I wanted to write this post to articulate the difference between simple WordPress development and custom WordPress engineering. The premise is that there are a lot of WordPress developers out there who can build a $5k website for your standard small business (i.e. a restaurant, a flooring company, etc.) – but there is a different skill set required for building larger, custom WordPress websites.

I have great respect for all developers, but the truth is, we are looking to hire for our WordPress team at Exygy, and because of the custom WordPress work we do for a variety of clients (from small nonprofits to large corporate clients), we need to find WordPress engineers.

Here is a list of tools and practices used by WordPress engineers that I and several members of the WPSFO Meetup group came up with:

Justin Carboneau @ Exygy:

A WordPress engineer uses modern tools like Grunt, Gulp, Git, Sass, WP CLI, etc.

A WordPress engineer uses modern workflows such as developing locally, and pushing code via Git to a staging site and production site.

A WordPress engineer structures her themes in an elegant and intuitive way – rather than throwing all the code into functions.php.

A WordPress engineer has a neck beard. (just kidding – that’s only a stereotype)

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Josh Visick @ Visick Design

A WordPress engineer can build the same project in another framework like Rails or Symfony and knows WHY building it in WordPress is the best approach.

A WordPress engineer knows the strengths and limitations of using WordPress as a foundation and architects the project in a way to leverage the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses.

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James Hipkin @ Red8 Interactive

A WP Engineer uses a house multifunction plugin to turn on common functionality as required. This allows them to be confident that the code is clean and maintained, and that it’s as light as possible.

A WP Engineer doesn’t use slider plugins. Even the best are bloated. They create a CPT to capture the data required and add only as much JS as is required to animate the slider per the design requirements.

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Antonio Lettieri @ HouseCanary, Inc

A WordPress engineer knows what mu-plugins are and uses them appropriately.

A WordPress engineer is stoked about core api.

A WordPress engineer thinks in terms of components and modularity.

A WordPress engineer leverages built in WP helper functions like _n().

A WordPress engineer uses vagrant, docker to build an idempotent dev environment that can be shared among other developers.

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Felicia Betancourt @ Firefly Web Services

A WordPress engineer optimizes performance by caching pages and objects on the server.

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Anca Mosoiu @ Tech Liminal

WordPress Engineers use the least amount of effort to build simple, maintainable products, that can be deployed in the appropriate environment, and last long enough to solve the problem they were intended to solve.

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Chris Burbridge @ Chris Burbridge Consulting

A WordPress engineer codes the “WP way”. (Enqueing, using existing copies of libraries if available, honoring the template hierarchy and all of that.)

A WordPress engineer has a set browser testing list and tests on real mobile devices and not just emulators.

A WordPress engineer has an approval process.

To me, it’s also about not just trying to code everything myself, but see what reliable libraries are out there (a lot of newer developers like the ego gratification of coding everything themselves). To me it’s about leveraging as much as it’s about coding, when it is wise to do so.

Being curious about what’s new and current, in development methods, tools, and so on.

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Thanks to all my WPSFO colleagues for the great contributions to this post. If you are a WordPress engineer looking to use your skills to make a difference, check out our job posting here.