WordPress

This content was generated with the assistance of AI and should be verified against the official documentation before being relied on in production.

This sub-section’s WordPress bibliography lists the reference material consulted while preparing these pages.

WordPress is an open-source content management system written in PHP that stores its content in MySQL or MariaDB and is extended through themes, plugins and blocks. This sub-section of CMS (Content Management System) documents self-hosted WordPress, the software distributed by WordPress.org; the hosted WordPress.com service is a different product and appears only where the difference matters. It covers the whole life of a site: installing and using it, administering the servers it runs on, building block and classic themes, writing plugins and blocks, working with its APIs from PHP, JavaScript and the command line, delivering it through CI/CD and containers, and using it as a headless back end or as a source of tools for AI agents.

The pages are written for four audiences:

  • site owners and editors, who write content, manage users and choose plugins and themes from the dashboard

  • administrators, who install, configure, secure, back up, scale and update WordPress on Apache or nginx

  • theme developers, who build block themes with theme.json, templates and patterns, or maintain classic themes

  • plugin and block developers, who extend WordPress with hooks, custom post types, REST routes, blocks and the Interactivity, Bindings and Abilities APIs

The running scenario: Lumen Press

Every example builds one site for Lumen Press, a fictitious independent publishing house. The local and staging site is lumenpress.test and production is lumenpress.example. The editorial team has an administrator, the editor maria.editor, the author tom.author and the catalogue manager lena.catalogue, who holds the custom lp_catalogue_manager role. Across the sub-section the site gains:

  • a news blog, static pages (About, Contact, Submissions) and a book catalogue: the custom post type lp_book under /books/, the taxonomies lp_genre and lp_series, and the meta fields lp_isbn, lp_pages, lp_published_on and lp_stock ("The Lighthouse Ledger", ISBN 978-1-23456-789-7, is the book most examples use)

  • the block theme lumen (templates, template parts, patterns, theme.json version 3, the "Paper" and "Midnight" style variations and section styles), its child theme lumen-child, and a classic theme lumen-classic used only to teach classic themes and the migration to blocks

  • the plugin lumen-catalog (namespace Lumen\Catalog, Composer PSR-4 autoloading), with a settings screen, a shortcode, the REST namespace lumen/v1, the WP-CLI command wp lumen import, a cron job that syncs stock from a fictitious distributor every six hours, a personal-data exporter and translations

  • the blocks lumen/book-card (static), lumen/latest-books (dynamic), lumen/series-shelf (hybrid), lumen/book-shelf (parent with block context), lumen/wishlist (Interactivity API), lumen/local-bookshop (a hooked block) and lumen/call-to-action (registered from PHP only), plus a Block Bindings source for the book meta

  • operations: wp-env and Docker Compose locally, staging and production servers, a Redis object cache, nginx, backups, and a Multisite variant for the imprints Lumen Kids and Lumen Noir

  • a Next.js reader app over the REST API, and the abilities lumen/get-book and lumen/summarize-book exposed to AI agents through the MCP Adapter

Map of Lumen Press: WordPress 7.1 core in the centre, the lumen-catalog plugin, the lumen themes, the lumen blocks, a Next.js reader app, AI agents through the MCP Adapter, and the operations stack

Pages link to each other instead of repeating set-up steps: the standard local stack is described once in Local Development Environments, and the database a fresh site creates is inspected in Database Schema.

Version baseline

The examples were tested on WordPress 7.1.3, released on 2026-10-06. WordPress 7.1.4, a security-only release published on 2026-10-28, is the current release and the one to run in production; it changes no API, so every example applies to it unchanged. WordPress 7.2 is in beta and planned for 2026-12-08; where a page mentions a 7.2 feature (such as the Secrets API or the "Ipsum" default theme) it is labelled as upcoming. In WordPress numbering, X.Y together is a major release (6.9, 7.0 and 7.1 are consecutive majors) and Z is a maintenance or security release; see Versions and Release Cycle.

