Author: Prashant Baldha

WordPress continues to dominate the web development landscape, powering over 43.5% of all websites globally as of 2025. This comprehensive guide explores the latest trends, best practices, and opportunities in WordPress development for 2025.

The Evolution of WordPress: Major Updates and Features

WordPress has undergone significant transformations in 2025, with WordPress 6.8 “Cecil” being the latest major release launched on April 15, 2025. This version introduces several groundbreaking features that modernize the platform:

Key Features in WordPress 6.8

Style Book Enhancements: The Style Book now offers a cleaner, structured layout with clearer labels, making it easier to edit site styles. It’s also available in select Classic themes that have editor-styles or a theme.json file.

Speculative Loading: This innovative feature preloads pages when users hover over or click links, significantly improving site performance. The feature works exclusively in modern browsers without impacting older ones.

Enhanced Security: WordPress 6.8 introduces bcrypt password hashing, which increases the computational effort required to crack passwords, providing better security protection.

Performance Improvements: The update includes over 100 accessibility fixes and performance enhancements, with smarter query caching that reduces database strain for high-traffic sites.

Top WordPress Development Trends for 2025

1. AI-Powered WordPress Development

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing WordPress development in 2025. AI-powered tools are now integrated into the platform through plugins and themes, enabling users to generate content, images, layouts, and entire websites faster than ever before.

Popular AI plugins like AI Engine provide comprehensive AI capabilities, including chatbots, content generation, image creation, and translation services. These tools seamlessly connect WordPress with leading AI providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Hugging Face.

2. Full Site Editing (FSE) Becomes the Standard

Block-first development has matured significantly in 2025, with the Block Editor finally becoming the default for serious WordPress development. Most modern themes are now built as block themes, featuring full Site Editor support, responsive layouts, and deeply integrated global styles.

Full Site Editing allows users to edit every aspect of their website using the block editor, democratizing website design for non-developers. This shift moves away from traditional themes toward more dynamic and modular design possibilities.

3. Rise of Headless WordPress Architecture

Headless WordPress is gaining significant traction in 2025, separating content management from frontend presentation. This architecture enables developers to use modern JavaScript frameworks like React, Vue.js, or Angular for frontend development while maintaining WordPress as a robust content management system.

Benefits of headless WordPress include:

• Superior performance: Static site generation eliminates database queries during user requests
• Enhanced security: Reduced attack surface with separated frontend and backend
• Unlimited design flexibility: Freedom to choose any frontend technology
• Multi-platform content distribution: Content can be served to websites, mobile apps, and IoT devices

4. Enhanced Performance and Security Focus

WordPress development in 2025 emphasizes performance optimization and security hardening. Key practices include:

Performance Optimization:

• Implementing caching plugins like WP Rocket or WP-Optimize
• Using Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) for faster global content delivery
• Optimizing images with compression tools
• Minifying CSS and JavaScript files

Security Best Practices:

• Enabling two-factor authentication (2FA) for all admin users
• Implementing strong password policies
• Regular updates of WordPress core, themes, and plugins
• Using security plugins like Wordfence or Sucuri

WordPress Development Best Practices for 2025

Coding Standards and Architecture

Following WordPress coding standards is crucial for maintainable, scalable code. The official WordPress Coding Standards cover five key areas:

1. PHP Standards: Utilizing PHP 7.4+ features, following WordPress-specific conventions
2. HTML Standards: Promoting structured and semantic markup
3. JavaScript Standards: Ensuring effective client-side functionality
4. CSS Standards: Maintaining consistent styling approaches
5. Accessibility Standards: Ensuring inclusive and user-friendly designs

Modern Development Workflow

Git plays a prime role in modern WordPress development workflows, enabling collaboration and maintaining high coding standards. Essential tools include:

• Local Development: Tools like Local WP, WordPress Studio, and XAMPP for local testing
• Version Control: Git for tracking changes and collaboration
• Build Tools: Gulp or Webpack for automating tasks like Sass compilation and minification
• Code Quality: PHP_CodeSniffer for enforcing coding standards

