To help you fully understand how WordPress works, it’s important to know the programming language it’s built with. 

What is WordPress?

Before we get into the technical details, let’s briefly discuss what WordPress is and how it works.

WordPress is an open-source CMS that allows users to create and manage websites with minimal coding knowledge. It started as a blogging platform but has transitioned into a tool that supports websites like blogs, portfolios, business sites, and online stores.

WordPress is built on several key components:

• Core: The core files are the heart of WordPress, providing the basic functionality to manage posts, pages, users, and more
• Themes: These control the visual appearance of a WordPress site
• Plugins: Extensions that add additional functionality, from SEO tools to eCommerce integrations
• Database: WordPress relies on a database to store and manage content, users, settings, and other essential data

What Programming Language Is WordPress Primarily Built With?

When you visit a WordPress website, much of what you see is dynamically generated by the server using PHP. PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) is a server-side scripting language that is designed for web development. It processes requests from users and interacts with the database to serve content.

WordPress uses PHP to:

• Render dynamic content: PHP generates the HTML that is sent to the browser by querying the database for posts, pages, and other content.
• Handle user interactions: Whether it’s logging into the site, submitting a comment, or posting new content, PHP is responsible for processing these requests on the server side.
• Generate theme templates: PHP works with WordPress themes to render the content and layout of your website, making the site flexible and customizable.

Basically, WordPress is built around PHP’s ability to interact with databases (specifically MySQL) and dynamically generate content based on user requests.

Why is PHP the Primary for WordPress?

You might wonder why PHP was chosen as the primary language for WordPress. There are several reasons behind this decision:

• Open-source and free: PHP is an open-source language that aligns with WordPress’s commitment to being a free and open-source platform
• Wide server support: PHP is supported by almost all web hosting servers. This makes it a lot easier for anyone to deploy a WordPress site without worrying about compatibility issues
• Flexibility: PHP is known for being highly flexible. Thus, allowing developers to create dynamic and interactive web applications
• Large developer community: PHP has been around for decades and it has a massive community of developers. This means that there are plenty of resources, frameworks, and support available

WordPress Frontend: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

While PHP handles the backend, the frontend of WordPress websites is built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Let’s discuss each of these below:

• HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is used to structure the content of a WordPress page. It defines the headings, paragraphs, images, links, and other elements that are displayed in the browser.
• CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is used to control the design and layout of WordPress websites. From fonts and colors to spacing and positioning, CSS is responsible for ensuring your site looks great on all devices.
• JavaScript is used for client-side interactivity. It helps to create features like image sliders, form validation, popups, and AJAX-powered content updates (loading more posts without reloading the page).

These frontend technologies work in tandem with PHP to ensure that your website is both functional and visually appealing.

MySQL Database

WordPress also uses MySQL as its relational database management system (RDBMS). MySQL is used to store and retrieve all the data for your WordPress site such as:

• Posts, pages, and custom content types
• User data (usernames, passwords, roles, etc.)
• Site settings and configurations
• Comments, categories, and tags

PHP interacts with MySQL by sending SQL queries to retrieve the necessary data. This interaction between PHP and the database is what makes WordPress sites flexible and able to display content that changes based on user requests. So when a user visits a blog post, PHP queries the database for the content of that post and displays it on the page using the HTML and CSS frameworks.

Wrap Up

WordPress is primarily built with PHP, supported by MySQL, and enhanced by HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for frontend functionality. The combination of these technologies is what enables WordPress to be the powerful and dynamic CMS platform that we all know today.

Understanding the programming languages behind WordPress can help you gain a deeper knowledge of how it works and why it’s such a popular choice for developers and website owners.