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You’ll need at least a rudimentary understanding of HTML and some knowledge of cascading style sheets (CSS) to make use of the theme and user experience sections of the book. Experience in writing and debugging PHP code is a prerequisite for more advanced developer sections, although if you’re just going to make changes based on the samples in this book, you can use the code as a template and learn on the fly. A basic knowledge of databases, especially the syntax and semantics of MySQL, is in order to make the most out of the chapter on data management as well as develop plugins that need to save data.

It’s helpful to have an interactive development environment in which to view PHP code, or PHP code sprinkled through HTML pages. Choosing a set of developer tools often borders on religion and deep personal preference (and we know plenty of coders who believe that vi constitutes a development environment). Some of the more user-friendly tools will make walking through the WordPress code easier if you want to see how functions used in the examples appear in the core.

Most important, if you want to use the code samples and examples in this book, you’ll need a WordPress website in which to install them. Chapter 1 covers some basic WordPress hosting options as well as the simple mechanics of downloading the components and installing WordPress on a desktop or test machine for debugging and closer inspection. Chapter 3 covers how to install and configure WordPress locally on your computer.

Finally, some people might argue that to really take advantage of WordPress you need to be able to write, but that ignores the basic beauty of the WordPress platform: It takes the power of the printing press to an individual level. This book isn’t about what you say (or might say); it’s about how you’re going to get those ideas onto the web and how the world will see them and interact with your blog.