Plugin and Theme Development

Choose plugins wisely by selecting frequently updated options with excellent user ratings. For custom development:

• Use object-oriented programming (OOP) for better modularity
• Implement proper error handling with WordPress debug logging
• Never modify core WordPress files – extend functionality using hooks and filters
• Use child themes for customizations to preserve update compatibility

Career Opportunities in WordPress Development

Salary Landscape

WordPress development offers competitive salaries across different markets:

India: The average annual salary ranges from ₹2-4 lakhs for entry-level positions to ₹9-20 lakhs for senior roles and architects. WordPress developers can expect:

• Entry-Level (0-2 years): ₹2-3 lakhs
• Mid-Level (3-7 years): ₹4-6 lakhs
• Senior Level (5-9 years): ₹6-9 lakhs
• Expert/Architect (8+ years): ₹9-20 lakhs

United States: WordPress developers earn an average of $84,542 annually, with top earners making up to $148,000.

Job Market Trends

The WordPress job market remains robust with opportunities spanning:

• Remote WordPress Development: Average salary range of $4.6k-$6.8k per month globally
• Full-Stack WordPress Development: Combining WordPress with modern frameworks
• WordPress Consulting: Helping businesses optimize their WordPress implementations
• Plugin and Theme Development: Creating commercial products for the WordPress ecosystem

Skills in High Demand

Essential skills for WordPress developers in 2025 include:

• Modern PHP: PHP 8+ with object-oriented programming
• JavaScript Frameworks: React, Vue.js for headless implementations
• Block Development: Creating custom Gutenberg blocks
• Performance Optimization: Core Web Vitals and site speed optimization
• Security Implementation: WordPress hardening and security best practices
• AI Integration: Implementing AI-powered features and workflows

WordPress Community and Open Source Contributions

The Power of Open Source

WordPress remains committed to its open source philosophy, operating under the GPL license that provides four core freedoms:

1. Freedom to run the program for any purpose
2. Freedom to study and modify the program
3. Freedom to redistribute
4. Freedom to distribute modified versions

Community Contributions

The WordPress community continues to thrive with significant contributions:

• 924 contributors from 73 countries contributed to WordPress 6.8
• Major companies like GoDaddy invested $500,000 in WordPress community support
• Five for the Future initiative encourages organizations to contribute 5% of their WordPress-related resources back to the project

Getting Involved

Contributing to WordPress offers numerous benefits:

• Professional Development: Gaining experience with enterprise-level code
• Networking: Connecting with developers worldwide
• Giving Back: Supporting the platform that powers millions of websites
• Career Advancement: Building reputation and skills in the WordPress ecosystem

The Future of WordPress Development

Emerging Technologies

WordPress development in 2025 is shaped by several emerging technologies:

Artificial Intelligence: AI integration will continue expanding, with more sophisticated content generation, automated testing, and intelligent user experiences.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): WordPress sites increasingly adopt PWA features for mobile-first experiences.

Serverless Architecture: Integration with serverless platforms for improved scalability and cost-effectiveness.

Challenges and Opportunities

Performance Requirements: Modern web standards demand faster loading times, pushing developers toward optimization techniques and modern architectures.

Security Concerns: Growing cyber threats require continuous security improvements and best practices.

Accessibility Standards: Increasing focus on inclusive design and accessibility compliance.

Conclusion

WordPress development in 2025 represents an exciting convergence of traditional content management strength with cutting-edge technologies. The platform’s evolution toward AI integration, headless architecture, and enhanced performance capabilities positions it as a powerful choice for modern web development.

For developers entering or advancing in WordPress development, the opportunities are vast. From mastering Full Site Editing and block development to implementing AI-powered features and headless architectures, the skill set continues to expand. The strong community support, extensive documentation, and commitment to open source principles ensure that WordPress remains a valuable platform for building the web’s future.

Whether you’re a beginner exploring WordPress development or an experienced developer looking to modernize your skills, 2025 offers unprecedented opportunities to create impactful, high-performing websites that meet the demands of today’s digital landscape.

