One of the most confusing things of starting off as a developer is the mind-boggling amount of logins and passwords you need to work. The term “google” means lots and lots, and it seems a developer needs about one or two google passwords…
It’s largely due to the decentralized nature of the internet. There isn’t a single authority controlling everything and gatekeeping your access to all the tools, plugins and services you need. It’s a good thing. Good things often require nitty-gritty work and details.
Let’s take a look at the first few passwords you’re going to need.
Basic services you need passwords and logins for as a wordpress developer
First off, you need some ways to access and use WordPress. Secondly, it’s important to set things up with Git so you can modify and track changes to website files between your own computer and the production server.
- WordPress account for your own website – This is the account you use as an administrator to create your website. It’s the key to your back-office. You can modify everything in your website from this account, as long as it retains administrator rights.
- WordPress.com account – note the “.com”: it’s an account created on the WordPress.com website. It can be the same account as above, but you can also create a separate account (even with the same email as the wordpress account for your own website). Here is where you can create a wordpress.com account.
- “WordPress.org” account to contribute to the development of WordPress from this more “public” account.
- GitHub – This is a specific system that helps you track changes you implement on your website when using the Git protocol. It only tracks file changes when you use git-related commands. You can do this from the terminal on your computer, from the GitHub website, and from GitHub desktop. It won’t track things you might change from the WordPress backoffice. With a GitHub account you can create Git repositories. Here is where to create a GitHub account. An alternative to GitHub is GitLab.