The rest of the baseline:

Component Version used in this sub-section

PHP

7.4 minimum (since WordPress 7.0); 8.3 or later recommended; the examples run on PHP 8.4

Database

MariaDB 11.8 in the examples; see Requirements and Hosting for the differing official minimums

theme.json

Version 3, schema https://schemas.wp.org/wp/7.1/theme.json

block.json

apiVersion 3, schema https://schemas.wp.org/wp/7.1/block.json

Gutenberg plugin

24.2.0, for features not yet merged into core

@wordpress/scripts

37.0.0 (unit tests run on Vitest since 36)

@wordpress/create-block

5.0.0

@wordpress/env

12.0.0

@wordpress/interactivity

8.0.0

WP-CLI

2.12.0

WordPress Coding Standards

3.4.1

Versions, release dates and links on these pages were checked on 2026-10-28. Older advice found in books, tutorials and answers often predates block themes, theme.json, bcrypt password hashing (6.8) or the PHP 7.4 minimum; Outdated Advice lists the corrections in one place.

Reading paths

Pick the goal closest to yours and read the pages in order; each path assumes only the pages before it.

The sub-section, at a glance:

mindmap root((WordPress)) Getting Started Architecture and versions Requirements and installation Local development Database schema Using WordPress Block editor and content Users, roles and settings Site Editor and patterns Plugins, SEO, migration Administration wp-config.php and web servers Updates, security, backups Caching, scaling, WP-Cron Email, debugging, Multisite Themes Block themes and theme.json Templates, patterns, fonts Classic and hybrid themes Plugins Hooks and security Post types and metadata Settings, roles, i18n, privacy Blocks block.json and registration Static and dynamic blocks Bindings, hooks, Interactivity APIs and Data WP_Query and options REST API Media, rewrite, auth Tooling and Delivery WP-CLI and Composer Testing and CI/CD Containers and Playground Cloud Deployment at Scale Managed database, media, cache EKS, OpenTofu, Helm Releases and migration Headless and AI Headless front ends Abilities and MCP AI Client

Run a site

  1. Introduction and Architecture

  2. Requirements and Hosting

  3. Installation

  4. Dashboard and Admin Screens

  5. Block Editor for Authors

  6. Posts and Pages and Media Library

  7. Users, Roles and Profiles

  8. Settings Screens

  9. Site Editor and Global Styles

  10. Choosing and Managing Plugins and Themes

  11. SEO, Analytics and Privacy

  12. Updates and Auto-Updates and Backups and Disaster Recovery

Administer servers

  1. Requirements and Hosting

  2. Installation

  3. wp-config.php Reference

  4. Web Servers: Apache and nginx

  5. File Permissions and Filesystem

  6. Security Hardening

  7. Updates and Auto-Updates

  8. Backups and Disaster Recovery

  9. Performance and Caching

  10. WP-Cron and Scheduled Tasks and Email Delivery

  11. Debugging, Site Health and Troubleshooting

  12. WP-CLI

  13. Scaling and High Availability and Multisite Networks

  14. Cloud Reference Architecture and Managed Database: RDS and Aurora

  15. Media: S3 Offload, EFS and CloudFront and Object Cache, Sessions and Cron in a Cluster

  16. EKS Infrastructure with OpenTofu and Deploying on EKS with Helm

  17. Releases, Upgrades and Autoscaling on Kubernetes, Migrating from a Single Server and Google Cloud, Azure and Alternatives to Kubernetes

Build a theme

  1. Local Development Environments

  2. Themes Overview

  3. Templates and Template Parts

  4. Template Hierarchy

  5. theme.json Settings and theme.json Styles

  6. Typography and Fonts

  7. Theme Patterns

  8. Style Variations and Section Styles

  9. Navigation and Menus

  10. Child Themes

  11. Create Block Theme and Version Control

  12. Theme Accessibility and Releasing

  13. For an existing classic theme: Classic Theme Anatomy and The Loop, then Hybrid Themes and Migration to Block Themes

Build plugins and blocks

  1. Local Development Environments

  2. Plugin Fundamentals

  3. Hooks: Actions and Filters

  4. Security for Developers

  5. Custom Post Types and Taxonomies and Metadata and Custom Fields

  6. Administration Menus and Settings API

  7. WP_Query and the Database API

  8. Block Development Environment

  9. block.json and Registration

  10. Static and Dynamic Blocks

  11. Attributes, Supports and InnerBlocks

  12. Interactivity API

  13. REST API: Extending It

  14. Internationalization

  15. Coding Standards and Static Analysis and Testing

  16. Publishing to the Plugin Directory

Go headless and use AI

  1. Introduction and Architecture

  2. Custom Post Types and Taxonomies

  3. REST API: Using It

  4. Authentication and Login API

  5. REST API: Extending It

  6. Headless WordPress

  7. Abilities API and MCP Adapter

  8. AI Client and Connectors

What’s covered

The groups below follow the navigation. The last three pages gather material from the whole sub-section.