The Block Protocol is a new specification aiming to make blocks reusable across applications. It is a standard, common language the helps reuse the blocks.

The Block protocol enables toy to use block by any application. The Block protocol is a middle-man between blocks and applications, so any application embed any block.

Often, WordPress plugin users come for support on WordPress.org, saying that this feature is not working. At that time, the plugin author should debug the plugin processes. According to WordPress forum policy, the plugin author can’t ask for WordPress site admin dashboard or FTP credential access. At this time, the plugin author gives different suggestions for tweaks, but they will not work. Now, the plugin author has a dilemma about what to do. At that time, the debug log is the friend of the plugin author and the plugin support personnel. The plugin support personnel can ask for the debug log, and it is legal according to WordPress support forum policy. Often complex processing popular plugins write the debug log.

What ought to write the debug log?

The plugin should write what it is processing. The backup plugin writes a new log file for a backup, restore, and migration. The plugin should write the log what it is doing. If anything is failing, it should be written in the log file. Every if-then condition should be written with a detailed description, and it will pay off you in the future.

Please avoid writing short form words like “a”, “b” and “c” etc. in the log file

How to write the debug log?

There should be a method called log() in the main plugin class. It takes arguments like text, debug level, and process id or nonce.

For each new process id or nonce, a new log file will be written.

The debug levels are of the following types:

• Info
• Error

Should the debug log auto cleared?

The X days old log should be cleared automatically, otherwise it consumes a lot amount of space. The X can be 30 or anything that is suitable for your plugin. To clear the log files, you can setup the WP Cron.

There are a few tools that improve your plugin code quality. I have described them below:

For Sticking to one Coding Standard:

The Plugin code should follow one code standard. More than one developer is working on the same plugin. Coding Standard is giving feel like all code developed by a Developer.

If we follow a coding standard, there is a low chance to produce a buggy code and We can understand the code easily.

Code is like poetry and following coding standard gives good look to the code. As a developer, We are spending a lot of time reading code instead of writing a code. A Well Structured code is easy to read and understand.

There are three tools to maintain WordPress Coding Standard:

1. PHP CodeSniffer – https://github.com/squizlabs/PHP_CodeSniffer
2. PHP Coding Standards Fixer – https://cs.symfony.com/

For WordPress plugin code, I recommended using WordPress coding standard or PSR-3 or higher coding standard.

Right IDE:

If we use the right IDE, We can see syntax errors easily, Debug PHP code with Xdebug. I recommended using VSCode or PHPStorm IDE for WordPress Plugin Code development.

Static code analysis Tool:

We should remove unused code and variables from the code. For it, We should PHPStan – PHP Static Analysis Tool.

Task runner tool:

For compressing JS and CSS files, Remove comments and make PRO and Free plugins, We should use Gulp, Grunt, Codekit, or Webpack.

Version Control System:

We should use git for the version control system.

If you have 2 to 3 years of experience in WordPress development, You have felt that sometimes you slow down by other developers or your own messy code.

Suppose you are giving the service of WordPress WebSite Development. A client who developed a website from you 2 or 3 years ago came back and requested a few tweaks, and you are wasting hours finding where and how you should achieve these minor tweaks because you forget where you have written your code logic! You are embracing bad code.

If you are in a WordPress Product (Plugin or Theme or Saas) for a long time, You may feel that your productivity is slowing down day by day due to bad code.

The difference between developing a code in other PHP frameworks and WordPress is that WordPress doesn’t insist on a specific code structure. Other PHP frameworks like Laravel, Symfony, CakePHP, and Zend force developers to write code in a certain way. WordPress gives developers to write code in their own way. WordPress gives the flexibility to developers to develop code in any way. But this flexibility comes with great disadvantages. Each plugin developer structures code in their own way. There is no standard structure to develop a code in WordPress. Some WordPress developer writes code in a procedure styles others are in OOPs styles. The same inconsistencies can be seen in the Plugin and Theme files structure.

Some Plugin development companies understand these messes of code later when their plugin codebase grows vastly. If a developer tries to add a new feature, The Plugin release occurs with 2 to 3 bugs. If a developer tries to fix these bugs, They introduce new more bugs, and the WordPress plugin falls into a vicious cycle of bugs. The developer will fall in a spiral cycle of bugs, and customers of the plugin start complaining, making tickets, asking for refunds, and giving bad reviews to Plugin. These will affect plugin revenues. One side developer of the Plugin has near-zero productivity, and the Plugin owner companies’ revenues growth decrease and support load increases. At this time, the Plugin owner company start to hire new developers. New developers learn the existing messy code system and add a new feature. At the Starting of the phase of new developers giving enough productivity because they have learned messy code base and make more worst messier code. At this time, Old developers resign from the company or are thrown away by the company due to their productivity issues. After some time, the new developer reaches the same level of lacking productivity as the old developer. This way company has new developers every 2 to 3 years. These developer’s cycles hurt the company. New developer requires time to familiar with the plugin codebase.

Bad messy code requires more time for the new developers to be familiar with the Plugin codebase.

The messy code degrades plugin quality day by day and loss customer respect. The customers are starting to look at alternative plugins.

Until now, We understood that bad quality code affects you and your plugin company very worst. Later, We will discuss the solution to overcome the bad quality codebase.

Are your emails going to the spam folder of the receiver email box? and Still you have not set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocol in your server, then this guide is for you. In Today’s day, Every Web Server should set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC protocols; otherwise, your email will go in the SPAM folder, and you will never reach your email subscribers.

What are SPF, DKIM & DMARC?

SPF, DKIM & DMARC are authentication mechanisms or protocols that ensure you are a legitimate email sender. They ensure that no spammers are sending emails on behalf of your domain. Suppose you own a prashantwp.com domain; then your server is only legitimate to send email from support@prashantwp.com, no one other.

Setup SPF

SPF stands for Sender Policy Framework. Your domain SPF record tells the email receiver which servers are eligible to send mail on behalf of your domain. It is used to determine sender server is authenticated to send an email on behalf of the given domain.

To set up SPF, You should add the below record to your DNS server.

• Type: TXT
• Name: domain.com
• TTL: Auto
• Content: v=spf1 ip4:172,76.0.9 ip6:2001:0000:3238:DFE1:63:0000:0000:FEFB include:_spf.google.com ~all

In the above SPF DNS record content, The v=spf1 substring is indicating the SPF protocol version.

In the above SPF DNS record content, The ip4:172,76.0.9 substring is indicating your server’s IPv4 IP address.

In the above SPF DNS record content, The ipv6:2001:0000:3238:DFE1:63:0000:0000:FEFB substring is indicating your server’s IPv6 IP address.

In the above SPF DNS record content, The include:_spf.google.com is indicating google is allowed to send an email on behalf of your domain. It is useful if you are using any third-party mail service. I am using Google WorKPlace for my mailbox. If you are using any third-party mailbox service, You should mention its SPF record’s address here.

In the above SPF DNS record content, The ~all substring is indicating all other email sender servers should be SPF soft fail. If you write -all instead of ~all, Then It indicates all other email sender servers should be SPF hard fail. You can write +all substring But I am not recommending it because It makes valid all other servers to send emails on behalf of your domain.

For more details about SPF records content, Please visit the https://postmarkapp.com/blog/explaining-spf.

Setup DKIM

DKIM stands for DomainKeys Identified Mail.

To set up DKIM, You need to generate public-private Public key pair. The DKIM mechanism.

The public key is published by DNS record. The Private key is used to generate a HASH of the content of the email. The Hash is going with email in header form. The receiver mailbox received mail hash and content, and It verifies the Hash is right.

DKIM ensures that no one has changed the content of an email between sender and receiver. DKIM saves you from email spoofing.

Generate Public Private Key Pair

You can generate public-private key pair in Putty Gen software in Windows Operating System. You can generate a public-private key pair SSH KeyGen in Mac and Linux Operating Systems. You can generate public-private key pair on the https://cryptotools.net/rsagen online without any utility.