Getting Started

Using WordPress

Administration

Block Themes

Classic Themes

Plugin Development

Block Development

APIs & Data

Tooling & Delivery

Cloud Deployment at Scale

Headless & AI

Summary pages

  • Outdated Advice: claims in older books and tutorials that no longer hold for WordPress 7.1, each with the current behaviour and the page that explains it

  • Comparison & Decision Guide: block or classic theme, plugin or theme code, static or dynamic block, REST or GraphQL, traditional or headless, single site or Multisite, and similar choices side by side

  • Cheat Sheet (PDF): a one-page summary of the sub-section to download and print

Related material elsewhere on this site

WordPress shares its language, database and infrastructure with other sections of this site. The pages below go deeper into topics these pages only touch. Online shops built on WooCommerce belong to the WooCommerce sub-section of E-commerce rather than to this sub-section.

Page Why it is relevant here

PHP Reference

The language of core, themes and plugins

Composer and Packages

Background for Composer-Based WordPress and PSR-4 autoloading in lumen-catalog

Testing with PHPUnit and Pest

PHPUnit itself, before the WordPress test suite in Testing

Static Analysis and Refactoring

PHPStan and Rector beyond the WordPress rulesets

OPcache, JIT and Performance

The PHP side of Performance and Caching

Cryptography, Hashing and Passwords

password_hash() and bcrypt, which WordPress uses since 6.8

PHP and Laravel

A PHP framework, for applications that outgrow a CMS

SQL Reference

The SQL behind $wpdb and the WordPress tables

Redis Reference

The persistent object cache used by Lumen Press

Docker

Images, Compose and volumes used by the local and container pages

Kubernetes

Deployments, storage and ingress for the Kubernetes variant

OAuth Reference

Single sign-on and token flows beyond application passwords

JMeter

Load-testing a site before scaling it

React Reference

The library the block editor and every block’s editor script are built with

Next.js

The framework of the Lumen Press headless reader app

E2E Testing in the Browser

Playwright, which the WordPress end-to-end utilities build on

Web Accessibility

WCAG background for accessible themes and blocks

Media Optimization for the Web

Image formats, responsive images and lazy loading

What is CORS?

Cross-origin REST requests from a headless front end

Model Context Protocol (MCP)

The protocol behind the MCP Adapter

Web Frameworks Comparison

Where front-end frameworks fit next to a CMS

Backend Frameworks Comparison

Server-side frameworks as an alternative to a CMS

Bibliography

Every source below was consulted while preparing this sub-section. Each entry links to its official website, and the books link to their publisher’s page. Individual pages list the subset they derive from under their own References heading. An entry marked "(unverified)" could not be opened from the authoring environment (the site refused automated requests); the link is the one the official documentation uses, but it was not re-checked on 2026-10-28.

Books

These books were compared with the official documentation. Where they disagree with the current documentation, the official documentation wins, and the pages say so in their own words.

Official documentation

WordPress.org user documentation

WordPress.org releases, news and project pages

Learn WordPress

Advanced Administration Handbook

Theme Handbook

Plugin Handbook

Block Editor Handbook and schemas

Common APIs Handbook

REST API Handbook

WP-CLI command reference

Coding Standards Handbook

Playground documentation

WordPress Developer Blog

Code Reference

Functions

Hooks

Classes and methods

Files

Code Reference home

Make WordPress

Core team: dev notes, field guides and Trac

Hosting Handbook

Themes Team and Plugins Team

WP-CLI Handbook

Project, security and test teams

Source repositories and packages

WordPress core source

Gutenberg repository

Other WordPress and WP-CLI repositories

npm packages

Docker images

Third-party repositories

Ecosystem

Plugin and theme directory listings

WordPress ecosystem projects

PHP, Composer and testing tools

Databases, web servers and operations

Front end, search and web standards

Cloud deployment at scale

These sources were consulted for the pages of the Cloud Deployment at Scale group; each entry links to its official website.

WordPress

Amazon Web Services

Databases, caches and queues

GitHub

Google Cloud

Helm

Kubernetes

Kubernetes add-ons

Microsoft Azure

OpenTofu and Terraform

Web server, PHP and runtime