Set up DKIM public key DNS record

The TXT DNS record name should be _selector.domain.com. Here, I am choosing selector phpmailer so that the DNS record name would be _phpmailer.domain.com. The TXT DNS record content would be your generated public key.

To set up DKIM, You should add the below record to your DNS server.

• Type: TXT
• Name: _phpmailer.domain.com
• TTL: Auto
• Content: v=DKIM1;t=s;p=public_key_string

In the above DNS record content, The v=DKIM1 substring is indicating the DKIM protocol version.

In the above DNS record content, The t=s substring is indicating the timestamp version. Its value can be anything.

In the above DNS record content, The p=public_key_string substring is indicating the public key. Do not forget to replace the public_key_string with an actual public key that we have generated.

Sign an Email with DKIM Private Key in WordPress

To Sign with DKIM private key, please add the below code snippet in the root/wp-content/mu-plugins/dkim-sign-email.php

<?php
add_action( 'phpmailer_init', function( &$phpmailer ) {
	$phpmailer->DKIM_domain = 'prashantwp.com';
	$phpmailer->DKIM_selector = 'phpmailer'; // Replace phpmailer with your DKIM selector.
	$phpmailer->DKIM_private_string = 'private_key_string'; // Replace private_key_string with actual private key you generated
	$phpmailer->DKIM_passphrase = '';
	$phpmailer->DKIM_identity = $phpmailer->From;
} );

Setup DMARC

DMARC stands for Domain-based Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance.

DMARC tells the mailbox what to do if SPF and DKIM fail to meet the criteria. To set up DKIM, You have just to set up a DNS TXT record.

To set up DMARC, You should add the below record to your DNS server.

• Type: TXT
• Name: _dmarc
• TTL: Auto
• Content: v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:youremail@email.com

In the above DNS record content, The v=DMARC1 substring is indicating the DKIM protocol version.

In the above DNS record content, The p=none substring is indicating the policy what to do if SPF and DKIM fail to authenticate. There are three values of the policy:

• Diffrent DMARC policies:
  • none: No action taken if the SPF and DKIM policy is not passed in the receiver mailbox.
  • quarantine: If receiver mailbox has setup quarantine setting, The email is send to it otherwise it goes to the spam folder, If the SPF and DKIM of an email doen’t pass.
  • reject: The email goes to the spam folder, If the SPF and DKIM of an email doen’t pass .

In the above DNS record content, The rua=mailto:youremail@email.com substring indicates the email address to send all DMARC activity to the given email address. Do not forget to change youremail@email.com with your actual email address.

Besides these DMARC arguments, There are other DMARC DNS record arguments are also exist. DMARC All DMARC arguments are listed on the Google DMARC record document.

Setup List Unsubscribe Header in Email

Add below headers in the sending emails:

$header .= "List-Id: PrashantWPMain \r\n";
$header .= "List-Owner: <mailto:prashant@prashantwp.com> \r\n"
$header .= 'List-Unsubscribe-Post: List-Unsubscribe=One-Click \r\n';
$header .= 'List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:prashant@prashantwp.coms?subject=Unsubscribe>';

Please do not forget to change my email addresses with your email addresses.

WordPress’s role and permission system is not hierarchical. There is not necessary that higher user roles have all capabilities that lower user role has. In the Laravel and Symfony PHP frameworks, the permission system is hierarchical. Often A WordPress developers tend to check logged-in user roles for authorization in Custom Solution is not the right way to develop a solution. The WordPress Developer should check permission for the authorization.

In WordPress, Each user has been assigned a user role. User role is a label for authorization in WordPress. A User role has many capabilities (permissions).

User roles along with capabilities

There are five in-built WordPress user roles are listed below. The related user role capabilities are also listed with each user role. You should not remember all capabilities for each user role. It is just for reference.

• Administrator: The administrator has almost all permission to do in WordPress site. The role has below capabilities:

switch_themes, edit_themes, activate_plugins, edit_plugins, edit_users, edit_files, manage_options, moderate_comments, manage_categories, manage_links, upload_files, import, unfiltered_html, edit_posts, edit_others_posts, edit_published_posts, publish_posts, edit_pages, read, level_10, level_9, level_8, level_7, level_6, level_5, level_4, level_3, level_2, level_1, level_0, edit_others_pages, edit_published_pages, publish_pages, delete_pages, delete_others_pages, delete_published_pages, delete_posts, delete_others_posts, delete_published_posts, delete_private_posts, edit_private_posts, read_private_posts, delete_private_pages, edit_private_pages, read_private_pages, delete_users, create_users, unfiltered_upload, edit_dashboard, update_plugins, delete_plugins, install_plugins, update_themes, install_themes, update_core, list_users, remove_users, promote_users, edit_theme_options, delete_themes, export

• Editor: The Editor user can write, edit, delete and publish all posts. The role user can edit, delete and publish other user’s posts too. The role has below capabilities:

moderate_comments, manage_categories, manage_links, upload_files, unfiltered_html, edit_posts, edit_others_posts, edit_published_posts, publish_posts, edit_pages, read, level_7, level_6, level_5, level_4, level_3, level_2, level_1, level_0, edit_others_pages, edit_published_pages, publish_pages, delete_pages, delete_others_pages, delete_published_pages, delete_posts, delete_others_posts, delete_published_posts, delete_private_posts, edit_private_posts, read_private_posts, delete_private_pages, edit_private_pages, read_private_pages

• Author: The Author can write, publish and delete posts only own by them. The role has below capabilities:

upload_files, edit_posts, edit_published_posts, publish_posts, read, level_2, level_1, level_0, delete_posts, delete_published_posts

• Contributor: The Contributor can write and edit owns posts. The user role can not even publish own post too. The role has below capabilities:

edit_posts, read, level_1, level_0, delete_posts

• Subscriber: The Subscriber can read all contents of WordPress site. The role has below capabilities:

read, level_0

In Multisite user, There is an extra user role named as Super Administrator. The Super Administrator can do anything in any site of Multisite WordPress. When the Super Administrator user is logged in, All permission checks are bypassed and all capabilities to given them.

The level_x capabilities are no longer used. It is retained for backward compatibilities purposes. So, please do not worry about it.

Authentication and Authorization

Authentication and Authorization terms are ambiguous with each other. However, there is a difference between both.

Authentication refer to check whether a user is logged in. Authorization means to check whether the logged in user has permission to perform specific action.

For authentication, WordPress has is_user_logged_in function available.

To display the “Thank You User_Name.” in the header of the front end of WordPress WebSite, We can use the below code snippets:

add_action( 'wp_footer', 'pmb_footer_display_thanks_message' );
function pmb_footer_display_thanks_message() {
    if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
        printf( esc_html__( 'Thank You %1$s.', 'pmb-text-domain' ), $GLOBALS['current_user']->display_name );
    }
}

For authorization, There is a current_user_can function available in WordPress.

current_user_can( string $capability, mixed $args )

• $capability – the permission to check the current user has.
• $args – Other argument. Generally, It is object id for which the capability (permission) are checked.

For displaying edit post link to the logged-in user who has the capability to edit the post, We can use below code snippets:

add_action( 'the_content', 'pmb_content_add_edit_link', 10, 1 );
function pmb_content_add_edit_link( $content ) {
	if ( current_user_can( 'edit_post', $GLOBALS['post']->ID ) ) {
		return '<center><a href="' . esc_url( get_edit_post_link( $GLOBALS['post']->ID ) ) . '">' . __( 'Edit Post', 'pmb-text-domain' ) . '</a></center>' . $content;
	} else {
		return $content;
	}
}

Sometimes there is a need to check general capability check that is not related to any object. At that time, There is no need to pass the object id to the current_user_can function. For example, The current user has capability to manage all option, We can use the code if ( current_user_can( 'manage_options' ) ) {